local ecologist

Urban gardener TLC kit

2013-05-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

To appease my outdoor garden envy I created a TLC kit for the urban gardener. When I lived in Boston, I had a plot in the Victory Gardens in Fenway and grew edible and ornamental plants. I used the Felco hand pruner I acquired as a community forester in New Haven and soothed by chapped hands with Crabtree & Evelyn's Gardeners hand cream, a thoughtful gift from a friend. The first time I used a hori-hori was in Berkeley; I was weeding a trail-side before re-planting it with California natives. The Nisaku hori-hori digging tool shown above is one of several carried by Amazon. The handsome hori-hori sold by Canoe is currently out of stock. At the end of the final class of the Trees New York Citizen Pruner course I was presented with a big blue bucket. The bucket is perfect for carrying your tools (hand pruner, pole saw, tree saw heads, gloves) as well as the vegetation you pruned. The garden bucket caddy by Fiskar is an improvement as it keeps your tools separate and secure. Canoe carries a canvas garden tote by Eena but I prefer the carrying capacity of the bucket caddy. I do not recall the brand name of any garden gloves I have used but I think I may remember the "Dirt Digger" glove by Boss Gloves. Why? First Lady and gardener Michelle Obama wore a pair during a spring planting event in April.

After you've weeded, planted, pruned, or simply admired, you can treat yourself to books and tea. London and Paris are known for their gardens (and trees). Why not prepare a cup of Harney & Sons Tower of London or Paris tea? If you have a garden plot or yard, you might consider reading The Flower Recipe by Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo or the classic Recipes from the Garden by Rosalind Creasy. A couple of other inspiring options are Urban Farms by Sarah C. Rich and The Essential Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal. For tree folks, whether the tree is in the sidewalk, in a park, or in your yard, there is The Tree Care Primer by Christopher Roddick.

Image credits:
1 Workman
2 Amazon
3 Abrams Books
4 Penguin
5 Amazon
All tool images via Amazon.

Floral Catalogue: Spring 2013

2013-05-15T17:51:00.004-04:00

Beginning with the blossoming of the cherries I have been taken photographs of the trees (and some shrubs and herbaceous perennials) in my neighborhood.

These hellebores are in a window box at 41 Bond Street.

My first time seeing a tree lilac in New York; this one is on Grand Street in Brooklyn.

We wrote a redbud profile last week.

It's a viburnum! Viburnum prunifolium, or blackhaw, identified by ‏@nygreenguy.

6 Landscape books written by mothers

2013-05-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama suggested her book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, as a Mother's Day gift to the audience at the Politics & Prose bookstore in D.C. Her remarks sparked this post: books about landscapes - domestic, public, and private - written by mothers. (All images via Amazon.com except where noted.)

Last month I attended a lecture by Jamaica Kincaid about "Captain Bligh's Bounty" and learned that she very much dislikes the breadfruit. She's a humorous writer and speaker, too. One of my favorite books by her is My Garden (Book).

It's not an exaggeration to say that Central Park is known world-wide. The Central Park Conservancy, too, is widely admired (and critiqued). Perhaps less known is the founder of the Central Park Conservancy: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Her accomplishments are impressive! Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History reminds me of a course I took with a much-loved professor and I am very curious about The Forests and Wetlands of New York City.

Image: 555 Hudson Street, NYC, Jane Jacobs' former home

Jane Jacobs is renowned for her brilliant analysis, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, of the role of mixed uses, short blocks, building age diversity, and density in making a livable city. The concepts "eyes on the street" and "sidewalk ballet" are familiar to many. I daresay she made the built landscape of Greenwich Village famous.

The suburban garden is the focus of many of Dominique Browning's books. I have not read Paths of Desire but I've read many of her editorials in the former House & Garden magazine and imagine that this book is packed with her lovely narrative style.

Finally, in a post about books written by mothers, we turn to schoolyards. Sharon Gamson Danks visited 150 schools in 11 countries to develop guidelines for schools transitioning from grey to green schoolyards in Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation. She chronicles the different lessons about wildlife, water and energy systems, and agriculture that a green schoolyard can teach. Furthermore, Danks looks at the important role of school-based green landscapes in different types of play.

This is a short list. I welcome your suggestions!

Wet weather discharge point, Grand Ferry Park

2013-05-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

Wet weather discharge points are permitted combined sewer overflow locations. During rainfall and snowmelt events, the city's combined sewer system can become overloaded, releasing a mix of stormwater and untreated sewage into waterways. In this example, the mix would be released into the East River at Grand and River Streets in Brooklyn.

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has prepared an CSO outfall map which is available here.

You can help to reduce the volume of overflows by limiting the amount of wastewater released into the system before and during rainfall and snowmelt events. Dontflush.me posts "Code BROWN! Engage plan B: save water during possible sewer overflow" and other alerts to its website and Twitter. The dontflush.me project hardware and software were developed by Leif Percifeld. Learn more here.

P.S. An interactive map by Climate Central of the 11 Billion Gallons of Sandy Sewage Overflow (HT Sustainable Cities).

Species: Cercis canadensis

2013-05-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

Cercis canadensis or Eastern redbud is an understory tree native to eastern North America. The small tree has two showy characteristics. It has "fluttering" heart-shaped leaves. The long stems (or pedicels) on which the leaves grow allow them to "flutter quite freely in even the smallest breeze".

