Botany Buddy

Twitter can wear me out sometimes.  I am a little to ADD to keep up with everything that is going on in all those different directions.  There are some wonderful people out there that I have gotten to know and I am a better person for it.  Let’s face it though, many of them are as fake as they come, especially when in the form of some tweet machine or corporate face.  The odd’s aren’t much different than in the world of touchable, seeable, smellable beings, but they are often more obvious, because it is easier to see behavior in print over a timeline than in a personal encounter.  Every once in awhile though you meet someone in the twitterverse that reminds you who you are and of your own timeline.

A few months ago I stumbled into one of those in @rainbowirisfarm.  It wasn’t anything I heard him say or do, but the few encounters I have take me deep into my roots unbeknown to him.  Rainbow Iris Farm is in a little known corner of the universe known as Bedford, Iowa.  You may be asking yourself how one can find the iris for the corn, and that can be hard.  However, also in Bedford is a little place called Lake of Three Fires.  There aren’t many big lakes in the land of tall corn, because it is just too damn flat to hold water.  This isn’t a big lake, but it had something even harder to find in the midwest.  It had a beach.

I grew up over the border in a little town in Northwest Missouri, and my parents split up at an early age.  Some of the fondest memories of times with my father involved two places…his rose garden, and Lake of Three Fires.  When my parents split up, it was during the gas crisis.  Mom got the Bug, and Dad got the MG.  At first I lived with my mom, and on visitation weekends with my dad, one of our favorite things to do was load up the MG and head to Bedford.  We would put down the roof and my brother would get the front seat because he was older.  I would sit in the back where there was no seat on the little flat space that the roof folded down into.  Sometimes I would even make a fort underneath the roof where I could nap out of the wind on the way home.

We knew the journey had begun, not when the roof came down, but when he popped in the Eagles Greatest Hits 8-track.   That giant orange toupee would start blowing in the wind with those giant silk collars and gold chains flapping to the wind in the same rhythm.  We new good times were ahead, including the drive.  When we would get to the lake, Dad always told us he couldn’t swim, but in reality it was just that the hair tape wouldn’t stay on in the water.  Decades later I can remember the sight of him on those trips vividly, but I can’t remember for the life of me what that lake looked like.  I can remember the rose garden vividly.  Every time I see @rainbowirisfarm in the timeline, I see that drive and even smell the Aramis like it was happening right then and there.  Then I go back down my own timeline and always end up in the rose garden.

With father’s day weekend coming up I will be going to the rose garden at Biltmore for a leisurely photo outing.  I recently did photo profiles of every rose in the place.  That was an even bigger journey through time than my twitter encounters.  Ominously missing from the collection is a certain Mr. Lincoln.  Rose gardeners will know what a travesty this is.  I started to wonder if the absence it was a nod to the South then I realized that Peace and Olympiad were missing too.  Maybe Mr. Vanderbilt just had something against symbols of democracy polluting his aristocracy.  Regardless,  I will go and inevitably get lost in the sights, smells and memories of times past.  I might even go all the way and put The Eagles on my iPod Touch.  They rightfully deserve a place there with Botany Buddy since my memories of them are much a part what has brought it about.   Now if I could just get just get that MG since I no longer need a truck.

In the last three weeks I have been visited by about thirty friends from distant places dating back over thirty years.   Some of them I don’t even remember not knowing and even though I hadn’t seen some in five to ten years it seemed as though a single day had not passed.  Most have married or should have been allowed to, and some we here to see one get married.  About the only thing that was different was some of us were a little softer physically and mentally.  However none of us were any softer in our passions.  When you get a group of artists, musicians, chefs, designers, and gardeners together you know you are in for aesthetic overload.  I have to thank Michael and Anita for choosing Asheville as the location for their special day.  There couldn’t have been anyplace more appropriate for such a reunion.

It was definitely a spiritual time and this in particular is a spiritual time of year for me.  Lately I have been completely enthralled in my writing for the update, but I have also been rediscovering my camera.  Two days a week I have been spending in the field capturing what has probably been the best blooming season I have ever encountered.  This has allowed me to capture from bud to bloom to leaf and to seed hundreds of varieties of plants.  In the process it has reconnected me to the people who introduced me to some of the plants, and the people I introduced the plants to.  This has been a true rediscovery of myself and I can never thank enough the people that have allowed this happen, just like I can never thank enough the people who first made these introductions to me.  There is an old saying that it is bad luck to thank someone for giving you a plant, you just give them one back and give one to someone else.  Gardening is without a doubt about giving and bringing people together rather than thanking them and going on your way.  Things and people always seem to keep coming around like the seasons in a garden.

This spring has also allowed me to reconnect with people I have never met.  In my excursions  I have visited private and public gardens as well as nature herself.  I have even just cruised neighborhoods scoping out that one missing specimen.  Twenty years ago this is how I first honed my craft with mentors and friends like Duane Hoover of the Kaufmann Gardens and so many others.  However no one made me better understand my craft better than those I studied that came before me.  Tommy Church, George Kessler, Frank Lloyd Wright and John Brookes are some of my favorites, but nothing influenced me more than the biography of Fredrick Law Olmsted.  I had read books about his work, but this was the first one that was really about him.  It is no garden book.  It reads more like a Western novel about someone who eventually found his was in a garden, and he was always the first to admit that he was not a Landscape Architect, just a lover of the arts and the land.  As a product of the liberal arts myself, I always related to him the most.

This spring I have been spending two days a week scouring the grounds of The Biltmore Estate, camera in hand and brain in the clouds.  Like the kid I was learning my craft in the parks of Kessler, and finding my way in the gardens I was creating, it is like Olmsted and I are connecting again after all these years and no time has passed.  Along the way I continue to meet new people as they find me crawling out from under a plant, trying to get that perfect picture of the bark.  Every once in awhile when I look beyond the picturesque gardens and soak in the pastoral, I realize Olmsted put that there too and I continue to meet new plants.  There is no one more responsible for the introduction of some the worst invasive species to these mountains than Mr. Olmsted, but I have not doubt he loved the land as much as I do.

I am sure that if he knew then what we know now, he would have moved from defining sustainability as related to money, to creating things that are sustainable without it.  He saw the plants as a palet to fulfill the visions of his designs, strong in Architecture, but grounded in the patterns of nature.  They were like the books on a shelf or the art on a wall and he brought a greater appreciation of them to all of us.  He saw sustainability as a plan to care for the land buy using it to generate the money to pay for the art.  I am sure if he were alive today, he would see that the plants need to take care of the land so we don’t have to plunder it to pay for the gardens we create.  In the end, he made us more aware.  He just wasn’t aware of the consequences of his actions, but without them we would not have come to the awareness we have today.

