Botany Buddy

A federal judge on Friday banned the planting of genetically modified “Round-up Ready” sugar beets in California.  (link at bottom) In the plant world this is the ultimate case of the lesser of two evils.  While Roundup is hated by many environmentalist for it’s effects on amphibians when it is suspended in water, it is loved by others as the most economical and effective tool in the war on invasive species.  Never mind the conflicting science about the effectiveness of trait containment in frankenplants and the ability of hybrid traits to pass on through seedlings.  We have seen through woodies such as Spirea, Maples, Asian Pears and even more rapidly in Monsanto’s own genetically modified corn, that making a species hardier will only make it better at adapting and proliferating.  This is one of the greatest of all natural laws, and a law that Monsanto has become masters at capitalizing on.  Regardless of the harmful practices, this a case is the ultimate example of a moral being trying to pass responsibilty to a being without a conscience, and the kind of argument that truly turns a garden philosofer like me on.

For decades Monsanto and the companies they have bought, have been creating selective herbicides that can be effective on broadleafs vs. grasses, herbaceous plants vs. woodies and so on and so on.   However, since Monsanto’s chemical patents have been expiring, and cheaper private label versions of Roundup, Weed-B-Gone, and Grass-B-Gone have taken over the marketplace, there has been a brilliant yet somewhat evil effort to change the landscape of the market.  Just as they havecornered the market on chemicals for decades (a market they very much created), they have been creating a market in bioengineered plants to eliminate the need for chemicals they don’t create and making it easier to use the ones they do.  The larger problem is, and where the “Evilness” arrives is that if plants weren’t taken out of their natural environment in the first place and used for unnatural purposes none of this would be necessary at all.

One could argue that the evilness is inherit in the monocropped, overconsolidated, and geographically unsustainable nature of the agriculture industry as a whole, and that they are just trying to lessen the evil.  That is another debate that we won’t go into here.  It could also be said that Monsanto is just trying to limit the use of chemicals and that is a good, but in this case the crop was created so people could use more chemicals, particularly one that Monsanto makes.  Worst of all, to make it easier to use that chemical they are creating potentially and in some cases proven invasive species (such as Round-up Ready turf grass) that do far greater damage to the environment than the chemicals to control them.  Worst of all the chemicals they are making them immune to is the only effective control that man has for the invasive species.  In the end what does more damage to the environment isn’t the plants or the chemical, but the irresponsible or uneducated decisions that are made by the people who create and use them.

That is what makes this case and scenario so exciting and downright intoxicating to a garden(ing) philosopher like me.  This gets to the heart of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and logic and grows right out of the garden.  To look at the more heady side of this you can check out my previous post on The Morality of Sustainability.  For now though, I will cut straight to the case at hand and sum it up simply in application here.

Only beings with a self-conscience can be responsible for their actions, and have moral authority or responsibility.  Left with the lesser evils, the chemical has two opportunities for good on the decisive front:  at creation with the maker, and in use with the applicator.  Chemicals can be produced responsibly and even organically if the makers take the time and responsibility to do so.  The perfect example is agricultural vinegar, but lobbyists have kept it illegal in most states.  It could be said that the good in the intent is enough, but regardless of our culture’s fondness of Spock and John Stuart Mills, the ends only justify the means in the eyes of the beholder.  That is a false argument, and that is just an excuse for personal justification rather than grounds for moral right or wrong.  For good to be possible it must come from the actions of a moral being and be inherit in the nature of  the beings involved.

As for Frankenplants (Genetically Modified Organisms / GMO’s), they are not beings with a self-conscience (once again you can look at the previous post) so Sugar Beets cannot be held responsible for their actions once they are released into nature.  However their creators are moral beings and have an inherit responsibility to do good, not just call it good and try to justify their actions.  Taking the nature out of a natural being by altering it’s nature, using it unnaturally, and forcing it to work against nature is the ultimate example immorality in itself.  Add in that you are doing it for personal and financial gain…You have pure outright evil.

