Speaking of First Nations Arboriculture...

"As mankind continued to chip his chert for stone warfare at the end of the Stone Age, he became very interested in the nut as food. It is thought that the movement of a nut called hazel or Corylus across the world was due almost entirely to mankind's fondess for its flavour. Indeed in North America, the mesolithic practice of the grand savannah design came into being primarily as a nut pasture to amplify game. This was a design centered around the open solar exposure of a nut-bearing canopy, whose wild grass pasture was flash-fired in April and November. This ashing of the soil produced fertilizer, pest management and increased herd capacity all rolled into one. The real gold came later on in the fall as crops of nuts. These were called pekan, or nut, throughout the length and breadth of the continent by an aboriginal culture that knew what it was doing and why it was doing it."

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Arboretum Borealis, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 2010. P43.

Growing Native Edibles with Lorraine Johnson

Thurs Sept 9th 2010
7pm -9pm
Growing Native Edibles with Lorraine Johnson
A Young Urban Farmers CSA Summer Workshop
Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Ave. Suite 400, Alterna Savings room, Toronto
Cost: Pay what you can

"Join acclaimed author and garden guru Lorraine Johnson for a workshop on edible native plants to grow in your garden. By growing these delicious plants native to the region, you'll not only be creating habitat in your patch of green space but also nurturing tasty treats for your dinner table. Become an urban forager...at home.

Only 20 spaces are available for this event. For more information or to RSVP directly, contact Noelle Munaretto at noelle@yufcsa.com with your name and phone number."

Lorraine recently taught a similar workshop at the Brick Works. Lauren from BlogTO.com covered it, including lots of edible native plant suggestions for our gardens!

Lorraine Johnson's latest book is City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing (Greystone Books, 2010) read more about it, and her new blog, here.

Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Earlier this year, in an Aliens-L list serve post, Randy Westbrooks recommended "Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900" as "a ‘must read’ for anyone who works on invasive species."

So I bought it. Now, I'm nearly finished reading it, and he's right. (But what else would I expect: invasion ecology isn't just science, it's sociology and culture and story, and if you've ever talked with Randy Westbrooks or heard him speak, you know that he "gets" story.)

It's helping me understand our current invasive issues + what was, and what's still left of, our natural heritage, in ecological, biogeographical, biopolitical, historical and social contexts.

With memorable examples and well-researched historical accounts I haven't come across anywhere before.

Personally, I especially appreciated any of the historic records of natural and ethnobotanical vegetation in eastern North America at the earliest points of first European contact.

First written in 1986, with a new edition in 2004, this book reminds me of the quote: "The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones." - Joseph Joubert

If you're interested in invasion ecology and natural heritage -- or if you liked Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" or Ronald Wright's "Stolen Continents -- you'll appreciate this one.

Henry Kock's "Growing Trees from Seed - A practical guide to growing native trees, vines and shrubs"

If you even think you're interested, buy it.

To find out more please see the book's website.

I've just finished collecting some of the later seeds from my Shrubby St. John's-wort (I agree with the book: these are "lovely shrubs ...deserving more use in sunny yards, including edge of pools and stream gardens"), and with them I marked the end of my first year with this book. It has taken me that long to read it simply because it takes at least all four seasons to observe what it has to teach, not just about seed collection & propagation, but professional and personal lifetimes' worth of growing, conserving, observing and educating people about our native trees and many of our shrubs too. Most of it was new to me.

The first few chapters are treasures of practical and experienced seed collecting, propagation and even restoration advice. Next, specific advice about collecting and propagating by family and species. All the while, the handy reference charts at the back of the book show you month-by-month which species' mature seeds you can expect to find and their stratification protocols.

I began to read what I could already use and understand late last fall. For the 1st time in my life, I realized that the phrase "instant classic" could even be trusted. By summer it wasn't a book or a manual or even a guide so much as a wise, warm and gentle field companion. Like walking land with an extra set of the finest tuned eyes. I love how intuitively organized and accessible this book's format is, and its unmistakable voice too: like the best teachers, it doesn't care about what it 'knows' as much as presenting information and guidance in ways that will enable the reader to learn. And it knows what you want (and need) to learn, even before you do :) After awhile I had to laugh each time it inevitably anticipated and answered my questions while I was still fumbling to formulate them!