As I near submission of the next update, I will not jinx things and thank Mr. Olmsted, Oregon State University or the University of Arizona, but I will be sure and give them some plants back.  Most importantly, I’ll be sure and share them with others, because plants and people definitely go together.  In the end, without growing together we will never learn together.

As yesterday would have been the 201st birthday of Charles Darwin I found it overly ironic that all I saw on the news was a barrage of people declaring that global warming was a farce because it had snowed outside. I have to admit that I am starting to find the snows I have missed from my youth a bit annoying now. However it hasn’t effected me enough to start denying reality and the evidence of real science.  I may be delirious from cabin fever and the total loss of routine from an ad-hoc school schedule, but it is not about to lead to the closing of this American mind.

Had it not been for the steady drumbeat of an old friend’s facebook status, Chuck-D Day might have slipped by me completely.  This friend is someone I new well in my youth.  For many years as children we spent every daylight hour walking up an down our town’s railroad tracks and creeks collecting turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders and any other little critter we could get to ride home in our pockets.  Of course we evolved over time, and got smart enough to carry buckets and boxes.  At one point we even moved up to traps and converted a neighbor’s walk in aviary into an all out zoo.  This particular friend is now a Herpetologist and was leading a read-a-thon in which they finished the Origin of Species in approximately 18 hours.  (I can only assume this was faster than the last time.) As I watched the devolution of our politicians minds on TV his constant updates assured me that somewhere someone was actually evolving.

As for my own celebration, it was going on in my head all day.  As I spent all day listening to the talking heads knowing full well they were incapable of thinking,  I was thinking about how I became most aware of global warming through the spread of invasive species.   Over the years I wasn’t always aware of either problem, it took a move to a different climate to make me see how differently things react under the slightest change.  It became even more evident when I began working across the 3 distinct zones from North Georgia to Virgina that I could see how differently species adapt and react to different ecosystems.  Hybrid Burning Bush and Barberry that for years no one would have imagined spreading are not only growing from seed, but they are adapting and moving into climates that normally would have been to cold for their seed to survive.

When I hear people talk of climate chance, I always hear about it’s effect on water, and people.  How the oceans will flood the cities, rivers will run dry, and other factors that we see directly related to our needs as humans is all that seems to matter.  The only time I hear plants discussed is in how trees can offset carbon so we can create more.  Unfortunately I hear more talk about whether the change exists in the first place, than what we can to do prevent it.  However, more than fighting of global warming plants can help us see and understand it.

In some respects plants are the antithesis of humans.  Plants adapt and get stronger every year and can live several of our lifetimes, but they create a new generation and pass on those traits every year.  When winters were consistent invasive species were easier to keep in check.  The annual minimum temperatures used to keep the non-native seeds in check year after year.  As winters have gradually warmed, those seeds have have adapted and become more cold tolerant as those few extra degrees have allowed them to survive.  Now they can handle the extreme conditions that now occur once every five years instead of annually.  We on the other hand have not adapted.  Burning Bush that used to be contained to areas near it’s cousins in Georgia are now making their way up the coast to New York.  Princess Trees, Barberry, Butterfly Bush, English Ivy, and many more are making that same journey.  In less than a generation of our lifetime, these species have adapted to the climate change and produced dozens more generations while we are still arguing over whether it even exists.

As humans we are different from plants.  We may live for decades but usually only reproduce during a short window of that time and in small numbers.   While we do physically evolve generationally, we usually reproduce at a peak moment and then actually become weaker for the next two thirds of our life.  Plants and trees that can live hundreds of years get stronger and reproduce every year until that last year of their life when they actually produce the most seed.  Where we differ is in that we have minds that can evolve way beyond our physical bodies.  However, unlike a tree whose wood gets harder with age and ease, we have to work and use our minds to keep them growing even as it gets harder.  If we don’t do this, collectively as a society we can actually get weaker and devolve.  The more we separate into individual pockets of though and deny the science that exists in nature around us the weaker we actually become as a species.  Too often because of our self awareness we lose the awareness of the world around us and slow the evolution of our collective conscience.

In the United States we track plant hardiness and nativity with the USDA system for for classifying plant hardiness known as the USDA Zones.  The system is based on a ranges of temperatures, recorded temperatures by areas, and the minimum temperatures those plants can supposedly take.  The system isn’t based on where these plants should grow, but where they could grow.  It also only covers minimum temperatures and not maximums.  Even more odd, this “could” focus is based on how we can use plants to alter the environment through a commercial view not how to protect and preserve it.  This is from the Department of AGRICULTURE though, not the Environmental Protection Agency.  Throughout the world these systems vary, but an emerging and evolving trend throughout the world does not start with temperatures, it start with plants.  Aerial photography is used to map where the species that form the canopy are, and the undergrowth can be determined by combining that and other data; yet another Copernican shift in the right direction.  People are actually using plants to gain perspective rather than trying to fit them into their own perspectives and learning more about themselves and the world in the end.

Unlike trees, if our minds continue to grow after reproduction we cannot continue to pass it on year after year through our seed.  Even what we do pass on isn’t the content of thought, only the ability.  We can only continue our evolution as a species through education.   The strongest ideas aren’t the ones that are said the most often, screamed the loudest or that have the most money to advertise them.  They are the ones that come from listening, hearing, and collectively evolving with the world around us.  Our evolution as a species is dependent the recognition of our role in the community of species, listening to each other within our species, and admitting that trying to be the strongest being isn’t necessarily in our nature as a species, and doesn’t make us the fittest species.   As a species we can learn a lot from the trees around us, but the message we should learn isn’t to reproduce like the Duggars.  It is that the world is changing, and for us to become the fittest species possible we have to continue to evolve mentally every year, even after our body ceases to evolve.  The lesson is that our seeds are seeds of thought, and without them our minds cannot grow and neither can our species as a whole.

It is funny how we all develop.  I probably could have guessed that my friend leading the read-a-thon would grow up to be a turtle hugger.  As for me, while I was in horticulture at a young age, the technology I work in now was still in the form of a punch card and we couldn’t have seen this coming.  There was a third member of or 9-10 year old research team, and I don’t think I wouldn’t have guessed the future for  him either.  He is writing his dissertation on the effects of invasive species on soil fertility in the upper Midwest.  However, as kids nature planted seeds in our minds, and as we moved to different climates those seeds evolved with the world around us.  I guess our evolution is proof that passion can evolve into thought and doesn’t have to lead to the death or denial of it.  When I look at how we’ve grown, it is reassurance to me that for us to remain the “fittest” species we must continue to evolve our minds and realize that we are part of a community of species.  Likewise, by denying evolution, including climate change, we deny our role in the community of species, weaken our collective mind and species as a whole, and  jeopardize the species Earth as we know it.  How this all came about isn’t what is important, but acknowledgement that it exists and our role in it is vital to our development as a species and to the survival of the world as we know it.