In this case, Monsanto is trying to put the owness of selectivity in the hands of a being without a conscience…the Sugar Beet.  It is trying to take it out of the hands of the beings with the conscience, chemical manufacturers, applicators, and growers.  Finally, they are trying to wash their hands of all responsibilty by saying the ends justify the means.  Worst of all, they stand to profit from both sides of this by being able to sell the seed, plus more Round-up. 

I have been clear througout my posts, that I don’t like to deem people as evil, to me the evil lyes in the lack of education and understanding that leads to these decisions.  I think all people are inheritly good and only their actions can be good or evil.  When people are described as good or evil, it is due to the accumulation of their collective acts and relegated to the adjective not a form of existence.  The evil that has led to this is the lack of education in the liberal arts that has proliferated all industry, especially horticulture/agriculure, and even more worrisome our education system as a whole that becomes more industrial each day.  Generations of replacing introspection with instruction instead of using both in education has led us where we are today, agriculturally, environmentally, economically, politically…and ethically.  I am sure that there will be plenty of people who claim that this case is being blown-up by a liberal activist judge in California.  Well if being moral means being liberal, then I am damn proud to be a Liberal.

Link to Reuters’ article on Judge’s ruling

*Please note that all of the food in these photos was grown orgnically, in my own garden, from organically certified heirloom seed, and tasted even better than it looks.

It has been a long time coming, much longer than this post, but we are starting to see the pieces of our online tools come to life.  I hearken back to the journey of creating the original iPhone app and remember the emotional roller coaster it was.  Despite all the memories relived and the stress of dealing with the developers and Apple, when it finally hit the store, it was like seeing a Magnolia bloom in spring oozing with pollen.  The people we have met as a result have been like the friends you make at a garden party or your trusted allies at the local nursery.  They have pollinated our flower and created the fruit that will produce that cluster of bright red seeds for the Cardinals to harvest and spread the flowers all around.

When we started the iPhone app and worked with the developer, we realized quickly that there was nothing natural about the technology at all, no matter how smooth they make the interface look.  We realized that to continue growing and for technology to work with nature it must act like nature, be built like nature and grow like nature.  The pieces and parts must be able to work together to grow the ecosystem as a whole.  Unfortunately since 1992, when the USDA started building the first database, technology for horticulture has been moving the wrong direction.  The medium has been used to store, organize, and dictate what nature is rather than grow the information like the plant kingdom, has grown itself.  As a result the information is fractured, isolated and has not been allowed to grow and become the knowledge it wants to become. 

We experienced the stifling complexities of this paradox before the iPhone app was ever complete, but were limited by the technology of the device.  As users started giving us feedback, we saw the limited use of the iPhone to ATT and the iPhone platform create the same separations as traditional horticulture information on other platforms.  Nature is made up of symbiotic relationships that are not limited by species let alone by the brand of your computer or phone, and we realized to meet the needs of gardeners, growers, and the horticulture industry as a whole we had use the whole world as our ecosystem, just like nature does.  So just as we ran from the USDA and turned to Linnaeus as the inspiration for our data structure, we have moved from the native applications to a web based platform that can grow as freely as the Internet has itself.

Gardens are about growing… plants, places, people, minds, and relationships.  For growth to happen you have to learn, which requires listening, communicating, adapting, and experiencing.  Using data structures and technological devices that prevent and stifle this growth, have kept the entire industry from being able to grow technologically as well as the plants in their gardens grow themselves.  When it comes to reference sources for horticulture, rather than treating them as a growing medium, technology has acted more like a pre emergent or pair of pruners to control the growth of information.  In the end it has prevented or limited the experiential activities necessary to grow and has turned gardening on the web to a collection on limitless libraries and opinions.  Other than prolific and wonderful discussions in social media little has been done to grow the industry as a whole through the use of the information.