The other dramatic feature of the Eastern redbud is the flower. The redbud is one of the first trees to flower in the spring. The flowers emerge before the leaves and almost cling to the branches and stems of the tree. In some cases, the flowers emerge from the trunk itself!

The photograph above shows three redbuds in bloom and each with a different colored flower (foreground to background): maroon, white, and lavender. The flowers are edible, as are the seeds. Top your dessert with the flowers. Pickle the buds. The flowers, leaves, and seeds have wildlife value, too. Birds eat the seeds, deer the leaves, and honeybees the nectar.

Here are looks at the seedpods and the leaves.

Have you eaten any part of the redbud?

NRDC LEED Platinum office building, Santa Monica

2013-05-02T20:35:00.001-04:00

In the final post of three about the Sustainable Santa Monica tour, I will share several green features of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) office building, one of the first buildings in the U.S. to be rated LEED Version 2 Platinum. NRDC walks the talk! The U.S. Green Building Council which administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program was "spearheaded" by NRDC senior scientist Robert K. Watson in 1994.

The NRDC office building began its life as an acupuncture studio. Wood beams from the former studio remain in the lobby which is named the David Family Environmental Action Center. Material reuse can earn a building up to two points in the LEED Platinum v2.0 rating. Construction waste management (up to two points) is also important: "98 percent of the waste materials generated during construction were reused or recycled." The use of "rapidly renewable materials" provides one point. The stairs in the building are made of poplar, a fast-growing, abundant species.

The building is located in the pedestrian friendly downtown. Walkable sites can earn one point. Although the building is flush with the lot line there are several access points to the outdoors. One is the courtyard entry, pictured above. Potable water is not used to irrigate the landscape. Rainwater and recycled grey water, from showers and sinks, are used for irrigation and toilet flushing. (Showers are provided -- a real catalyst to bike to work.) A complex water recycling system is located in the basement. To make one gallon of water per minute requires 2,200 watts according to a sign posted in the basement. The solar array on the roof provides 20% of the building's electricity.

The roof is another access point to the outdoors but it is more utilitarian than leisure space. Another way to enjoy the outdoors is on the ocean-facing deck. Providing occupants to "direct line of sight to the outdoor environment" only carries one point. It's a beautifully made point here! A cistern runs beneath the deck and captures rainwater which is fed into the water recycling system. Water efficient landscaping -- reducing potable water use, using nonpotable water for irrigation, and planting vegetation that does not require permanant irrigation -- can earn a project up to four points.

The main meeting room is located off the deck and it is awash in natural light. Four light wells provide natural light to the rest of the building but only three of the light wells have ventilation louvres. Increased ventilation and daylight account for one point each.

There are lots of small details that make the building efficient and beautiful some of which are described above but there are two that might be easy to overlook. One are the chairs in the conference room which are made from recycled seat belts. The chairs are aesthetically and physiologically pleasing! Look up to see the fan blades which were fashioned after airplane wings. They use less energy to provide the same cooling as conventional fans.

Descriptions of all the green elements of the building are available on the NRDC website. You can learn more about the LEED rating systems here.

Thank you to Kristin Center for a highly informative tour of the NRDC building.

Stump Stories: Ladd and Bush Bank Building, Salem, Oregon

2013-05-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

Image: Tree memorial, Ladd and Bush, Salem, Oregon, courtesy of Bonnie Hull (source)

In downtown Salem, Oregon, three of five Zelkova trees at the Ladd and Bush Bank Building, currently housing a U.S. Bank branch, were removed by U.S. Bank after appealing the Shade Tree Advisory Committee's original "no removal" judgement. Citizens demonstrated against the reversal of the "no removal" judgement and installed memorials when the trees were stumped.

Image: Tree memorial, Ladd and Bush, Salem, Oregon, courtesy of Bonnie Hull (source)

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. The five Zelkovas were planted in the early 1970s and removed before this year's Earth Day. The three trees that were cut were almost 43 years old.

Image: Tree memorial, Ladd and Bush, Salem, Oregon, courtesy of Bonnie Hull (source)

The fate of the remaining two Zelkovas remains to be seen. Brian Hines filed an appeal to save the remaining two Zelkovas on April 22, 2013. Watch this space for updates. In the meantime, you can follow HineSight.com or On The Way.

P.S. Have you read the 80 Wooster Street stump story?

Collection: Tree guides

2013-04-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

In honor of Arbor Day, I am sharing part of my collection of over 20 tree guides covering New York, New England, the South, the Pacific Coast, and California as well as Madrid and the Castilla and Leon region of Spain.

Many of the books in my tree guide collection are shown in local ecologist books (via Amazon).

Books not listed with Amazon include Arboles Unicos de Castilla y Leon, by Cesar Herranz Beltran (shown above); Native Trees of the San Francisco Bay Region, by Woodbridge Metcalf; Trees of North America, by C. Frank Brockman; A Guide to the Trees, by Alice Lounsberry; Familiar Trees and Their Leaves, by F. Schuyler Mathews; and Guide to New Haven's Trees, by Urban Resources Initiative.

How are you celebrating Arbor Day?

Bicknell Avenue Green Street, Santa Monica

2013-04-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I wrote about the sustainable sites field trip in Santa Monica outlining the the stops on the tour and providing details about the Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility or SMURRF. The water recycling facility is an end-of-pipe solution in contrast to the Bicknell Street green street project which manages runoff at the source. The block-long green street is a pilot project to test the use of vegetated bioswales, permeable paving, and infiltration basins can reduce impervious surfaces and capture and filter runoff. Green streets are one of several low impact development (LID) strategies cities use to meet National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) requirements.