I am still having a hard time taking off running with the blog since Christmas, but with the ground wet and nothing but ice and snow for a month, I couldn’t run if I wanted to.  Normally at this time I would be out prepping beds, putting up trellises for my peas, and digging trenches for my potatoes.  Instead I have been trapped inside by the weather and the year I hoped to be a quick return to the garden after the rains of last summer is anything but.  Instead, I am in the  midst of  a writing binge on the new app similar to the one I was on last summer when I started writing our 1st app.  For a gardener with a philosophy degree this is about as challenging to your sense of reality as your first introduction to Kant’s Epistemology.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Kant, the basic principle is that the meaning or reality of the things you encounter is not found in the things themselves, but is determined by the filters through which you perceive them.  Put simply, the meaning of an object is relative to the person assigning the meaning; not intrinsically embedded in the object being perceived.  In Philosophy circles this principle is commonly known as “The Copernican Revolution”.  To self-centered beings who perceive the world in how it relates to themselves, it only seems logical that other beings meaning would be centered in the being itself.  In Kant’s day this was as big of a change to most people as Copernicus’ claim that the world was round.

Many people don’t realize that Copernicus’ shift to viewing the world as round was Earth shaking enough to cause the start of the crusades and a complete reversal in the interpretation of the view of the Bible to being the “word” as in story to “Word” as in literal.  Hundreds years later, Kant’s view has unknowingly been adopted in countless ways, and  is viewed as the ethical foundation for capitalism, partisan politics, some religions and even some science.  This is actualized in the view that there is no man made global warming because man is nature.  In some cases it is even taken to the level that our self-centric role in the world is even divinely destined so anything done against another must be justified or forgiven.

Every spring I reach this point of reflection and introspection, and it seems to be directly related to the impending rush to make that first planting deadline of the pea.  The pea of course has similar significance in that it is the first plant ever scientifically bred and led to the proof and eventual discovery of the gene.  Little did Mendel know that his discovery and notion of genetic adaptation would lead to the concept of evolution generations later.  Hundreds of years later, those first discoveries made by a monk and his peas have led to an entire industry and way of life in which nature is now viewed by more people thorough an agricultural or horticultural lens than one seeking nature itself.  Nature is viewed by many as a means to an end for personal need and it’s meaning is derived more in how it relates to them, than the meaning it might have in itself.  Somehow, through the evolution of our thought, we have managed to take the nature out of nature.

I love Kant.   Maybe because in college Father Brady used to insist we called him CAN’T, and my love was out of spite.  Brady’s insistence was not because his shift of reality was away from an intrinsic selves to one self, but because if he was going to make a shift he should have made it toward God.  You could say father Brady was an “Old School” Jesuit…from the days when they carried swords instead of pens.  Regardless of my love for Kant, it doesn’t mean he was entirely right.  In fact my love is from where he made me realize that something was wrong.  He was right in seeing the relativeness, but wrong for denying the other selves, and in turn relationships between them.  I don’t think any of us are always right, because as beings with conscience and free will we have to be capable of wrong.  That is why we have to give up our righteousness and strive for good.  After all, the meaning of Philosophy is the love of knowledge,  not Knowledge by itself.

The thing with Kant’s Copernican Revolutions is that in determining which side of reality holds the meaning, we by default recognize meaning is intrinsic to both sides.  As I watch the world turn in my mind, and I plant my peas one seed at a time, I will undoubtedly be thinking of all the Copernican Revolutions happening right now.  The shift to organic gardening, the hopeful return to more localized markets, the return of our economy to making real goods instead of fake money, our roles as citizens in our country and as citizens of the world are all shifts as big as those caused by four little peas planted by a monk hundreds of years ago.  Our view back to nature having nature may even be as big as realizing the world isn’t flat.  Not to ramble, but these are the musings that made an old friend coin the lyric “In the garden growing different kind of mind”.

Regardless of what you see as important, the one thing these transformations all have in common is the recognition that our view of reality is changing once again.  As the forces of nature respond to our treatment of it, and people respond the polarizing views of each other, we are starting to realize that everything and everyone does have an  intrinsic meaning and they responding to each others’ self-centered views of them.  As I watch the bloggers here, people in the gardening industry and in the social networks on line,  I see the same things.  I see people trying to find their way in thought as well as their careers.  I see my friends in print finding the same uncertainty as those in real estate, and I see a widening gap between the masses of those struggling to choose the “right” side to follow even though both sides are lost and suffering.

Through all this I still see those finding a new way, like that next generation of pea sprouting from a seed.  I see those using technology to enhance the use of their writing instead of to compete with their writing.  I see people using both to bring people together to educate and solve problems.  Amongst all those struggling to use these new tools to shout the loudest and most often, as though there is something to win, I am starting to see new species emerge with a steady sturdy growth.   These people aren’t trying to win a battle of the fittest.  They are growing and creating their own Copernican Revolution in which the meaning isn’t in who or which, but in how:  how we move forward together, how we effect each other, and how we can bring out the meaning in each other to embrace the meaning of us all.

This is a new generation not founded in who’s reality is right, but what is the best way forward.  The new reality requires finding the meaning in each other, embracing the symbiotic relationships intrinsic to our nature, throwing away the notion of right, and trying to do what is good.  That little pea that seemingly sprouts out of nowhere in March and grows ever so slowly until it explodes with abundance and sweetness in June isn’t moving slowly because the lettuce is better.  It is taking it’s time and giving some nitrogen to the soil on it’s way.  It is letting the bees take as much pollen as they can.  In return the bees are pollinating even more, and if we don’t treat that mildew on the leaves the bees will pollinate a bumper crop because we didn’t kill them with chemicals.  If we look for the meaning in relationships with each other instead of in ourselves we will see that this revolution won’t require wars, because the great change will be ending the wars we create with one another and against the world we live in.  What is right will become seeking good, and that’s not so bad.

Now,  if you are not under ten inches of snow get our there and grow some mind.