Some who will read this have seen what we are up to in our cyber-greenhouse, and have watched us toiling in the soil, and even seen some of the seeds germinate.  Finally the seeds have all germinated, their roots are reaching the edge of the pots and are ready to be potted up.  Like those first liners going to the wholesale market, that is who we have been working with first to bring this to market, and for some of those larger nurseries who do it all, we are planting our flowers in their greenhouses as well.  Soon it will be spreading nation, continent and world-wide just like those seeds on the Magnolia.

Like nature itself, the technology is proving that it can grow symbiotically with all these different groups regardless of their individual environments and species.  It is working, just like all of those original experiments that came from Linnaeus and those little bitty peas.  It is working because instead of fighting and controlling nature we worked with it, embraced it and emulated it.  We are able to grow all of these different tools for all these different people, because like nature we have one life force driving everything we do for everyone in our garden, and have used nature’s structural models to make it all work together.

We are not ready to release our individual or education tools yet, if you sign up for news on our main site we will keep you posted.  If you are in the nursery or landscape industry and looking for ways to better communicate with, or education your clients, staff, and end users feel free to contact us, and I’ll gladly give you a tour or the cyber-greenhouse and show you what we are growing for you.

The Christian Science Monitor had a good article on the state of the nursery industry this week titled, “The nursery industry is facing tough times.”  It paints a pretty bleak picture for the last year and predicts the same for next year.  It is actually an extension of an article posted by the Oregon Nurseryman’s Association.  I would link them both at the bottom but ONA still doesn’t post on line so CSM you get it.  The just of it is that last year commercial growers showed a 17% decline and they are predicting the same again next year.  The growers they interview hold their chins up and say the industry will rebound, but that they will be the last ones, because the plants are the last thing to go in when construction comes back.  For an industry that rarely operates on a profit margin over ten percent things will have to change.  They say that the industry is completely dependent on the housing industry, but that isn’t the complete truth.

I have been in this industry my entire life.  I am a Missouri Certified Nurseryman, and worked in some sort of retail or wholesale nursery my entire career until 2004 When I moved to North Carolina.  My growing design career had led me to a company that was entirely landscape and maintenance focused with no retail or wholesale operation.  The company I came to work for was the biggest in the area, the work was supposed to endless, every house I saw upon arrival seemed to be north of 1 million dollars.  Beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, and golf courses (if you think they are beautiful) where everywhere I turned.  Being right outside of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, this is also on of the most biodiverse areas in the world.  For a designer and gardener, this was and still is paradise.  I toured about twenty jobs in three states during my interviews and coming from the inner city I saw how I could be creatively reborn, and I was.

When we decided to take the position and move here it wasn’t about work though.  We already had roots in the area from my wifes past, and we had a two year old daughter at the time.  We had reached the point where we had to leave our beloved Hyde Park, but couldn’t stand the thought of becoming suburbanites, or crossing the state line to Kansas.  This was about being the kind of people we wanted to be and raising our daughter in that light.  We made sacrifices and I contend they were worth it.  However, I have to admit some sacrifices I did not see coming.  I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Mountain Laurels, Rhododendrons, and Azaleas at every turn.  I was probably intoxicated form the smell of the Galax as well.   I still am and always will be.

What I did not see was the storm that was coming.  In the Midwest you can see a storm coming from hours not miles away.  It’s flat there, so when you first see that front coming it is still in Nebraska.  You have time to secure your site and get out of the way.  Here things pop up from behind a mountain and your stuck.  Luckily I have never been one to look to the horizon.  I am always one to explore inside before I look out.  I am a bit introspective if you can’t tell.   As a designer I take after Frank Lloyd Wright.  I seek out the box and break it down creating as many different views inside until I lead the eye outside to the horizon and nature so we understand our role in it and reveal the greatness of it all.