The bioswale (shown above) is planted with climate-appropriate vegetation. Also, existing, 80-year old palm trees were preserved. One of the first things I noticed about the block was the lush vegetation. Look at the block pre-greening (note: it is a small photo).

The parking lane (shown above at left) is permeable down to six inches. One lesson from the site so far is that this depth does not drain all the rain that falls on the site; there is still runoff.

Wet and dry weather street runoff is directed into the bioswale for soil infiltration (shown above). Overflow, for example during rainfall, is returned to the gutter and directed to filtered catch basins and then is held in infiltration basins located beneath the permeable parking lane.

L.A. Creek Freak provides several suggestions for improving the function of this green street including installing more permeable paving and adding more green space with bulb-outs. The latter would favor the pedestrian: creating a more walkable street and calming traffic. In addition to increasing the depth of the permeable street pavement, perhaps the city will increase permeable surfaces and green space when it expands its green street program. This project was partially funded but it remained expensive to complete so not every street in Santa Monica will be greened in this way. The city is considering installing this type of LID strategy on streets similar to Bicknell, i.e. local collector streets.

Does your city have a green street?

Sources:

Stump Stories: 80 Wooster Street, NYC

2013-04-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

Forty-five years ago, artist George Maciunas transplanted two trees from a Canal Street parking lot to 80 Wooster Street.

The Parks Department deemed the trees dangerous but they were not removed until residents requested a removal after being told that the trees, especially the northern one (above) would compromise the installation of a standpipe system.

Read the entire stump story at The SoHo Memory Project blog.

Sustainable Santa Monica

2013-04-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the Sustainable Santa Monica field trip at the American Association of Geographers 2013 Meeting. I was the tour organizer on behalf of the non-profit Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities and the alumni interest group Yale Blue Green. The morning segment of the field trip was led by Brenden McEneaney, Green Building Advisor at City of Santa Monica and Neal Shapiro, Watershed Management Coordinator at City of Santa Monica. We ate lunch at the Wednesday Downtown Farmers Market followed by a tour of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) building.

The showcased the spectrum of blue-greening a city, from building- and site-based strategies to end of the pipe strategies. (The term "blue-green" is a play on Yale Blue Green but is also a nod to the Blue-Green Building website that presents case studies of "low-impact development aimed at sustaining water and watersheds....")

We were shown the Bicknell Street Greening project, the Civic Center Parking Structure, 502 Colorado Court, and the Main Library, and the NRDC building after lunch. These buildings and sites incorporate multiple technologies to protect watersheds and air quality and to reduce energy use. Bioswales, cisterns, solar panels, light wells, greywater recycling, glazed glass, and more. I will provide details of the green street and the NRDC office in future posts.

Santa Monica's end of the pipe approach to watershed protection we saw was the first stop on the tour: the Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility or SMURRF. SMURRF is an impressive system and is the only such facility in the world. One thing to note is that the City of Santa Monica has a separated sewer and water system so it does not treat stormwater. SMURFF is a dry-weather runoff treatment system; approximately 300,000-400,000 gallons of water daily from draining pools, over-watering, and leaking pipes are treated. The system includes several Continuous Deflective Separation detention systems one of which was opened for us to view. The particular CDS we saw cost $500,000. The recycled, non-potable water that is produced at the end of a five-step treatment process is provided to public and private customers for landscape irrigation and toilet flushing. The entire SMURRF facility cost $12M; the project is cost-shared with Los Angeles including revenues. The facility is experiential; the public can view the entire treatment process. Also, artwork was installed to tell the story of water treatment. Learn more by watching the SMURRF Virtual Tour.

In 1994, the City developed its Sustainable City plan with eight goals areas to which arts was recently added. The plan is funded by the rate payers via fees for water and waste. (The City owns its own water company.) Ten percent of the funds come from the General Fund and the Office of Sustainability also seeks grant funding. Revenues have declined because of the success of the water program, yet the City is now pursuing an aggressive climate plan with the goal to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050! "The DNA of the city is sustainability," noted Brenden McEneaney.

Watch this space for details of the Bicknell Street Greening project and the NRDC building.

Thank you to Brenden McEneaney and Neal Shapiro at City of Santa Monica and Kristin Center at NRDC.

Window boxes at 41 Bond Street

2013-04-17T10:30:00.000-04:00

The landscape at 41 Bond Street, an "entirely locally-sourced bluestone" residential building that fronts directly on the street, is composed of several elements: window boxes and loggia, a planted marquee, balconies, a green roof, parapet planters, and a rear garden. This patchy yet compositionally unified landscape was designed by Future Green Studio based in Brooklyn, NY.

Of the planting scheme, the form writes that it "emphasizes texture and form, mixing a contemporary with a fancifully rugged style."

Aren't the hellebore flowers beautiful?! This photograph was taken on April 13, 2013.

For additional photographs of the project, check out Future Green Studio's 41 Bond Street portfolio.

Sacramento's Capitol Canopy by ATLASlab

2013-04-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

Capitol Canopy image courtesy of ATLASlab

The State of the Trees report authored in 2000 by the Sacramento Tree Foundation described that city's trees as its "crowning glory."