It’s an age old question that can apply to many things.  Names are something we take for granted, but in reality they are the fundamental basis of all communications.  When we think of names we think of what we call one another, our pets, our children and our places.  In reality though ever word in every language is in essence a name.  Even a verb is the name for an action that takes many words to explain, that is why they all have definitions.  Imagine trying to give someone directions without a name for the action of “turn”.  Most importantly though, we use names to explain relations.  First names, last names, family trees, nationalities, and the names for the relations between these things are what derive and keep order in our world.  Even further they are the signposts to how we navigate and determine our possible impact on and place in the world. Names of course vary among languages and regions.   Different words (names) are used to describe the same thing in different languages and locations.  In the end, regardless of differences in language, the objects and actions being described by their name can be recognized for what they are and the variations in language can be translated.

The scenario where this doesn’t work is in living beings.  Verbs can vary in how they are performed, but that can be described with adverbs.  Physical objects like rocks or furniture can vary in visible traits or molecular makeup, but that variations are qualified with adjectives to help further describe the object.  Even these can easily be recognized visually and translated between languages and cultures because the “name” is essentially the same.

Where absolute accuracy is essential and qualifying additives cannot do justice to a name is when it comes to living beings.  When it comes to people, accuracy doesn’t seem to be such a problem because we are all unique and have a free will.  We will always act individually even within a community and the genetic heritage of our name has limited capabilities in determining or predicting how we will act.  People can even share the same names, but be easily qualified with adjectives or descriptors because every human is distinct.  With people and even domesticated animals, the genetic code may vary slightly within our species, but our wills, personalities, relationships and souls make us all easily discernible from one another.

With other less discernible species such as grasses, lichens, trees, fish, birds and non-domesticated animals the species may be discernible as a whole but the identity of individuals within the species is much less clear.  More importantly the collective impact or necessity of the species has an even greater effect on the world and nature as a whole.  Names of these species describe a collective whose members act on a collective instinct (or possibly conscience) instead of individual free wills.  In the end these names represents more than the one.  They give insight and understanding into the collective nature and cultural background of the species as a whole.

To answer the the title question:  Everything about and everything something and what it impacts is in a name.  A good name captures both the essence and esse of what it describes.  It captures the traits of what makes the thing being described unique (essence) as well as the intrinsic presence that makes it identifiable for what it is (esse).   Where meaning gets lost is when variation occurs in the naming itself rather than the translation of the names.  In the plant world people work in both common and botanical names.  The botanical name is a Latin based name that is used not only to identify the plant, but also gives insight into the breeding and heritage that led to it’s creation.  It is is written in Latin to provide a universal language whose meaning will not be lost in translation world-wide.  This allows us to see what the species is, where it has come from genetically, and what it might do in nature or the situation we put it in.

Common names are regional and based on local peoples’ experiences with the plant rather than the culture and cultivation of the plant itself.  Common names are extremely descriptive, but subjective and should never be used when striving for accuracy of any kind. There is much debate about what people like to use, and whether the botanical name is important if you are not a professional horticulturist or botanist.  However, you really can’t know the plant well enough to responsibly plant in nature or a landscape without the information provided by an accurate botanical name.  Common names may tell what a plant has done, but cannot give sure insight of what it is capable of doing.  Accurate and exact botanical naming of all species (not just plants) is crucial the the protection of nature itself as well as understanding it.  Nothing has been more influential to the spread of invasive species and disease than improper naming that occurs in the commercialization of plants and the mis-education that improper naming provides.

Over the last fifteen years, with the rise of genetic testing, efforts have been underway world-wide to cleanup this mess, and bring order to this problem. The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is one of the efforts that has been working across borders and oceans to make this happen.  The ITIS is a collaborative effort of governments and  academic systems, that crosses borders and oceans, but is greatly limited by the inertia and limited funding of the respective institutions.  There are others that specialized even more into areas such as fungi, cacti, wattles, and regional ecosystems.  These groups have a passion and sense of urgency but don’t have cooperative and interconnected systems to make some of this possible.  This problem isn’t limited to the plant kingdom, it is pervasive in the animal kingdom as well, and both do relate to one another.

Most of the early misnaming has been created by the limitation of communications.  Most botanical naming was done long before the Internet was ever created and the commerce of species became a worldwide phenomenon long before there was a world-wide-web.  As a result duplicate species are being sold and shipped with different names throughout the world.  Even more damaging, multiple species are being distributed throughout the world with the same name, and this is where the greatest danger lyes.  People are shipping and using plants all over the world for uses they are not suited for or with potential impacts that they are totally unaware of.   What is in the name they are buying or selling is actually of another name.  The greatest responsibility  lyes in the breeders and distributors of these species to accurately identify what they are selling, and to accurately identify what they are breeding them from.  Unfortunately, until the system is completely cleaned up and connected this cannot be done.

Commercialization has not only led to the spread of misnamed species, but people are breeding new species and varieties from already misnamed species at rates ten times faster than the original species were discovered.  When we started Botany Buddy it was created to help communicate and educate between the “classes” (for lack of a better name) of gardeners.   The tools we are creating are meant to bring the same language to educators, botanists, growers, purveyors and gardeners in a way that is easily accessed and understood by all.  Our original iPhone app was created to educate, communicate, and identify information to the user and for the users to be able to communicate it to each other.  In the end it has communicated just as much to us.  With users in over twenty counties and on every continent we have communicated with botanists all over the world to help us design our new database and systems.

Just this week we finished proofing the final taxonomic database for the upcoming web based app.  With about 60,000 species ACCURATELY represented we can now add data, photos, and even more species to the database and know that we can truly represent the species’ family heritage.  When we started this our intent was to add a thousand or so trees at a time, and just build on the library we had in the original app every so often.  In the end we realized we needed to add the ones we have now into nature’s library and to create our own Dewey Decimal System to manage it the information in it.  As a result our final product will be a tool that has literally “thousands times” more information than our initial release and will be formatted to grow at any given moment and with more accuracy than any other resource I have found in existence.  This capability would be totally impossible if it were not for a name.

Personally I like to be a little incognito in my gardening circles.  Those who “know” me know not just my name, but my botanical name as well.  I would venture to say those who read this blog regularly are probably getting to know me on that level to some extent.  The other day I was at garden center and watched someone selling an ornamental grass.  This person did not know my botanical name.   The customer asked if the plant would spread by seed.  The sales person said, “No this is Kirk Alexander Maiden Grass and is a hybrid that was cultivated by a local designer years ago.”  I pointed across the highway to about a 1/4 mile long stretch of maiden grass growing in a ditch, and said, “That may be Kirk Alexander in the pot, but those are his parents over there and they didn’t arrive until after Kirk did.”  Needless to say they looked at me like I was nuts, but that is what is in a name. If we know where we come from we know where we might go.