I was especially grateful each time it anticipated any confusion I would have about similar and introduced species and hybrids. Not that it's a beginner tree ID guide (I still needed those. If you do too: see native plant ID links in the right side bar. Also, after basic ID guides, Gerry Waldron's Trees of the Carolinian Forest: A Guide to Species, Their Ecology and Uses is an especially apt companion to this book), but it is uniquely helpful for fine scale ID.

To the family and friends of the late Henry Kock, co-authors and editors Paul Aird, John Ambrose and Gerald Waldron and all the good people who helped complete, fund, support and steward this important book into being: I hope you will always know you have given us all a gift that can't be measured. *thank you*.

Tallamy + "what should I plant?"

Although I've mentioned this book twice before here, apparently I was too subtle about it because folks still email to say "but, you missed Tallamy!"

And he is worth mentioning again.

Yesterday, a landscaper / urban ecology student friend-of-mine told me "I give this to book clients, and they tell me this book changed my life."

...and their plant selections.

I can get behind any book that can achieve that kind of ecological literacy. As Garden Rant's Susan's Harris said and Wild Flora neatly summarized: "Tallamy makes the case for native-plant and wildlife-friendly gardening in a way that many conventional gardeners have been able to accept and understand."

Also, since the hard cover book came out in 2007, Tallamy's given us some updates that I've been meaning to share.

While I initially appreciated the book's message...

[if you missed it, here it is in a nutshell: Tallamy's an entomologist and a former long time "conventional" gardener. He observed his garden, did the research and noticed that -- in some really fascinating and informative proportions -- it's the native plants which feed the native insects -> both of which feed and support native birds, whereas non-native species are less frequented, and often detrimental to the same cycles = the plants you choose to garden with in your yard matter to the conservation, or extinction, of biodiversity.]

...what I really wanted was a paperback edition (more affordable to give to folks) and access to the raw data (those spreadsheets rocked, and even helped validate, my little world) and a journal article (very cool analysis + succinct read + something you can credibly cite).

As you can see, Tallamy has since delivered all that.

BTW: It wasn't until that Conservation Biology journal article came out that I started to see Tallamy's book crack into ecological restoration and conservation discussions / emails. Until then, I mostly saw the book mentioned in popular gardening magazines, public workshops, and gardening blogs south of the border (like folks were starved for it too. I started to feel spoiled guilty about how well Lorraine Johnson had already nourished me and the rest of southern Ontario about native plant gardening ecology. Also, at first it was hard for me to "get" how new (and thus, how that much more profound) Tallamy's message was for a lot of folks, because our endangered->extirpated Karner Blue butterfly's dependence on our at-risk Wild Blue Lupine Lupinus perennis had already taught us a hard lesson about why we need to conserve and restore our native obligate larval host plants too).

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And today I've just noticed that the book's two websites each have "what should I plant?" short-lists (here & here) too.

I appreciate the effort to appeal to folks who want to cut-to-the-chase like that, but... here's my advice and my caveats about these and other general native plant recommendation lists / short cuts.

As insightful as the book site's plant recommendations are, those rankings are restricted to butterfly and moth visits. In the mid-Atlantic states.

That's no substitute for knowing your yard, local native plant communities (and all sorts of insects, pollinators and wildlife).

Besides, discovering those fine details is half the fun.

In case 'high wildlife value' or 'obligate plant host' (aka native plant) gardening is new to you, you'll still want to choose:
-plants that are native to your unique neck-of-the-woods (eco-region, eco-district, seed zone, or even indigenous to your watershed)
-appropriate to your yard's conditions
-from what you can ethically source (by seed or through nurseries)

My advice? When the weather starts to warm, bring this book, and any species short-lists it inspires, to your local native plant nurseries and ask them which native plant species they would recommend for your very unique patch of the planet.

And ask them for some related gardening -> naturalization -> restoration & conservation advice. (BTW: I do think that, as soon as you start gardening with native plants, these successive gradations are an inevitable path).