Anyone who has strolled beneath the cooling, soothing canopy of towering elms and sycamores knows the city is graced by a special relationship with trees. In Sacramento, at the heart of California’s great Central Valley, our tree-lined boulevards, parks and residential foliage evoke far more than an appreciation for natural beauty. They represent 150 years of commitment to trees based on a profound understanding of the economic, social and civic benefits that trees bequeath.

The Tree Foundation's State of the Trees report also noted that the city's urban forest was critically under funded even "at a time when mounting scientific evidence shows that planting thousands of new trees each year will effectively reduce the Sacramento region’s energy needs, improve air quality, and bolster public health. In fact, our existing tree canopy returns over $50 million in environmental benefits annually."

Capitol Canopy, Golden State Event Lawn, image courtesy of ATLASlab

A decade later, in 2011, landscape architects Kimberly Garza and Andrew ten Brink of ATLASlab, won the Catalyst Capitol Mall Design Competition with their Capitol Canopy proposal. Capitol Canopy spans temporal and spatial scales. The designers offer a timeline for tree growth for 25 years (noting that the "full build-out of this plan will never be complete") in the core of city - the Capitol Mall - and beyond to its river walks and Northwest neighborhoods. Garza and tenBrink argue that a well-designed urban forest will not only provide environmental benefits, it will be a place that people use and invest in.

Image: Capitol Canopy, Timeline, image courtesy of ATLASlab

The urban forest will look different in different parts of the city and will function differently, too. For example, the Urban Pine Forest type modeled after the Central California Pine Forest will provide year-round shade on the south side of buildings thus enabling activities like farmers' markets and lounge areas. Shade is essential in Sacramento, especially in the summer. (Here's some information on Sacramento's climate excerpted from my dissertation: "Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and an 'average of 74.5 days over 90◦ F' The city is located in a valley and is subject to thermal inversions that not only keep warm air at ground level but also trap pollutants at ground level.")

Capitol Canopy, "Urban Pine Forest" section, image courtesy of ATLASlab

The selection of evergreens is an interesting one. Evergreens will offer much needed shade in the summer but they will also cast shade in the winter. Why not select deciduous tree species? The ATLASlab team notes that when planted with understory vegetation, the Urban Pine Forest will provide bird and butterfly habitat. During my dissertation research, I was directed to research by Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails and Dr. Thomas Cahill of UC Davis which showed that two types of evergreen trees, redwood and deodar cedar, are "especially effective" filters of particulate pollution. Perhaps the "needled branches" of the Lodgepole, Whitebark, Canary Island, White, and Gray pines will perform well as particulate filters.

Capitol Canopy, Golden State Riverwalk section, image courtesy of ATLASlab

At the Sacramento River, nesting sites and riparian vegetation are incorporated into the urban forest. Infrastructure like boardwalks and boat launches will enable visitors "to experience the riparian ecology."

I wondered how this attempt to restore Sacramento's urban forest would be financed and how it would be integrated into existing afforestation efforts such as the regional Greenprint initiative (5 million trees in 6 counties) spearheaded by the Sacramento Tree Foundation. I asked the landscape architects. The firm was not required to consider long-term maintenance. The competition sought " big and innovative design ideas that would define the Capitol Mall and the City, with little restrictions on site boundaries, proposal budget and or maintenance." The Capitol Canopy proposal was developed after careful research of "the City, specifically studying the Sacramento Tree Foundation's framework plan. From this, we translated their research and proposed native canopy types for the Mall that then are dispersed throughout the City and river."

Capitol Canopy, Market Canopy, image courtesy of ATLASlab

Capitol Canopy is a well researched and beautifully illustrated proposal. Furthermore, the design elegantly combines ecology and environmental benefits with beauty, social needs, and civic uses.

Thank you to Kimberly Garza and Andrew tenBrink for use of their images and for answering my questions. Hat tip to World Landscape Architecture where I first read about Capitol Canopy.

Book Talk: The Global Pigeon, by Colin Jerolmack

2013-04-12T16:46:00.000-04:00

Image: The Global Pigeon, by Colin Jerolmack via University of Chicago Press (source)

Last week I attended the book talk for Colin Jerolmack's The Global Piegon. Jerolmack's book is not a natural history of the pigeon, per se. Rather it uses the pigeon as a way of sampling the human population for an ethnographic study, according to Harvey Molotch who toasted Jerolmack at the book talk.

Pigeon color morphs, Project PigeonWatch post, Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Urban Bird Studies

The Global Pigeon is based on Jerolmack's dissertation research. He started out broadly looking at how people use space in cities. The beginning of his research coincided with New York City's anti-pigeon policies and practices. He took notice. He attended public meetings and residents complained about messy pigeons -- certain types of people fed them and the pigeons excreted their waste messing up public space.

Image: Pigeon feeding and instruction, Washington Square Park

Pigeons have thrived in cities because of their relationship with people or people's relationship with them. One of the ways this relationship manifests itself is pigeon feeding in parks. Although pigeons eat seeds and fruits, they access to an abundance of "food intentionally or unintentionally left by people."