People are all hybrids and we may be determined not to become our parents, but it in the end both the best and the worst of them tends to come out in us.  Obviously I get my verbosity from my father.  He always used to say “the mind cannot absorb more than the seat can endure”, so I will wrap this up.  This trait about me you could definitely predict if I had a botanical name.  Our naming task has taken far longer, more mental energy, and more patience and determination than almost anything I have ever done.  It is and has to be the foundation of everything we do going forward to really be a great reference.  I like superlatives, and this may be the most important and responsible work I have done in the last thirty years and hope will help the world for hundreds of years to come.  That is what is in a name.

I saw this headline out of the Telegraph (UK) today: “Garden Centre Tells Men to Make Wives ‘Feel Special’ With a Clothesline“. If it hadn’t been attached to a tweet decrying the backlash, I actually would have thought, “What a great idea!”.  Of course once the retail chain was attacked for their callousness, they admitted their insensitivity and apologized; claiming that it was meant to be in jest and their catalogs were known for such dry humor.  ”Humor?” I thought…I was dead serious.  This is the kind of gift that would make my wife feel special.  In fact, such a gift has.

Three years ago, my wife started begging me for a clothesline.  Now being the obsessive compulsive designer, this was not quite jiving with my vision for the garden.  I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but the other reason was to being the obsessive compulsive one I also insist upon doing the laundry.   That way I know things are hung and folded the way I want, when I want.  A clothesline would about to add some serious effort to my weekly ritual and at a time of year when I need my rituals the most.  It also was going to add chaos to my rituals as suddenly the ability to complete my tasks was about to be controlled by the weather.  As a gardener it took me decades to get over this weather thing,  and I wasn’t looking forward to this inner struggle again.

However, we are “homestead gardeners” and in terms of our homestead palet, and our need to be green, She had a point that it did fit in.  So fate had it’s way and one day my fence guy (who like the article is from England) was here to install a beautiful new Three-board fence for our new extended goat pasture.  You see at the very front of our front yard and lawn is not a cul-de-sac for everyone to view our house from, but instead a series of three mini-pastures for us to rotate our goats and poultry through so they can “range”.  This new beautiful fence was to go right at the end of the lawn framed by two large White Oaks to take your eyes across the pasture over the valley and up the mountains on the other side to frame our view, and it does this quite well.

So after months of avoiding the clothesline and trying to buy off my wife with the fence project, The day had come to install the fence.  When James (the fence guy) arrived we had our usual chat and caught up on various projects before he drove down across the lawn to unload the materials for his guys.  They had been picking through the rock for a day already to dig the wholes so I thought I would stay away so they could complain to James and he could do his thing.  As I headed back to he house I didn’t even look at the materials as I have known James a long time and trust him with every bone of my body.  Back at my desk I looked out the window and to my surprise my wife was down there with him climbing in the back of the truck.  It turns out once he had unloaded our materials left in the bed of the truck were 2 (qty) 4″ welded steel “T’s” that he had removed from another job.

I knew I was in trouble.  My wife spent three years living in a mud hut in Africa in the Peace Corps and she is a very resourceful and determined person.  The game was on, and as James looked up at me in the window, a giant grin came across his face as he quickly lowered them down from the truck.  The last thing he wanted to do was take them home and have to put them up for his wife.   So there you have it…my wife was getting a clothes line and she was “Feeling Special”.  So for Valentines Day the gift that year that we can actually remember is my sanding those posts, painting them green, and setting them in concrete to string those lines.

Truth be had, I love that clothesline, and I love my wife.  It is an integral part of our homestead garden that sits centered between those Oaks right in front of that fence.  When the clothes aren’t on it, it looks more than appropriate with the goats behind it, the vegetable garden to one side and the woods to the other.  When the clothes are on it they add life to the landscape and their play in the wind exudes the freshness of the nature that surrounds us.  I have to say I love aesthetically arranging the clothes on it, and hanging them just right to prevent wrinkles from the pins and to get them to snap just right in the breeze so I don’t have to iron my linens.  This addition was perfect for my Monkish tendencies and our lifestyle.  That clothes line does make my wife “feel special”, and it makes me feel special too!

Anyone who doesn’t thinks that clotheslines can be romantic or make a spouse “feel special“, probably has problems enjoying a fine piece of chocolate or a tomato picked minutes before slicing.  The feeling of a fresh linen shirt touching your skin right off the line and the smell of fresh air that permeates it is one of the finer things in life.  Sliding between line dried sheets that don’t wreak of fabric softener as the cool breeze of night air drifts in through the window is one of the greatest “Rights of  Spring”.  Never mind all the environmental benefits that come along with it, If you can’t see how a clothes line can make on “feel special” than you must just have a hard time feeling yourself.

My wife is a landscape painter, and you can see her work here.   In the spring she opens the studio door and paints studies of the view.  One of my all time favorite pieces is this one of the clothesline.  If this doesn’t embody romance, then you must need a little more in your life.  It is not uncommon in the states to find people fighting for the “Right to Dry” as exclusive neighborhoods with soulless landscapes have banned them with their covenants.  My recommendation to you is if you do want to make your wife feel special get a clothesline, and try doing the laundry for her every once in awhile too.  It might just make you feel special too.

One of the things that I have never gotten used to living in the Appalachians is driving past signs that tell me I have crossed the Eastern Continental Divide.  Having worked all over Southern Appalachia this happens to me often and every time I do I am reminded of a legendary church in the mountains that straddles this line running North and South.  The water that supposedly runs off of either side of the roof either flows into the French Broad to Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico, or toward Charleston and to the Atlantic Ocean.  Legend has it that before running water the women’s outhouse was on the Atlantic side and the men’s was on the Mississippi side.  Supposedly it was to be cordial and let the ladies have the shorter journey.  Regardless, the stories of the divide somehow manage to bring people together and no matter where you go along the divide people seem to have their stories and want to hear yours.

As I point out often I am from the Midwest and grew up around the Missouri River.  We lived in Missouri, but the rest of our family lived in Illinois so the closest thing we had to a divide was the Mississippi River.  The thing about rivers is they are also about bringing things together.  As all the water flows down steam and they keep coming together and getting larger and larger, they seem to bring everyone together.  Rivers can be great dividers with only a few bridges to cross them, but when it comes to the life of the communities around and on either side of them, rivers seem to bring people and places together.  Even though they are physically divided, the people on both sides  have a desire to cross them and a shared dependency on the rivers as a source of life and livelihood.  Just like water is the source of all life, it is also the source of shared life and community.  On the other hand the Continental divides and the violent upheavals that created the mountains are definitely barriers that water just can’t cross, and all of the water that flows from them may eventually come together, but the ever building momentum of the rivers make those divides seem even farther apart.