I've had nursery owners take-me-to-school for an hour. It helped to go back, when it wasn't a spring weekend frenzy. And it helped when I attended their public education lectures and workshops too.

Or, if you're not the DIY type, ask the native plant nursery owners for referrals to land care professionals they personally recommend. Lately, I've been searching for easy-to-hand-out standards about how to choose land care professionals, and honestly, this is what experience has taught me so far: The good native plant nursery folks know the good native plant consultants and landscape contractors. I can't say that any plainer. And no, it's not an insiders club, a membership they buy, an association they join or an accreditation. It's the fact that seed source and ethical informed seed collection and propagation standards are sound measurements of what you're getting, and ultimately it's the seed collectors/growers/nurseries who can tell you what standards they follow and which local landscapers, consultants and contractors are demanding and applying those standards in their plant selections too. Also, by their nature, native (and especially indigenous) plants are products of truly localized networks (often you can still expect to know where your garden's native plants come from, in a way a lot of still wish we knew where our food comes from: there are no "5000 mile" native plants) where folks know each other over time: bet-their-reputations-on-it referrals still mean something.

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BTW: Carol Brown has already done an excellent job of reviewing the book & more of what Tallamy's been up to. Besides, her "Ecosystem Gardening" site is worth a mention in its own right. Enjoy :)

Goldenrod

Had to include a pic of goldenrod because the asters in the pics below looked lonely to me w/o goldenrod buddies.

Click through the pic: it's zoomed-in, but otherwise unaltered. I have no idea why it turned out looking more like a painting than a photograph. Looks like brush strokes.

Apparently there are 29 goldenrod species in Ontario (32 in Canada), and 'the' book a native plant girl should buy is "Goldenrods of Ontario" by John Semples and Gordon S. Ringius, University of Waterloo. I'll have to call U. of Waterloo bookstore to see if they still have copies.

Wildflowers of Riverwood Conservancy

I missed Dr. Nina Katalin Barabas's presentation on medicinal native plants at the North American Native Plant Society's Winter Speakers series last night. Too bad because they've all been so good. (BTW: thank Paul Heydon at Grow Wild! for that line-up.) I didn't realize that, besides already being a great newsletter and plant sale, NANPS could pull off a great public speaker series too. High Park did too. And winter is such a good time for it.

Sharon Lovett (Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Oak Savannah co-creator /photographer /author and High Park VSP co-chair) noticed I was AWOL and emailed me this morning. Yes, I missed another good one. But what she really wanted to tell me about was a new book she saw there, a field guide about GTA wildflowers, from a place called Riverwood.

Wildflowers of Riverwood - Field Guide of Wildflowers in Mississauga Garden and the Greater Toronto Area
Nina Katalin Barabas PhD and Eva Sabrina Bruni
Mississauga Garden Council. 2008. 184 pp

My first (and apologetic) question: who and what is Riverwood?

Turns out, the Riverwood Conservancy is a:

• 60 hectare (150 acre) park / public garden / natural area / ANSI in Mississauga
• habitat to over 475 species of plants & animals
  
• the "most ecologically diverse community in the Credit Valley watershed” with 200 to 350 year old trees and mixed old growth, young deciduous and mature mixed forests, woodlands, meadows, oak savannah, old fields, tablelands, floodplain, ravines, slopes, wetlands, marsh and creeks.

In other words, it's a taster's menu of our regional wildflowers, including the odd rare one too, like the White Trout Lily on the book's cover.

Nina, last night's speaker, was one of the volunteers who co-wrote this interpretive wildflower field guide for Riverwood and us. "A volunteer effort ... truly a project by the community for the community". :)

A generous community: 150 species in the guide. Check out the sample pages and features at a glance. Natives and common weeds too and distinguishes the two. Sweet woodland and wetland flowers, but not much for prairie / savannah species. Historic and first nations medicinal uses are the most common themes. I love that it tells you when and where you can find each species at Riverwood. Add a camera to that and it sounds like affordable family-friendly sport to me.