Another way in which pigeons have become intertwined with humans is through the practice of pigeon flying. Jerolmack told the audience that in New York, pigeon flying was initially the purview of white ethnics. However, as younger generations of white ethnics proved disinterested in the animal practice, the older men (and its almost exclusively men) hired your black and Puerto Rican boys as assistants. These boys grew up to fly pigeons. In NYC, Jerolmack argues that animal practices around pigeons transcend ethnocentrism. He contrasts this situation with his work in Berlin where Turkish immigrants fly pigeons but the practice is used to "carve out a separate space in the larger German society." He also observed the Million Dollar Pigeon Race in South Africa - at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum - but found that that for all these populations, communities are formed through animal practices. As Molotch stated in his introductory remarks, the relationships between people and (wild) animals, particularly in cities, is not one of pure biophilia, but one that "works through social bonds."

The talk ended with a Q&A session. A member of the audience asked about the different perceptions of bee keeping and pigeon breeding and Jerolmack provided a fascinating answer about "class coded animal practices." Bee keepers tend to be affluent and white while the rooftop pigeon breeders tend to be working class. Pigeon racers in New York tend to be union men (fire fighters, police officers, steam fitters, etc.). Pigeon flyers "have not been able to hitch their activity to sustainability," said Jerolmack. He was told by an official in Chicago, that bee keeping is progressive and raising pigeons is backward. The pigeon is not a charismatic animal!

As a child, my cousin and a neighbor flew pigeons. I always had positive associations with pigeons until I experienced them in an urban context. I'm still thrilled by their flying.

What about you -- how do you feel about pigeons?

Park rocks

2013-04-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan

St. James Park, Bronx

Remillard Park, Berkeley

Indian Rock, Berkeley

Mont-Royal, Montreal

P.S. Read about the nearby nature of rock outcroppings.

P.P.S. Carolyn Yerkes writes about the survival of rock outcroppings despite the 1811 grid plan in The Greatest Grid, edited by Hilary Ballon.

Gates of the World

2013-03-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Image: Japanese Garden, Chicago

Image: Segara Ninda, Penang, Malaysia

Image: Fairway, NYC

More Gates of the World can be seen on our Flickr page.

Nature children's books

2013-03-22T11:20:00.003-04:00

The children's nature book, Nature in the Neighborhood, by Gordon Morrison, was the inspiration for a map of selected natural resources in my neighborhood. Kelly Brenner of Metropolitan Field Guide asked for "other must-have nature children's books". Here are 10 recommendations.

1. Big Night for Salamanders, by Sarah Marwil Lamstein, with illustrations by Carol Benioff

Evan and his family help the salamanders migrate across a road. The book is cleverly organized: the natural history of the salamander is told alongside the fiction in a facing page layout.

2. Las Estaciones, by Iela Mari

A story of the seasons centered on one oak is told in pictures only -- the illustrations are so fabulous that you don't miss the text.

3. Bugs Galore, by Peter Stein with illustrations by Bob Staake

A fun way to introduce the sheer diversity of bugs. (The book is all about bugs though some of the bugs look like no-bug insects like bees. Learn about the difference between bugs and insects.)

4. The Carrot Seed, byRuth Krauss with illustrations by Crockett Johnson

A classic tale of patience and a friendly guide to vegetable gardening.

5. The Very Quiet Cricket, by Eric Carle

Here's one book with sound effects you won't mind your child reading, again and again. Eric Carle is one of the best illustrators and his art in this book is no exception. Children learn about a range of insect sounds. It's also a nice love story.

6. The Wind Blew, by Pat Hutchins

Pat Hutchins is another talented illustrator (check out What Game Shall We Play?). I have not found many well-written, approachable children's nature books about elements like wind. This is a good one!

We also like:

7. Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus about the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

The book celebrated its 40th birthday last year.

8. Sasha Visits the Botanic Gardens, by Shamini Flint with illustrations by Alpan Ahuja

A dear friend gave the book after we spent time in Singapore.

9. A Child's Calendar, by John Updike with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman

The calendar is livened by Updike's poetry and Schart Hyman's art is evocative of the New England town landscape. This book pairs well with Las Estaciones.

Image: The owl in Here is the Arctic Winter, by Madeleine Dunphy (source)

10. Here is the Arctic Winter, by Madeleine Dunphy with illustrations by Alan James Robinson

A gently didactic book about the Arctic ecosystem. One reason I like this book is that it's set in the dark - and the dark is a place of life.

World Water Day 2013

2013-03-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

World Water Day is celebrated annually on March 22 and developed to "a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources."

Image: Rainfall drainage calculations for Skyline Park, Denver, by Lawrence Halprin
in Landscape Journal 31(1-2), 2013, Komara

Image: Constructed seep for the Bush Center in Dallas, by MVVA in LAM March 2013, Van Valkenburgh and Saunders

Image: Vegetated swale at Sunset Circle parking lot, Lake Merced Boulevard, San Francisco, by San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Works

Image: Stormwater vegetative control, East River, NYC, by Trees for NY

What water management proposals or sites inspire you?

P.S. 2013 has been designated the International Year of Water Cooperation by the United Nations.

Interview: Melissa Harrison, author of Clay

2013-03-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

Image: Clay, by Melissa Harrison, UK cover photo via Bloomsbury (source)

One reason I enjoy my subscription to "Harper's Magazine" is the New Books review section. This month, Jane Smiley reviewed three books which she described as extending the tradition of Don Quixote by writing about "geography: what is out there, who lives there, how they are different from characters who live in other landscapes." One of the books is Clay, by Melissa Harrison.

Clay is about the intersections and differences of the lives of a boy, a girl (and her mother) and her grandmother, and an immigrant man. Nature also plays a significant role in this novel -- it provides identity, solace, wonder, and home. The book is published by Bloomsbury and has its own website.

