While my songlines stretched out once again in 2023, I’m ending the year where I started: in “a world of emerald fluff.” As soon as the late autumn rains fall in the forests I live among, the vast swaths of moss, dormant in the long dry season, uncurl, fluff out, and turn a vivid green. […]
Songlines 2023: a year of new beauties Read More »
What we do with our land, however small an area, matters not just to us, but to the life of our planet. Landscaping isn’t a static, visual element but an active participant in the world we create. It can foster healthy soil and air or drench it with chemicals. Clean water as it filters through healthy soil or send it laden with toxic compounds to underground aquifers or nearby waters.
Most importantly, it can help save birds, butterflies, and other living beings from extinction.
Gardening as if life depends on it Read More »
I’ve never thought of rain as life-changing, but this year it was. 2019 started with the wettest winter the San Francisco Bay area has known since recording began. First, that meant I had plenty of indoor time to explore projects that excite me. I fell under the wonderfully radical and optimistic spell of E.O. Wilson’s
Songlines 2019: a year of change and commitment Read More »
I once designed a landscape for clients who wanted their property to blend in with the oak and hickory forest surrounding them. They’d read an article in the local paper about my advocacy for native plant gardening and liked the idea. This was at the eastern end of Long Island, in New York, which is
What we can do: gardening to save half the earth Read More »
The invitation came from Susan Friedman, whom I met on a weekend with Joanna Macy, and whose native plant gardens were part of Retaining Paradise. The Work that Reconnects workshop was held at Canticle Farm, an urban farm in Oakland, a rectangular open space created by combining the yards and gardens behind a block of
Treasuring bees, saving the world Read More »