This is the first in a series of field guides volunteers plan to create for the Conservancy / the GTA flora and fauna represented there. The proceeds of the sales of this book will fund the publication of those future books and field guides, as well as their outdoor education program. You can buy the book on-site at Riverwood's Historic Chapell House (open mon-fri 9-4) for $34.99 (or$29.99 for Riverwood Conservancy members). Or call 905-279-5878 or email info@TheRiverwoodConservancy.org to place an order. I was able to just call and use Visa and have it sent to me. With shipping and handling and taxes it was $41.49, and arrived fast too.

Once I saw Riverwood on a map, I realized I'm familiar with some of that forest, but just south of Burnhamthorpe at U of T in Mississauaga / Credit River at Erindale. Sweet place! $35 is an awesome price for a book you can spend an early -> mid-May morning with getting to know spring woodland ephemerals along those forest trails, and then to bring home to help plan out a native woodland garden while the nurseries (and blooms!) are in full swing.

Congratulations -- & thank you -- to the team behind the book, and the gardeners and stewards at Riverwood too. BTW: I can't think of a better peer-recommendation for this book than Sharon gushing "had to have it!"

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Just noticed this: "The Native Herb Garden with Nina Katalin Barabas." Free Seminar at Richter’s Herbs, Goodwood ON, Sun Apr 26th, 2-3 pm.

Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Black Oak Savannah: A Volunteer Stewardship Program Guidebook

Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Black Oak Savannah: A Volunteer Stewardship Program Guidebook. High Park Community Advisory Council (HPCAC) and HPCAC Volunteer Stewardship Program. Toronto, Ontario: High Park Initiatives, 2008. 64pp. $15.

I’m trying to write a book review, but what I keep coming up with is a love letter.

This blog has tried to suss-out a few resources about High Park before, but this new book is the introduction I’ve really been looking for all along.

It’s not just an interesting and easy-to-use interpretive field guide (lots of gorgeous glossy black oak savannah and tall grass prairie plant ID pictures and facts about their habitats, as well as natural history backgrounders), it’s also an inspiring and informative stewardship story too! A story about who and what it took, and still takes, to steward this remnant of globally endangered habitat, including stewardship volunteer teams, a unique public advisory committee, community consultation, an on-site native plants nursery, adopt-a-plot native plant gardens, and local native plant sales which increase the habitat in private yards well beyond park boundaries. All of this in a high-use urban park no less (e.g. sports, cultural events and an increasingly vocal dogs-off-leash community with a self-admitted non-compliance as high as 39% in some on-leash areas: a difficult challenge for any area attempting to conserve a globally endangered landscape, its plants, wildlife and their fragile habitats, such as ground nests). There are also examples and encouraging lesson anyone can apply to restoring and stewarding their natural areas too.

Being a fan of our local environmental stewardship public education resources in and of themselves, I’m thrilled to say that this tight jewel of a book has set a new bar for me when it comes to natural area and stewardship field guides in general.

The format is fresh and inclusive. “We wanted it to be different from many guidebooks,” says High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program Co-Chair Sharon Lovett, “we included volunteer stewards and city restoration staff as part of the habitat. And we wanted to encourage other people to undertake restoration projects of their own as well as learn to appreciate the park’s specific black oak savannah.”

Who might want to buy this book? Local native plant lovers, stewards, citizens of the area, folks creating their own environmental stewardship and natural area public outreach and education pieces, and, of course, anyone visiting High Park. Whether you're new to the park or a long-time fan, this book greets folks where they’re at, and it has enough references and resources to carry you through for a long time after that too.

For more reviews and how to buy this book, look here. Also check the Toronto Botanical Garden's bookstore, High Park events and booths at similar events in the city (I got mine at an NANPS plant sale and I've come across it at the Evergreen Brick Works Saturday Farmer's Market too.)You you can also contact vsp@highpark.org to order a copy. $15 plus $3.00 shipping. Cheque payable to High Park Initiatives. 95 Lavinia Avenue, P.O. Box 108, Toronto, ON, M6S 3H9. All proceeds support stewardship and educational projects in HighPark.

Two new pollinator guides for Toronto gardeners and field naturalists

A Guide to Toronto's Pollinators by Laurence Packer, York University, and Toronto Plant Guide for Attracting Pollinators by Victoria MacPhail.