Once here I had to do the same thing with my new work environment.  One of the first things that struck me was that with one of the largest landscape markets in the country there were relatively few nurseries.  Where did all these local earth loving gardeners shop?  Asheville is way too crunchy for them to shop at WalMart.  The next thing that struck me was that we didn’t do any work in town.  All of our clients were an hour, county, or state away?  I was a mid-towner.  I was used to driving by all my work on the way to and from the nursery.  I could schedule an appointment on every hour because all my customers were neighbors and new each other, not an hour apart.  It was an event for the entire block when I came around.

Finally after a few months it struck me that I had tons of work, but I had no customers.  I would meet these people get to “know” them and their space, but when it came time to see the plan they may not even show up.  We would send the plan to them or give it to the builder, and a signed contract and deposit would show-up for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Then it struck me that all of these beautiful houses, furnished to the hilt, were empty.  There was no one home…EVER.  Not only were the homes we were working on empty, but in someways our work had become empty too.  After knowing all of my clients closely suddenly I was lucky if I knew ten percent of them.

One of the reasons I always liked working in a nursery was that my customers could find me, but now I couldn’t find them.  I knew my customers and as part of their home I became part of their family.  Suddenly I had tons of work, but had no customers, and even the greatest of designs somehow lacked soul.  I have done a lot of market research this year and from 2002 to 2007 the amount of landscape services performed in this country jumped from 24.5-44.7 Billion dollars.  It almost doubled.  The number of people didn’t double, and we know that what everyone spent didn’t double because the nation saw wages shrink.  What did double (in some cases more than double) was property values.  The over inflation in the real estate market that fueled new construction was what was fueling this growth.  Almost the entire landscape industry shifted it’s focus to service this new market with deep pockets, and best of all (in some people’s minds) there were no customers to deal with.  It was supposed to be easy money, and all you had to do was grow your company to do the work.

It’s confession time now.  A little over two years into my new position here, I went to work for the other side.  I started a consulting company that designed and managed properties for a few of the most elite resort developments in the Southeast.  I got a unique inside look at what was feeding the growth on the other side.  One of my roles was to create management and financial plans to manage these properties down the road.  It was part of the collateral needed to get  the construction loans.  A big change coincided with this growth at the beginning of the decade that greatly effected how this all worked.

For the first time in our nations history, the banks that made the loans that drove this country ceased to hold them and the responsibility to guarantee them.  As a result a fundamental change in underwriting occurred.  Property values were no longer calculated for what they were worth, but for what they could be worth.  If you had the land, a landscape architect, and a good marketing package you could set the price, get the appraisal and get the loan.  The banks didn’t care, because they were only writing a five year balloon that they were going to collect the fees on and sell the loan in six months.  Even worse the government was giving out HUD agreements protecting the developers from the buyers if for some reason they didn’t deliver what they were selling.  Even at the lot buyer level, the eventual homeowner could get their lot home package for no money down and no payments for two years if they had the personal credit the developers could use to build a house.

When it came to building the developments it worked the same way.  It was on the backs of the contractors to go out and buy the equipment for these multi year-commitments, and if it meant they could get part of the windfall and not have to deal with all those pesky customers they were all for it.  In the end, everyone involved was living off the over inflated land, and as long as the cash kept coming to feed the machine they were all fine with it.  Something happened on the way to the bank though.  Suddenly there were way more million dollars houses than there were people that could afford them, and all those little investors who financed those home to make a fortune on in two years suddenly couldn’t pay the bank when there was no one to buy the house.  When the banks came to collect, they realized there was still no asphalt on the roads to get to the house, the pool the developer promised wasn’t there yet, and that golf course was still five years out.   There line of credit would expire and be dry before the golf course it was for was even built.  Foreclosures on the spec homes started to mount, the banks couldn’t sell the loans and property values plummeted.

Suddenly the same was true for the developers and bankers.  All of these over inflated construction loans were due on a five year turn around, and before the construction could be completed the properties were already worth less than the loans.  The lines of credit came to a halt, property sales stopped completely and developers that sold hundreds of lots the year before were lucky to sell three.  With the banks cutting off the credit, and the buyers nowhere to be found, it was over.