Instead of writing a traditional book review, I decided to ask Melissa Harrison to participate in an interview. She agreed to answer my questions via a questionnaire which I have included below.

The Interview

I read in Jane Smiley's review that the book's chapters are structured according to "the traditional English calendar." My web search revealed that the chapter titles are based on British holidays. Can you talk about your reason for organizing the book in this way?

The chapter titles were a way of connecting a modern, urban narrative to an ancient, rural calendar. They all would have been familiar to anyone living in the English countryside between the medieval and Victorian periods; I wanted to hark back to the rhythms and patterns that governed our lives for so long – and suggest, perhaps, that they have not been entirely lost.

I noticed that different types of landscapes/natures represent different characters (ex: Jozef/farm, TC/wildlands). Was this characterization intentional or did it emerge as you wrote the book?

That’s not something I’m aware of having done – but every reader brings different things to a text and it’s often a mark of a good book that it can be read in several ways. So thank you, that’s an interesting new angle!

At the end of the book, the main characters become untethered from the land/nature. Is there a lesson here?

Not so much a lesson, but I wanted readers to experience a sense of loss – because it’s often through loss that we realise the value of what came before. One of the things that drove me to write Clay was a belief that fostering a connection to nature is deeply important, not just for the future of our environment but for ourselves. I wanted readers to come away from the book noticing more of the natural world around them, and hopefully valuing it more. To make that emotional connection come to life meant showing what could be lost for the characters when it was taken away.

Did you write Linda to lose, recover, and lose her direct connection to nature?

Linda is someone who had a chance of living a more meaningful life – of reaching beyond material things, of defining herself differently – but didn’t quite have the courage to take it. I have every sympathy with her, especially as she knows that something is missing from her life, and really does try to recapture the connection she had as a child; but ultimately consumerism, class and the pressure to fit in are too much for her. It would also have required her to heal her relationship with her mother and align herself, imaginatively, with her – and that’s not something she’s able to do.

Image: Clay, by Melissa Harrison, US cover photo via Bloomsbury Publishing (Thanks, Carrie Majer)

The nature experiences available to TC are striking given his residence in an urbanized area. Can you talk about green space access and conservation in urbanized England?

The locations in Clay are all places I can reach on foot within about 15 minutes of my South London apartment. British cities are full of parks, some endowed by royalty in days gone by, some created by Victorian industrialists and philanthropists and many – particularly in London – carved from World War Two bomb sites. My neighbourhood is very urbanised, but in Britain even the most built-up areas usually have street trees (often huge and ancient), grass verges beside the roads and small recreational parks that are protected from development. Having said that, the very ubiquity of our urban green spaces means that many people just stop noticing them. I wanted to remind people to look again – and realise how lucky we are.

It seems that Daisy and TC experience the outdoors differently because of factors like housing type and location, parental oversight, sex perhaps. Do you think this is an accurate reading of the book? Also, can you talk about your perspective on the importance of children's experience of the outdoors/nature?

Daisy and TC represent the two extremes of parental oversight, I suppose: TC, utterly neglected, does what he pleases, whereas all of Daisy’s time is managed. Both are impoverished in different ways; Daisy comes from a wealthy home and has many advantages, but she is not allowed to make her own decisions or develop a clear sense of risk, and her parents seem to value activities most highly if they can see that they are directly educational in some way. Yet I believe that unstructured outdoor play is absolutely vital to childhood development, and that we do children a terrible disservice when we fail to give them opportunities to enjoy it.

It's clear that you are knowledgeable about plants and animals. How did you gain this expertise? What are your favorite plants and animals?

I grew up in a semi-rural English county in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when it was still possible to leave kids to play outdoors all day. Learning the names of trees and plants seemed natural to me, but, like Linda, I forgot much of it when I became a teenager. After I had lived in London for a while I realised that I had lost something important to me, and when I was able to rent an apartment with a small garden I began to plant and care for things again, and to connect with a patch of ground for the first time since I had been a child. I began looking things up and reminding myself of the richness of the world beyond my job, socialising and my daily commute.

Will we see TC again?

The honest answer is I don’t know! I worry about him still, which sounds odd – but he became very real to me in the course of writing Clay. At some point I may need to find out if he is OK. But not just yet.

Will nature figure prominently in your next book?

Yes – but in a slightly different way. I don’t want to say too much, but I will reveal that it’s not set in a city, and features a journey through a landscape. Watch this (open) space!

Species: Landscape designs and species that survived Superstorm Sandy

2013-03-05T19:19:00.001-05:00

Pier A Park, after Hurricane Sandy, Hoboken, NJ via Fund for a Better Waterfront (source)

In his segment at Waterproofing New York, Dennis Burton, horticulturist/forest restoration manager of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, referred the audience to the Urban Forest Hurricane Recovery Program at the University of Florida. The Trees and Hurricane website recommends site designs and tree species to establish a "more wind-resistant urban forest" in coastal, sub-tropical and tropical places like Florida. (I did not find a discussion of flood or surge-tolerant urban forests.)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, several articles examined the impacts of the superstorm on waterfront parks in New York and New Jersey, in particular the suitability, or lack thereof, of plant species and landscape types.

For example, Pitch Pines and other salt-tolerant species planted in Brooklyn Bridge Park survived up to four hours of inundation by "brackish and salt water," according to Rebecca McMackin, park horticulturist for Brooklyn Bridge Park. Ms. McMackin wrote a post-storm assessment of the park's horticultural management program and procedures.