I have been dealing with these divides everyday lately.  When we created Botany Buddy our initial plant database was from Oregon State University.  While the creator of the library is well traveled and captured most of the major species in the United States, the few that are missing are all East of the Rockies.  I knew of this divide from my years working in nurseries and my experience with nursery stock dying in the trucks at higher elevations if you tried ship it from Oregon to the Midwest through the Rockies.  What never dawned on me was just how prevalent this divide was in native species.  It isn’t as obvious here on the East Coast.  The highest point is only about 6500 feet, and there are lots of natural crossings in the 3-4,00 foot range.  However this divide has become prevalent in my life even though it is a couple thousand miles away.

This divide runs through plants, animals, insects diseases and even weather that just can’t make it over the mountains.  Everything that is found in an ecosystem on this continent is effected by the Western Continental Divide.  Since Botany Buddy has launched we have found even more divides.  Having users in 25 countries and 5 continents we have become obsessed with these divides and how to cross them.  As we have been developing our web app we are finding partners throughout the states as well as these other continents, and in many cases those people have come to us.  With all these divides in our lives, somehow in less than two months I am finding myself closer connected to people all around this world than I am many of the people in my own valley.  My local stream hasn’t brought me to these people, and our rivers don’t even run together, but our divides have brought us together.  On either side of every divide are people with similar desires, passions, and needs to bridge those barriers and open the free flow of people, trade, and most importantly ideas and information.

We have found the new rivers to bring us together right here on the Internet.  Some people use technology and the web as a divide to hide from others and work in seclusion, but there is a ground swell of people out there using the new mediums to get connected and let their ideas run downstream to the waters that feed all life.  When we started this project we were obsessed with the data, what data we had, and that it could be carried in your pocket.  We were also concerned with making sure that information could be shared and that we could bring people together so they could bring people to us.  However, before the original design of our first app was ever complete Botany Buddy as a whole was all ready moving into broader, deeper and faster moving waters.  By not focusing on solely the iPhone, we have been able to create a product that isn’t based on divvying up our information for you to put in your pocket but rather connect you to even more.  While a device can help you get connected, the app platform is designed to isolate information, and encourages keeping you isolated with native, unadulterated information contained solely on the app.

Like a flood upon launching this app it became clear to us that the rivers that would bring these divides together actually flew over those mountains, not between them, and they were the channels of the Internet.  At first this really scared me.  I have seen areas completely devastated by invasive species, and some of the first on-line garden businesses I noticed were people shipping plants internationally.  When it comes to exotic invasive species somethings need to be divided for a reason, and need to stay that way.  What was even crazier was I saw people shipping plants from England to California even though they were native to where they already were.  They were also paying five times the local price for these plants.  At first this notion of crossing the great divide was scaring me.  The last thing I wanted to be was a conveyor of ecological disaster.

Thankfully, more often we are approached by people who understand that what we are trying to create is an every changing and evolving reference source, not a sales floor.  We want to bring people the tools they need to do their jobs better and more efficiently, but most importantly we really want to make sure they have the information to do it responsibly.  We also want to make sure they can do it no matter what phone they are on, or even if they are just sitting at their desk.  I moved to this field from private design because as much as I loved the one on one interaction I had with my clients, I felt I could do more good if we all could interact and have access to equal, objective, accurate, and complete information whenever we needed it.

The very physical divides that have affected our environments continue to effect our travels, but they don’t have to interfere with the travel of our thoughts.  Just like the story of the old men and the church have brought together all stripes of people who have crossed the Eastern Continental Divide,  your stories of your endeavors are helping bring us together with people all over the world.  The shared desire to have the information we need to make responsible decisions that benefit us all is what drives us everyday, and late into the night.  These connections that we are making are real, and that is why the results will be too.  Without these divides we wouldn’t have made these connections, and we wouldn’t be a hundredth the resource we will eventually become.  In the end, we couldn’t do this without you and the stories and information that you share, and for that we are thankful for the divides that have brought us all together.

Since I started Botany Buddy and have been writing content for all of our upcoming applications, I have become somewhat addicted to reading all the old print trade magazines as well as blogs.  It seems like one of the hottest topics is and always has been lawns and the use of turf grass in design.  I have seen those that despise turf of any kind, those that don’t mind it as long as it is 100% organic, and those that think declaring your manifest destiny with acres of perfectly manicured turf is a symbol of the American way.  I hate to say it but you all my just be right, because what is actually the right thing to do may be dependent upon the situation you are in.

I always like to take nature as my guide.  Having spent the last five years designing and creating covenants for “sustainable” conservation properties, I have struggled with this dilemma myself and have come of with somewhat of a guide for decision making.  Like with everything else, I use nature as my guide.  If there was no place for grasses in our environment I seriously doubt we would have had the prairies, savannas, and wetlands to begin with.  All three of these situations are nature’s home to grasses, and they have very specific roles in the habitat of our wildlife and ecosystem as a whole.  Other than grazing,  The main roles of grass in all of these situation are erosion control, water filtration, and play.

Erosion control is pretty easy to understand, and there is a reason all best management practices in construction require very stringent seeding or sodding processes.  Once we killed the prairies, the winds blowing across the prairies would create the dust bowl and we learned this lesson the hard way.  Once grasses secure and protect disturbed soil the roots and thatch of the grass naturally convert the exposed subsoil into nutrient rich topsoil.  If you have ever lived in a brand new subdivision you see the emulation of this natural condition for the first ten to twenty years of its existence.  If you have lived and gardened in a 100 year old neighborhood you have enjoyed the benefits of the nice rich soil this process leaves behind.  Even in the woods, the herbaceous layer of perennials and in some cases grasses serve this same function.  The process of growing, dying back, and returning to the soil is emulated in our own lawn as long as we leave the thatch in place.

The other place grasses are most prevalent are in wetlands and river bottoms.  besides holding up the blooms of the beautiful wildflowers flowers for us to see better, grasses also are a vital filtration device for the water that flows through them.  This can be the same in our yards.  Running your storm water across a lawn is far better for the environment than channeling it in river rock or piping it to a storm water inlet.  Running water across 30 feet of healthy turf can remove 90% of the sediment and pollutants the water carries.  However this only works of you aren’t using even more pollutants to take care of the grass.  If managed responsibly, turf is actually one of the most ecologically friendly ways to manage surface water and drainage.  In the end the damage done poor drainage can be far worse than anything you can do with a lawn.