The house of cards was collapsing, but to make that house of cards look strong people kept spending.  The contractors kept going even thought the developers couldn’t pay.  As payables mounted to 90, 120 days or more, the companies would finance them to service the debt on that equipment.  If they could just keep going and make the developers look strong someone would finance it,  or they could slap liens on teh properties and when the bank sorted it out they would get paid.   The problem was, the banks held the first mortgage, and since the properties weren’t worth the note, the liens didn’t get paid because the banks were in line first.

In all of this,  the only one left holding the bill is the contractors and the few homeowners that didn’t buy their homes in an LLC.  so they could walk away.  Oddly enough the ones stuck with the bill are the only ones that could have walked away, but chose to stay.  In the next three years 1.5 Trillion dollars in commercial loans are coming due on properties that aren’t worth what those notes are for, and this isn’t over yet.

Our industry sold it’s soul, or so it seems.  The thing is, our soul never left us, we just left it and we have to find it again.  There are those that didn’t get sucked in.  They stayed craftsman before contractor and realized to be a craftsman you have to have someone to craft a piece of art for.  We have seen down turns before in the 80’s and early 90’s, again after September 11, and this industry grew out of the great depression.  In those times though, the industry didn’t invest in what collapsed.  We didn’t finance the stock market, the dot com boom, or Osama Bin Laden. The difference this time is we bought in and got left holding the tab.   In times like this people find their homes and gardeners are born.  The jobs will be smaller, but there will be more of them.  The customers will not have as much money, but they will value our work more.  This industry was built on relationships, and going back to that is the only way it will come back.  We have to find what made us who we are in our souls.

Landscape companies will have to change, some will go, and many new ones will emerge.  The work is still there and is not going away.  The yards need mowed, the trees need trimmed, the house needs shade, and in more and more cases landscapes have become a structural part of construction.  Most importantly, more people are finding their homes and garden as something more than where they park at night.  In some way the industry got what they wanted which was less customers.  However I have to think that everyone is really like me and what they love about what they do is the customer.  If this is true the industry will be fine, but we have to be honest with ourselves that we are not victims of the housing industry, because we are in the home industry.  We just forgot where our home was.

More from the CSM:  http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/2010/0219/The-nursery-industry-is-facing-tough-times

When I started this post it was going to be an all out attack on Lawn&Landscape Magazine.  Over the past several months they have taken a corporate political stance that has ceased to be an educational service to their industry and turned into an all out chemical and economic attack on garden consumers and professionals.  Their publication has obviously become an effort to carry water for the equipment,  chemical and insurance industries that pay for all their advertising and write their content.  It has ceased to be an educational service to the industry.

The article that finally pushed me over the edge wasn’t the one last month on how limiting turf use to 4000 sf per yard was an attack on our ideals, or the one the month before on how landscape employees that are constantly exposed to chemicals and physical danger don’t deserve health care.  Instead it was this month’s on how the industry was being attacked because municipalities in Canada where restricting chemical use in residential and environmentally sensitive areas.  Their fear was that the socialist tendencies of these Canadians might drift south like a cloud of RoundUp and make us little salamanders in the states start caring about the future of our children and water supply.  The full article is here…water bucket and all:  Best Defense

As most of you who read me know, I have spent my entire career in the landscape design build business.  One of the things that has made this business great is that as long as I can remember is that nurserymen, landscapers, and gardeners are typically true tradesmen who learn, love and teach their crafts.  They are not just tradesmen, but true craftsmen.  Probably the most notable reason this industry has been able to grow as fast as the customers isn’t just the demand that has paid for it, but also the numerous organizations, associations, and schools that have collaborated and been a part of that education.  The main goal of all these groups is the advancement of the industry by networking and educating.  For the most part all the various state associations, the ANLA, and various other groups make this their calling.  These groups also have one other thing in common, they are all in the business of growing, and understand that to do it successfully you can never stop learning.  They also know that the most important part of learning is listening to their industry, and their consumers.