On the other hand, in East River Park, mature trees were uprooted and others were damaged by salt introduced by the surge. In an interview with the New York Press, Christine Datz-Romero, executive director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center, would like restoration to include vegetating the park with salt tolerant species or making wetlands or marshes that would attenuate wave energy. In the same article, 74th District Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh also pointed to the ecological services provided by "naturally occurring beaches along the East River."

Design also matters as shown in the University of Florida's attention to "preventive design" but also in the example of Pier A Park in Hoboken, New Jersey. The Fund for a Better Waterfront reported the following:

The morning after [Sandy], the 97 London Plane trees comprising the grove on Pier A and multiple rows along the promenade were all left standing. The 9-11 memorial ginkgo trees also were left intact. Just two of the trees growing between the bike path and the walkway were uprooted.

The survival of these trees has been attributed to the design of the site. The planetree grove was planted in three feet of "specially formulated structural, 'air-entrained soil' that has allowed the roots of the trees to quickly spread spread horizontally, thus providing for great stability." The site was designed by landscape architects Henry Arnold of Arnold Associates and Cassandra Wilday and received Honor Awards from ASLA in 1997 and NJASLA. You can see photos of the site in years 4 and 8 at the Arnold Associates website.

I am engaged in a comparative study of urban vegetation management practices and policies as a response to storms. If you know of other articles, reports, or websites that deal with this topic, please include the information in a comment.

3 Street-tree pit soil levels

2013-02-27T12:27:00.000-05:00

Depressed soil in a tree pit whose edges indicate that a grate once surrounded this honeylocust.

The soil level in this tree pit has been raised with potting soil. Is the bark of this Callery pear rotting behind/beneath the soil?

The soil level shown above is at-grade. Little water is pooling in this tree pit on a rainy day. Hopefully the soil level will not be raised around this honeylocust.

These three tree pits are located on West Third Street between Thompson Street and LaGuardia Place.

A Park is a Park is Always a Park

2013-02-25T13:39:00.002-05:00

The title of this post is taken from the affidavit of former NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern in support of the Article 78 lawsuit against the alleged unlawful approval of the NYU 2031 Expansion Plan by NY City and State agencies. Commissioner Stern argues that although Mercer Playground, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, LaGuardia Park, and Mercer-Houston Dog Run were not not formally "mapped"* as public parks, the fact that they have been used as such confers public-park status on them.

Legally, the fact that all four parks have been used as parks continuously, in some instances for decades, is all that’s needed. “These sites exemplify the concept of impliedly dedicated parkland and therefore must be afforded the protections of the Public Trust Doctrine. To fail to do so exalts a quid pro quo, plutocratic form of government, and blatantly disregards the values that state law embodies of accountability and transparency,” says Stern. (Source: caan2031.org)

In fact, unlike LaGuardia Corner Gardens, LaGuardia Park, and Mercer-Houston Dog Run which sit on land presently owned by the DOT, the land on which Mercer Playground sits is owned by the Parks Department. The land was transferred from DOT to Parks in 1997 (see the text on the plaque, pictured above, as well as on the playground's official webpage).

Gibson Dunn attorneys will present evidence on the illegal "parkland alienation" to NY State Supreme Court Justice Donna Mills tomorrow, February 26 at 11:30 a.m. at 111 Centre Street, Room 574.

* Central Park is not officially mapped, either.

Nature in the neighborhood

2013-02-06T13:16:00.000-05:00

The title and content of this post is taken from the name of one of my favorite children's books about nature: Nature in the Neighborhood, by Gordon Morrison. The book describes the animals, plants, and habitats associated with each season. This is not a book review so I won't provide a lot of detail but Morrison begins his tale with the emergence of earthworms in the spring and ends it with rabbit and coyote tracks. In between are illustrations and natural histories of toads, kestrels, goldfinches and thistle, monarch butterflies and milkweed, and cattails and ferns.

Image: Page 18, in Nature in the Neighborhood, by Gordon Morrison

Morrison's map of nature in a neighborhood is fantastic and a portion of it is shown above. I've highlighted some of the natural resources in Greenwich Village and a bit beyond (see nos. 1 and 7), shown below.

Image: Selected Natural Resources in Greenwich Village

1. Hudson River

Big City Fishing offers a free fishing summer program offered at several piers along the Hudson River. Participants learn about river ecology by listening to staff talks, examining plankton under microscope, viewing fish they catch themselves or fish that others have caught (all fish are released into the river by staff), and identifying fish on the Fish Poster.

2. Minetta ~~Creek~~ Brook (under Minetta Street)

Minetta Brook once ran above ground in Greenwich Village, flowing through the western section of Washington Square Park to the Hudson River. The route of the brook was altered and culverted in the 1820s. The waterway is evident in the curve of Minetta Street and flooded basements during some rain storms.

Image: Northern Cardinal, photography by Hubert J Steed (source)

3. Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village

The 1.5-acre Sasaki, Walker and Associates garden was completed in 1959 and is the park in which the Washington Square Village complex sits. The garden provides habitat to numerous species of birds including Northern Cardinal, Mockingbird, Thrasher, Catbird, Mourning Dove, Pigeon, American Robin, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Hermit Thrush, Sparrow (House & White-throated) and European Starling. More information is available in "The Birds in Our Garden" report prepared by biologist Gabriel Willow.