The final natural use of grassy areas I like to call “Play”.  If you have ever had the chance to see Elk emerge from the forest after an afternoon rain to engage in their courting rituals and graze you know exactly what I am talking about.  The same can be said for buffalo or deer, and it is not unlike watching  my daughter play games in the front lawn with a bunch of her friends.  The need for wide open spaces and battle our sense of claustrophobia is not only natural to us but most other species as well.  No matter how unnatural some can make a lawn look, wide open grassy spaces are very much a vital part of our natural landscape.  Unless a landscape is completely wooded they can look very unnatural without some form of lawn.  I have seen plenty of gardens planted to the gills.   Without a hint of negative space in the form of a meadow or lawn and they can look just as unnatural as a lawn.  Ground covers can provide this effect too, but if they grow lower than weeds it is impossible to keep them healthy and if they are aggressive enough to keep them out they are usually an invasive species.

In short the challenge to designing with lawns isn’t whether or not to do it.  The amount of sunlight and ability of the environment to support grass will determine that.  The challenge is finding the methods of installation and management that get it established quickly, and do more to benefit nature than we do to harm it in the process.  To guide you through these decisions I have put together this summary.  This in not a “How To”.  There will be an app for that.  Think of it as a “why to”…or to not.  I think you will find your answers come naturally and they will do more to help you succeed than any four-step program you buy and your local retailer.

Turf Grass Installation:

If you are looking for a traditional lawn, the two most common methods for installation are sodding and seeding. With soil preparation sodding typically costs from $1.00-$1.25 per square foot.  Seeding Usually Costs $.15 to $.25 per square foot.  However, this is very deceiving when you consider what it takes to achieve establishment.  To get seed to establish into a lawn in a landscape takes an average of 3-4 applications of herbicides, preemergents, and fertilizers per year.  It also usually requires at least one major aeration and renovation if not more, extensive watering, and frequent overseeding.  It also takes more water to establish the seed, and to maintain it in the hottest times of the year because it has less of a root system to support the blades.  This is just for one year, and it actually takes two full years of diligent, chemical ladent maintenance to beat the lifecycle of the weeds.   That is only if your timing is prefect and you don’t miss a beat.  Otherwise it can take longer.

There is no doubt that sod farms water incessantly, and pump tons of chemicals into the soil.  But the space that they pollute is limited.  They will typically get twenty or more harvests out of the same piece of ground.  They also tend to harvest and recylce their water and as a result are becoming more and more conscious of the the nitrogen levels and especially herbicides in it.  Due to the intense methods and irrigation, sod farms also produce a harvest ready turf in six to twelve months vs. two to three years.  This means it takes at the most 1/3 the chemical usage to achieve the desired thickness as it does to seed a lawn.  They are also strictly strictly regulated when it comes to run-off whereas homeowners are some of the biggest polluters with with their fertilizers running off right to the street and into the storm water system with no riparian buffer at all.  Numerous sources can be found to cite that homeowners use 10 times the number of pollutants on their lawns per acre than agriculture does.  This should make us think twice about how responsible we are.

Turf Grass Maintenance:

Mowing: The most environmental damage that results from lawns isn’t from having them, but rather how we take care of them. There are three main things to look at in the care of the lawn, mowing, fertilizing, pest/disease and weed control, and watering.  While treating pests, diseases and weeds directly contributes the most toxins to the soil and water, how you mow and water contributes to most to how much treating you need to do.  There is now greater deterrent to all of these other problems than having a healthy lawn in the first place.  Remember all of these other problems occur when what you trying to grow in the first place is weakened by not being allowed to do what it wants to do naturally.

Almost all turf grasses are bred from naturally occurring varieties that grow between six and twenty-four inches in height.  Now most of them have been bread to have thinner blades and can no longer hold themselves up naturally, but the closer we can allow them to get to that six inches the more they can do to take care of themselves and their space for us.  Other than specialty turfs like zoysia (which set you up for failure anyway), most common turf grasses shouldn’t be mowed shorter than three inches and should be allowed to grow at least two before mowing.  Not only will this make the grass perform better, but it will get tall enough to keep most weeds out, or at least hide them.  Your mower also pollutes, but that is a topic for another blog, hopefully the price of gas is starting to make you aware of that.

Chemical Treatments

Fertilizing: The two most common chemicals applied to lawns are fertilizers and herbicides.  Even organic chemicals, especially fertilizers, can create runoff if over used and pollute our streams.  Chicken manure is organic, and a great fertilizer, but you don’t want you well head next to the chicken house.  The best deterrent is to only use them when absolutely necessary.  Too often people throw down nitrogen every time their lawn looks a little yellow or brown.  Some times it just needs a simple trace mineral like lime or iron, or it just plain needs a break because it is too hot or cold out.  The only times that the need for nitrogen can be very obvious are in spring and fall when the grass is in prime growing season and it is still having problems.  Keeping grass growing in 100 degree temperatures is just as brutal as trying to keep yourself going and sometime we both just need a break.

Herbicides: Weed control is the second biggest polluter in lawn care.  It is also probably the easiest battle to lose.  That is why I recommend not even trying if you don’t have too.  My personal lawn is a mix of fescue, bluegrass and rye, but it also has some oxallis, nutgrass, and clover.  These weeds don’t get large enough to kill out the turf grass, and they provide fodder for the rabbits that keeps them out of my veggie patch.  When they go dormant in the fall, their thatch also creates a nice medium for overseeding the fescue that is slowly choking them out.   If you do have to treat something, only spot treat it, and only bother with things that can actually get big enough to kill out your grass or is a seriously invasive species like honeysuckle or crown vetch.

Pesticides and Fungicides: Aren’t used as often as other chemicals but can be just as dangerous to the water supply and wildlife even in smaller quantities.  Once again the question here is why bother.  Yes grubs will bring moles that tear up your yard, but grubs prefer clay and the moles help aerate and break it down.  Grubs also provide food for wildlife like wild turkeys and robins.  Treating fungus can slow down the organic processes needed to actually let your lawn and soil improve by itself, and the pesticides can kill the worms that provide the best fungicide and aeration of all.  Most of the problems you would treat for in the first place you can’t spot until the damage is done.  It is easily repaired with over seeding in the fall, and most disease and insect problems will usually run a natural course and disappear within a year.  In the end preventative treatments can do far more damage to your soil than the actual problems you are treating for, so think twice before applying or don’t apply at all.

Watering: I recently did a post on watering titled:  Plants Are Like People: Water With Love Even If It’s Tough. All of the same rules I go over there apply to turf.  A healthy turf can’t use more than an inch of precipitation a week, and should never be manually watered more often than once per week.  If you follow the instructions on the previous post you can get away with hardly watering at all.  We just came off of one of the worst droughts in the history of the Southeast, and in those years I never had to water my lawn more than once a month during the summer because I used the deep fall and winter  watering described in the previous post.  Also the taller you let your grass get the deeper the roots will grow.  If the roots are three inches deep, and you have watered deep enough to reach all the roots, you should be able to go three weeks without watering.  There are some common sense things you should do to prevent runoff like not watering the street or your driveway, but nothing is better for the environment than eliminating the need to water at all.