Each are free online, or you can order them in hard copy for $5 each.

PS- Thanks to the Toronto Botanical Garden Library blog for the heads up.

With the plants come the critters.

Beavers, opossums, deer, foxes, coyotes, rabbits, skunks, mink, porcupines, ground hogs, bats, turtles, snakes, frogs, fireflies, owls, golden eagles, white pelicans and 300+ more bird species … yup, all here in the city of Toronto, just trying to stay alive and keep a home, like you and me.

Yesterday we saw our first baby raccoons this season. It’ll be awhile yet before we come across displaced baby birds. In between, we notice that once the daffodils come up, the baby squirrels start to fall down (sadly, often off of high roofs and onto pavement = bleeding-out-the-nose irrecoverable head injuries; while others just have mild hypothermia and dehydration and can be warmed, hydrated, stabilized and re-situated the same day).

What should you do when you come across distressed wildlife in your yard?

“First do no harm”...but how do you even know which interventions are a good or a bad idea? (I wish that gardening, stewardship and hort / botanical societies would give practical workshops on this. Wildlife is what you get when you're a gardener / growing wildlife food and shelter). It's way less stressful for you and the animal if you have a bit of a plan ahead of time (like how, ideally, you take 1st aid or CPR course before you need them), so check out the Toronto Wildlife Centre, Toronto Humane Society Wildlife Rehab, and for birds, FLAP. If you get up into cottage country, you'll be interested in the Muskoka Wildlife Centre and A Wing and a Prayer.

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Want to attract and nurture wildlife in your backyard? See the Canadian Wildlife Federation's Attracting Wildlife page. You'll also be interested in Douglas Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. Tallamy is the Chair of the University of Delaware's Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology = he knows his stuff, and better yet, he writes in accessible plain language. I think this one's bound to be essential reading for native plant gardeners (and anyone interested in back yard ecology, including native pollinators, but that’ll have to be another post.) BTW: the cost of this book varies wildly, I've started using all bookstores.com to find best the price.

Also, if you're in Ontario and you think you have serious wildlife habitat you want to identify and protect, see the OMNR's Significant Wildlife Habitat - Technical Guide -- interesting reading for field naturalists too.

headed for the endangered list?

The New Ontario Naturalized Garden by Lorraine Johnson is still the first book I still recommend to anyone interested in native plant gardening in Ontario. It’s invaluable, no comparison.

Today, trying to buy a copy online, most of the regular prices clicked-through as “sold out”. You can still find new copies here, with prices varying from $19 to $319(!)

Quite likely there are also still pockets of new copies to be found by calling local bookstores, nurseries or gift / book shops at local botanical gardens.

Also, if you live in Toronto there are several copies available for loan through the Toronto Public Library. Outside of Toronto, you can try your local public, post-secondary school and botanical garden libraries. It's no wonder I've come to see libraries more like "seed banks" and conservation areas. Still, if we lose this book from bookstore shelves, native plant gardening outreach and education in our region will have lost a lot.

Let's all cross-our-fingers for a re-print or a new edition. Not that a new edition is needed. The information in this book is still fresh and accurate.

Update: try here at The Forest Shop.

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

Wow. This is like finding out there's a southern hemisphere.

Until I read this book, most of what little soil science and "chemistry" (e.g. over simplified "N-Ph-P" and how-to-alter-your-pH advice) that I had hodge-podged together over the years floated around my mind in scatter-shot unlinked fragments. A lot of it I took more on faith than real understanding, and I also often didn't know what-to-do-1st to start to help heal the problems in my disturbed soils.

Now I know why: most of that soil chemistry is more accurately the processes and products of soil microbiology, and there's nothing mystical or disconnected about it.

I think most of us have been mentally messed-over by the petro-chem hort gardening industries (see the advertisers behind every popular gardening magazine today), but also, a lot of knowledge about soil microbiology is relatively new information too (increased microscopic power in the 90's is what changed this). So while intuitively, we knew that plants, soils and nutrient cycles were more like a super-clever elegant symphony than disparate fields of study, this is the only book that has succeeded in substantiating, factually explaining and pulling-it-all together for me. Which, btw, also means the authors must be really good writers.