4. Time Landscape at LaGuardia Place and Houston Street

Alan Sonfist planted the Time Landscape, a 25' x 40' forest park, in 1956 to mimic a pre-colonial woodland in Manhattan.

5. Green Roofs

a. NYU Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life (West Third and Thompson Street)

b. Project 594 Broadway Roof Garden

The roof garden at 594 Broadway was installed to to reduce the building's contribution to stormwater run-off and to reduce cooling costs. The plant palette includes Sedum album (white stonecrop), S. acre (goldmoss stonecrop), S. spurium (tworow stonecrop), S. sexangulare (tasteless stonecrop), and Sempervivum tectorum (hens and chicks) as well as ice plant was also planted. We wrote about the green roof here.

6. 333-year old English Elm in the NW corner of Washington Square Park

View this venerable tree over the course of the Tree Year 2011.

7. Hua Mei Bird Garden in Sara D. Roosevelt Park

I heard about this bird garden when I first moved to the neighborhood but did not visit it until last summer. Most of the activity was along the exterior of the southern side of the garden. I observed several older Chinese men talking with each other and interacting with their birds. Check out this New York Daily Photo entry about the garden.

Neighbors, what would add to this map?

Would you like to guest blog about nature in your neighborhood? Send an email to info at localecology dot org or leave a comment. Thank you!

Public stairways of NYC: Pinehurst Avenue

2013-01-31T13:51:00.001-05:00

To access Pinehurst Avenue from 181st Street, one must climb a three-tiered stairway. The stairs were built in 1924. I found the staircase accidentally and was pleased to see it. One of the most interesting sections of The Greatest Grid deals with modifications to the 1811 Grid due to above 155th Street. In Andrew H. Green's 1868 plan for Northern Manhattan, large swaths of "hills, valleys, and cliffs" were preserved, though implementation of Green's plan was incomplete. (Read more about the grid here.)

One of the ways that developers accommodated to the area's topography was to construct stairways. In the book, the West 215th Street Steps, built in 1911 by the city, are featured. Other street stairways in Manhattan can be found at 187th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, at 215th Street and Broadway heading, and an abandoned stairway at Haven Avenue between 172nd and 173rd Streets, according to the Henry Hudson Owners Coalition. Another Manhattan stairway is located at 155th Street between Bradhurst Avenue and Harlem River Drive, according to the New York Stairs map created by Doug Beyerlein. Check out photographs of 155th Street at the Bridge and Tunnel Club website.

Image: LeRoy Steps, Berkeley

I have climbed public stairways in Berkeley (with the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association) and in Oakland (also with BPWA but now Oakland paths have their own organization called Oakland Urban Paths). Hilly San Francisco has lots of public stairs. And Los Angeles, too.

Are there public stairways where you live? Do you regularly climb them?

Deforesting Athens and other "war cities"

2013-01-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

Image: Athens, Greece from Acropolis via Stefanos Kofopoulos, Wikimedia Commons (source)

Yesterday, NPR correspondent Joanna Kakissis reported about the impacts of Greece's economic austerity policies the country's urban forests. In her interviews of Athenians about the "fog of woodsmoke" hanging over the city, Kakissis learned that residents are burning cheap firewood, discarded Christmas trees, doors and windowsills, olive trees from country homes, and protected forests. Local environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis observed that the city's urban forest was decimated during World War II: residents substituted wood for cooking and heating after the "Germans and Italians took the heating oil and coal during the war." The forest recovered and Gourdomichalis would like it survive this crisis. (The Greek Reporter ran a story about the austerity-induced deforestation in December 2011.)

Athens, Greece is not the only city whose urban forest was destroyed during a war and subsequently replanted and restored. Dr. Joe R. McBride and colleagues have assessed pre- and post-war urban forests in Hamburg and Dresden (Stilgenbauer and McBride, 2010) and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lacan and McBride, 2009).

The abstract of the Dresden and Hamburg paper is quoted below:

Extensive firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden during World War II destroyed major portions of the tree cover—the urban forest—in each city. In Hamburg 42 percent of street trees were lost; in Dresden the estimate was 51 percent. The availability of planting stock, economic considerations, and differences in local (Hamburg) versus central planning (Dresden) influenced the reconstruction of those urban forests. The conversion of tree nurseries to vegetable gardens during and after the war delayed replanting in both cities. And while the economic rebound of West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s supported planting and park reconstruction, economic depression combined with the draining of funds from East Germany to pay Russian war reparations slowed progress until the 1980s and 1990s. After the war, Hamburg landowners resisted major changes to the urban fabric, such as street realignments. In Dresden, despite local opposition, portions of the city were rebuilt following the Soviet “16 Principles of Urban Planning.” Reconstruction projects (street widening, freeway construction, new buildings) eliminated approximately 2 percent of the prewar green space supporting trees in both cities. The impact of firebombing on these urban forests contributed to the establishment of postwar tree protection laws in East and West Germany.

I wrote about the Sarajevo urban forest here after attending a lecture given by Lacan. In Sarajevo, the black locust regenerated in remnant peri-urban woodlands in contrast to the pre-siege composition of pines, hornbeam, beech, and sessile and downy oaks. Although the black locust is not a desirable species, the trees are not weeded because residents remember the denuded landscapes of the war. The dire economic realities in Greece might be submerging a similar memory in Athens.