To wrap things up, lawns represent a vital part of our natural ecosystem.  They serve functions that are vital to wildlife and nature as well as our nature as human beings.  As long as we take nature’s cues on when to use them and don’t try to grow them where they don’t belong or want to be there is nothing unnatural about them at all.  What is unnatural is what we have been doing to them.

There is a dirty little secret in the gardening business that there are three things someone will spend 500 times what they spent on the plant on the supplies to grow them:  tomatoes, roses, and grass.  Next time you are in a garden center or big box store, look around and see what they have dedicated their space to.  Successful gardening is about getting plants to grow for us so we can focus on finding, growing and new plants.  If a lawn doesn’t do more to take care of the space it occupies either you are doing too much for it, or it shouldn’t be there in the first place.  There are natural uses and needs for lawns, we just have to take nature’s cues and think naturally about what we do with them.

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.

The Morality of Sustainability

I have to admit I have had this one in the hopper for some time now.  I have been preparing and wanting to write this post for a long time, but it was a commenter on Sustaining Sustainability that finally prompting me to flush it out.  We all hear people talk about what they can do to live sustainably almost every single day.  There are no shortages of arguments and evidence for how it can save us all money, and there are plenty of people learning how to make money at it.  Finding empirical evidence as to the benefits of living sustainably is as easy as finding options in the cereal aisle at the local grocery.  I constantly hear people profess all the ways we can benefit personally from helping the Earth.  What I do not hear are cogent moral arguments for why this is the right thing to do, and why as inhabitants of this earth we have a moral obligation to protect and respect everything that is a part of it.

Unfortunately the only moral arguments I hear about sustainability are actually against it.  Time and again I hear that as part of this planet we (humans) are nature too, and that our consumption of any resource on it is a natural act.  I recently even heard a Senator say that he would not support any climate change legislation until we have used every ounce of coal and drop of oil that “God has given us to use”.  I am not going to make this a discussion about the theology of predetermination vs. systematic theology (living in Christ’s image), but I do find it hard to believe that if God created us in his image he would want us to plunder and destroy the earth.  After all he doesn’t.  Beyond being part of nature as a species we have things inherit in our nature that make environmental responsibility a moral obligation.  Consider what I am about to layout to be “An Ontological Argument for a Morality of Sustainability”

An Ontological Argument For a Morality of Sustainability

Everything on this planet has an inner essence. Even physical “non living” being, such as coal, has an inner essence that allows us to identify it even if it changes form.  I can look at five pieces of coal and know that they are coal.  I can crush that coal to the point that those five pieces are no longer identifiable, but still look at that pile and know that it is coal.  The inner presence of a being is that allows others to identify it for what it is through many phases and forms of its life is the essence.

Every living being on this planet has a soul. Living beings have an essence just like physical ones, but they also have a presence beyond that which exudes their liveliness on other beings even though the physiological actions that carryout this life cannot be seen.  When I see an Oak I know that it is alive.  When I see an Oak that is alive, I can sense its life even though I cannot see the photosynthesis occurring or the transpiration from the leaves.  It exudes something beyond that essence which is its soul.  The soul also projects its presence in various forms of instincts or consciousness that beings carry out in living to ensure their survival.  The final evidence of the soul is the continued presence of essence after the soul has left and life has ceased.  Once that Oak is dead, I still know it as an Oak, and even as a specific Oak, but I can also sense that the life (or soul) is gone, and the evidence of its absence and remaining essence is further proof of the soul’s previous existence.

Everything with a soul has varying levels of consciousness and self-consciousness. Every living being has an awareness of what it has to do to survive and reacts to its surroundings.  This may be instinctual, but also may progress to various levels of will.  In any form it implies a sense of self being.   I do not believe my grass can feel it when I mow, but it does have natural instincts to guide its reaction to my mowing, and has natural instincts to seek out water for its survival.  I believe full well my dogs are capable of feeling remorse, loneliness, fear, pain and love.  I also believe they can sense it in others, particularly myself.  I do not however believe they can empathize it.  However, though my dog can sense my remorse and feel pain itself, it cannot feel my pain.

When a being’s soul progresses from being conscious of itself and surroundings to empathizing with another it develops conscience. We as a species empirically know that we can extend our consciousness to the point of feeling what other people feel, and actively seek to do so.  When the ones that we love hurt, we hurt.  When ones that we do not even know hurt and we see the cause as unjust, we hurt.  This is the ability to empathize.  There has been speculation that other primates may have this ability, but as far as we can know for sure, we are the only species whose soul progresses from the point of consciousness to conscience.

With conscience comes responsibility. As human beings our ability to empathize combined with our free will gives us a moral awareness that requires us to take responsibility for our actions.  We have an inherit sense of right and wrong. We can rationalize our way around it, but in the end right and wrong and our ability to discern it remains.  This is the foundation of morality, and with this ability comes the responsibility act within those parameters.

The morality of sustainability is rooted in our ability to empathize with other beings. Morality is not possible unless you can make that leap into another’s heart.  This ability to empathize gives us a unique ability and responsibility to act in ways that protect and respect the essence and souls of other beings.  Sustainability is rooted not in how to get the most from our resources, but our moral responsibility to protect and respect the essences of every being, their role in our ecosystem, and the ecosystem itself as a living being.  If we can empathize we have responsibility inherit in our ability to sense morality.

As beings of conscience not only do we have the ability to sense and empathize with the essence and souls of other beings, but it also gives us the ability to make decisions that knowingly destroy and harm them and in turn the environment as a whole.  No matter how much we try to rationalize it, this wrong.  Being moral beings we need to be able to own that awareness and take responsibility for it.  As moral beings we have a responsibility to recognize and protect the essence of the earth and its beings in everything that we do.

To make the claim that it part of nature to exploit the Earth and its resources without protecting its essence is morally wrong.  We may have the right in the legal sense within the laws of man.  But it is not right in the moral order of our being.  Our nature as moral beings requires us to make morally responsible decisions not just ones that we can rationalize.  The ability to rationalize allows us to make moral decisions, but it also allows for immoral ones as well for you can not know one without the other.

In the end living sustainably is not about how protecting the earth benefits us as a species, but that it is in our nature as moral beings, and a failure to live this way is not only immoral, but unnatural.