If that weren't enough, starting at about page 52 (with a peek ahead at chapter 12), I suddenly started to recognize and then re-interpret dozens of soils / landscapes (old-growth forest -> shittiest dead zones) I've been in, with a new clarity about why (given the criteria of a soil microbiology POV) their plant communities were what they were too! :D That's cool!

There's too much essential and excellent advice in this book to try to sum up, but here's one bone for native plant gardeners: LEAF MULCH. Specifically, dry, brown and aged. Apply it on top of the soil (not into the soil: applying into the soil encourages bacteria more than fungi: which would be fine for annuals and veggies). Why? That mulch will feed and encourage networks of fungi that native plant perennials and woodies NEED to uptake nutrients in at the root level (rhizosphere) below. You can take that on faith or, if you'd rather actually know what's going or to see a lot more excellent advice, read this book! :) It's in circulation at the Toronto Public Library, or buy it. This one's worth it.

Books: urban public space gardening

Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto by David Tracey. New Society Publishers, 2007

“...Guerrilla gardening can be summarily defined as gardening in public urban spaces with or without permission. Gardening by the citizens .. In his excellent manualfesto – both political and practical as the name implies — Tracey traces the history of this movement … he advocates organized group action …offers practical advice on how to obtain free or low-cost equipment, plants, trees and soil …teaches basic horticultural techniques and provides examples of successful campaigns in cities like Seattle, Vancouver and Montreal. .. As he reminds us, native plants are always better than exotic ones …This book is a manual as well as a manifesto but it is also something else: a very readable and humorous narrative of urban environmental efforts in modern times.”

-- excerpts from the book review Sowing content by Maya Khankhoje at the rabble.ca book lounge.

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If you're interested in this, you'll also want to check out Lorraine Johnson's Tending the Earth: A Gardener's Manifesto

Native prairie plants - the best option for sustainable biomass / biofuel production?

Photo by P.D. Pratt

Article from Treehugger:
"…Researchers at the University of Northern Iowa's Tallgrass Prairie Center (TPC) are looking at ways to use the state's mixed prairie plantings as a source of renewable energy — as biomass to produce ethanol or to burn for electricity… A study conducted this past year by David Tilman, an ecology professor at the University of Minnesota, had demonstrated the potential for polycultures of multiple grass, prairie and wildflower species to serve as an alternative to switchgrass in producing ethanol. Tilman and his colleagues found that, in addition to producing more than twice the biomass than single-species planting (not less than 238% more than switchgrass), multiple-species plantations restored biodiversity, grew on degraded land and — perhaps most importantly — could be carbon negative. Biofuels derived from this source could also store up to 51% more energy per acre than corn…"

Ok - not my field of expertise, but it immediately sounds better than corn or switchgrass mono-crops. It's also relevant here because if it were successful, it might lead to opportunities for increased awareness about native prairie plant communities, habitats & restoration (& also native prairies as models for sustainable polyculture agriculture too: see the 2nd chapter "How will we feed ourselves?" in Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine M. Bengus, but I'm sure that's a-whole-'nother blog out there).

Tending the Earth - A Gardener's Manifesto - Lorraine Johnson

Lorraine Johnson is Toronto native plants gardener, writer and lecturer.

This morning I was reminded again -- by Garden Route Therapy blogger, steward & Horticultural Therapy student Emma Rooney -- how often folks who may have never even heard of Lorraine Johnson or this book, soon recognize it as "the book I have always wanted to read" (Marjorie Harris).

Unfortunately, it's a few years old now & is becoming more difficult to find/buy (of course I know you'll try your local indie bookstore 1st, but even Chapters is sold out of both editions of it). I hope it eventually goes into re-print, but to be safe, if you haven't read it yet, you might want to check it out soon. Shop around, I've seen prices vary by $20.

If you're in Toronto, you can also literally check it out through the Toronto Public Library.

If you can / do buy it, I recommend considering buying a second copy, just to lend out. I can't think of another book with legs like this one. It seems to go exactly where it's meant to be.