(This is where I originally paused to figure out how to handle this tactfully)  then…

This morning I woke up to this wonderful post from Garden Rant: “A Chemical Reaction” Makes the Case.  It chronicles the grassroots efforts of the Canadian people to protect their children and resources, and the woman who made it her life’s cause.  This is a wonderfully positive take on what happens when industry and government listen to the needs of their customers and in the end grow together for the benefit of both.  What happened in Canada is a case of consumers driving change and an industry growing to meet demand in trying times rather than screaming that they are under attack.  This is an example of what our industry has always been about when it is at it’s best.

Lawn & Landscape Magazine used to be dedicated to advancing and teaching a growing industry but has gradually become increasingly consumed with maintaining the status quo.  Now obviously for them the status quo is the never ending supply of equipment and chemical vendors who cover %70 of their publication with adds.  However, for the people in this business the future isn’t in buying up their vendor’s over saturated, unwanted, and unaffordable inventories, it is in learning their changing market’s needs and desires and adapting their businesses to them.  In short they need to learn, and education requires two things; listening and thinking.  Both of these Lawn & Landscape  has been too busy screaming how we are under attack to do.

Before I started Botany Buddy I had to go through some serious reconciliation.  I was giving up 25 years of designing landscapes usually for the sake of prestige and money.  It wasn’t necessarily desired by me, but by my clients who at least wanted to portray that image.  I was just paying for my gardening habit and overdosing on it with their money.  It was a viscous cycle, and for twenty years I watched the industry make the same mistakes as the clients.  Firms became more concerned about the appearance of the trucks and mowers than if the equipment best met the needs of their clients.  In the end, we even pushed this image to our clients, by focusing on the resale value of our product rather than how it made their lives or environment better.

Well as the false economy that paid for these false ideals has crumbled, a return to the values that started this industry are coming back.  In the last five to ten years sustainable landscaping has come into focus.  Everyday people are making decisions based upon their environments and lifestyles, and finding the essence in both rather than trying to create an image of a place that doesn’t exist.  Lawn & Landscape surely isn’t going to listen to little old Botany Buddy, and I’m sure after this Monsanto won’t let them promote my little $10 app.   That’s O.K., I didn’t get into this for them, I did it to return to my roots as a gardener, out of a love of the world around me, and to hopefully find a new way forward.  We may not be able to change the giant of industry, but maybe if all of us gardeners rant a little more, we can “uproot the gardening world” like the women of Garden Rant and change the world around them.

What happens when you combine politics, various county governments, Academe and community organizing?  Usually not much.  Having been been raised in Academe and involved in plenty of politics, when I first heard of a BYGL I definitely had my preconceived notions.  In fact the first image that came to my mind was the Spoofhound.  That was the name of my high school mascot. Rumor had it in the early days our football team was so inept at coming together and working as a team that the coach said they all looked like a bunch of  Spoofhounds.  The name has stuck as long as anyone can remember.  Of course when the teams are good everyone tries to change their name to “The Hounds”.  However being a dog lover I have always been fond of the name Spoofhound.  I couldn’t have been more proud of that name when they recently gained national notoriety for an act of selflessness that became a network and Internet sensation and showed how greatness can be reached when unlikely partners come together to do something good. (story)

When I first heard of  ”The Bygles” (at least that is what I call them), I have to admit I imagined somewhat of a Spoofhound effort in the purest sense of the name.  After all how could so many competing entities possibly come together to beat the odds for the benefit of everyone.  Anyone who has worked in horticulture or been a gardener knows that when you are working one on one with an extension agent it can be a wonderful experience.  However, if you knew what it requires to allow that to happen you would be surprised you had the chance to meet with an agent at all.  Typically University Extension Services are are funded by a combination of federal, state, and local or county funds.  Most are also usually torn between a university system and local governments.  This makes it really easy for someone be turned into a research assistant or someone who has to do the biddings of a politician trying to seek reelection.  Yet somehow through personal care and a love of their jobs by individual agents those of us on the receiving end are rarely aware of this paradox.  These agents are friends, educators, and ambassadors between the farmer in the field or the gardener in their yard and many different figments in ivory tours that hold the fate their existence in a very fragile web of funding and interests.

Somehow in the story of  ”The Bygles” all of these odds are overcome to create an effort more worthy of the name Superdog than a Spoofhound.  BYGL is a statewide newsletter put out weekly through the growing season by The Ohio State University Extension Service.  This seems like no big deal.  All of our local agents put out at least monthly newsletters, or at least most do.  However this one is different.  Every week during the growing season agents from every county in the state come together via conference call to discuss not only what is happening in their districts, but how diseases, insects, and trends are acting across the entire state and their region of the country as a whole.

For one day every week these people bring all of their local perspectives but put aside their local agendas to see how they can address these problems as a state and on a statewide level.  After the meeting everything is compiled into one document and not only faxed out to all of their various members and users, but also put together online where the report can be accessed.  Not only can the report be accessed, but through the effort of some dedicated agents and university staff, wonderful photos are taken and information is gathered to tell the story as it needs to be addressed today and not just recycled from some old files.  Not only that, they reach outside of their own circle to other agencies and resources, and all the appropriate links and references are included so people can quickly find what they need.  As a result they are able to address problems and needs for the entire state as an ecosystem rather than one county at a time, and over come all the bureaucratic odds.

As gardeners our biggest challenge is learning the ecosystems we work in and learning how to help the plants and animals in them to work together for the good of the entire garden.  Gardening can be challenging, but working across all the various bureaucratic boundaries, and hierarchies to pull this off has to be harder.  One of  ”The Bygles” likes to say “Information is not Education”  As someone with a philosophy degree, I have to agree.  Having managed lands in many states and across state and county lines, I have become familiar with many extension services and their resources.  They are loaded with information and are extremely valuable resources, but BYGL is definitely designed for education, not just to disperse information.

The last BYGL was just published for the season until next spring, but I highly recommend you check this site out.  I would be proud to call this dog a Spoofhound in the greatest sense.  *Note: when you go to this page the links to older newsletters are at the bottom.  The links at the top are under construction as they are archiving this years content.

As long as I can remember I have been hanging out in Garden Centers.  As a small child, my father was a competitive rose grower, so the smell of malathion is as iconic to my childhood memories as the smell of a bakery is to most people.  Of course I have gotten all green with age and what I can only assume is some sort of wisdom.  I can only think my father would have too if lung cancer hadn’t gotten him first.  Especially since he always swore it was the roses that gave it to him and not the Chesterfield Kings.  My father was a very ritualistic man, and no matter how much he loved those roses, spraying every other week, and fertilizing on the off weeks, there was one ritual that he loved even more.  It had to be rooted in his desire to find the prefect specimen, with the perfect color and shape, and then to manipulate it even more than he could the perfect rose.  That most monumental of annual quests was for the perfect Christmas tree.

I grew up in Northwest Missouri, about 30 minutes south of a little town called Shenandoah,  Iowa.  Most people don’t realize that for the first half of the 20th century Shenandoah, Iowa was the nursery capital of the world.  More nursery stock moved through that little town with nothing but a radio hall and the Tall Corn Motel than any place in the world for almost a half a century.  I grew up working for a company called Earl May.  Their headquarters was there and the location I worked at was one of the first satellite locations outside of Shenandoah.  Earl May grew into fame for having one of the first nationally broadcast gardening radio shows, and one of the largest distributed seed catalogs ever.  What has made it one of the largest grossing nursery retailers though wasn’t nursery stock at all.  It was Christmas and Pet Supplies.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s retail chains like Kmart and Pamida (not even Walmart yet) were emerging and with them came seasonal garden shops.  When garden centers realized they needed to stay open year round to compete and keep customer loyalty they started looking for seasonal sales to carry them through the winter.  Gone were the days of having roadside stands and taking winters off.  You had to be a part of the the buyers’ year round ritual to keep up us gardeners coming in.  Earl was a smart man and so were his offspring.  While everyone else was deciding whether to take on animal and livestock supplies or to set up a Christmas trees on their empty nursery lots in November, Earl May decided they wanted it all.  Instead of focusing on one, they went for both and instead of focusing on livestock, they went for pets.  They developed a chain revolving around the lifestyle of people who love living and love living things.  It was pet supplies, birding goods, and holidays of all sorts year round.  Garden supplies were relegated to less than 1/3 of the store’s floor space.  If people needed it weekly Earl carried it.  When I left the company at a height of 62 stores, they had some of the most loyal gardening customers I have ever known, but their two largest departments were actually Christmas and Pets.

My earliest childhood memories of hanging out in that garden center were not lining up to check out the first arrival of bare root roses in March, or buying my first radishes seeds.  It was the magic of walking under strands of clear white bulbs through a forest of  Scotch Pine and Douglas Fir.  We would run up and down the aisles hiding behind the tallest of trees, and drink hot cocoa or cider while dad analyzed every single tree in that place.  It had worked and Earl got me.  Of course as I grew, Earl grew.  Soon they had lights and ornaments, flocked trees and artificial trees, even to the point of carrying Macy’s famed Department 56.  All the way through high school and college and for another fifteen years beyond that, not only had I become and accomplished nurseryman and successful landscape designer, for two months out of every year, I became an Elf.  Through three different nurseries and almost thirty years of my life, I flocked trees, made wreaths, put them in stands, created arrangements, tied bows and decorated some of the most elaborate places you have every seen.  It was only appropriate that one day I would design the landscape on the Country Club Plaza, on of the most magical Christmas places of all.

As the leaves in the mountains of North Carolina begin to fall, the underlying green of the Rhododendron and Hemlock that makes them so special is coming through.  But if you go up high enough, above 4,000 feet, something else is happening.  If you drive high enough and get back into the most remote corners of  the hills you get beyond the the hardwood forests to places with names like Little Canada and Little Switzerland.  From these mystical mountain tops were you can see for miles on end, sometimes four states at a time.  It is a magical place where what at one time were natural balds on top of mountains have now been turned into special forests.   The trees are perfectly lined in rows, rarely get over 12′ tall and are perfectly pruned as far as the eye can see.  The rich dark green with the little splash of blue is unmistakable and with the shorter days as the sun goes down the stars come out like strands of clear white bulbs over the fields.  This is the origin of the Frazier Fir.  The most sought after Christmas tree of all.

Yes I am a cheesy romantic.  As much as I like to preach all my virtues of environmental awareness and tree hugging elitism, nothing excites me more than that in three short weeks I will take out my little girl and walk the aisles looking for that perfect specimen.  We will strap it to the roof, bring it home, cut off the stump and put it in water so the branches will lay perfectly open by Thanksgiving Day and the rituals will begin.  Of course I will hold back my excitement as I see it grow in her eyes over the coming weeks.  Mainly because I don’t want her to explode before Christmas day, but also because I know I look like a dork.  I will look weird enough at the annual Advent wreath making party when I break out my Felco pruners, floral wire, and perfectly pruned greens and berries.

In the meantime we’ll keep logs on the fire and marshmallows near by and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the best types of trees and how to be green through all of this.  But for now, the green that I am feeling is that cheesy looking elf suit that is permanently tattooed to my psyche.  That same suite in reality probably made me a gardener.  As much as I run from the chemicals that are the lifeblood of the garden center and loathe the grotesque commercialism that has taken over our holidays and lives as a whole, I also realize it has helped bring us a generation of gardeners.  For that I owe Earl a lifetime of memories and a lifetime more to come.