Life has been complicated for all of us over the past three years, but we’re hoping to create some new content for our readers.
Until we can share some original insights, here are a few links from other sites.
First, Holden Arboretum is hiring! The Horticulture & Collections department seeks a Director of Land & Collections Management. The Director of Land & Collections Management is primarily responsible for performing a variety of functions related to proper land care and environmental management of Holden Arboretum’s Living Collection trees, grassland & meadows, trails & fence, waterbodies & irrigation. This role combines practical hands-on groundwork and core safety values while also providing management and supervision to teams to achieve agreed goals. Other positions include seasonal and garden positions, as well as several internships. View the full list here.
Next, we wanted to share some information BUGS! ODNR recently published an article asking arborists, gardeners, and hikers to report sightings of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. HWA poses a significant threat to eastern hemlocks forests as feeding by HWA at the base of hemlock needles depletes the trees’ stored energy, causing decline and eventual mortality after several years. Elsa also wanted to warn readers that the Baslsam Woolly Adelgid may be moving into our area due to climate change.
Finally, we came across this Permaculture To-Do List and thought our readers would also appreciate it. There’s a Stewardship through the Seasons chapter in Dani Baker’s book Home-Scale Forest Garden excerpted on Practical Self Reliance. It breaks down what gardeners should do each season. Hint: Winter includes more than sitting by the fire, watching it snow!
If you’re missing warmer weather, we’ll soon be sharing a piece by Elsa about her September trip to Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina. We hope you stay tuned!
The Thursday before Thanksgiving, co-editors Heather Risher and yours truly, Elsa Johnson, got up in the wee hours of the morning and drove to Pittsburgh to attend the Three Rivers Urban Soil Symposium at the Phipps Conservatory. As these things go, the presentations were densely presented, structured to have 4 segments, each segment with three to five speakers giving short presentations on aspects of soils (you didn’t know there were so many, did you) followed by a question and answer period. The structuring topics were: Composting in Urban Soils; Growing Food in Urban Soils; Storm Water and Resilience in Urban Soils; and Urban Habitat, Trees, and Greenspace.
It is hard to take that breadth of material and make a coherent essay out of it. What we present here is more bullet points and notes rather than full-out report.
First Session: Composting in Urban Soils.
Take away-s: Speaker #1, Rick Carr, Compost Production Specialist, Rodale Institute: Twenty one percent of our landfills are food waste. Managed aerobic decomposition is important for soil regeneration. Use the plant as your measure of success.
Steaming compost, photo from the Rodale Institute
Speaker #2, Marguerite Manela, Senior Manager of Community Composting and Compost Distribution, NYC Department of Sanitation: Curbside composting works like curbside recycling. Alternatively have sites where food can be dropped off for composting.
Speaker #3, Anthony Stewart, President and Environmental Director, DECO Resources: Useful tool – XRP — an x-ray florescent “ray gun” that measures contaminates in soil.
Speaker #4, Travis Leivo and Laura Todin Codori, vermicomposters, Shadyside Worms and Worm Return: Cold composting is slow, taking up to 2 years. Thermophilic composting is fast – only two weeks.
Heather’s notes: NYC hosted a workshop on dyeing fabric with food scraps. I’d like to see something like that locally. Is anyone else interested?
Second Session: Growing Food in Urban Soils.
Take away-s: Speaker #1, Dr. Kirsten Schwartz, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Director of the Ecological Stewardship Institute, Northern Kentucky University: coming from a social ecological focus. She spoke about contaminated soils, such as with lead and the distance it resides in soil from house being both patchy and widespread. Soil itself is more than what is grown in it. A social ecological focus sees both bio-physical legacies and social legacies, such as farm to fork “doesn’t include us”. Community involvement is complex. One needs to find points of common interest.
Speaker #2, Dr. Patrick Dronan, Associate Professor of Pedology, Penn State University: Wealth is urban. Presented about Hilltop Farm, a planned community that failed and was abandoned and part of which has been converted to a community garden. Common problems of urban soils – compaction (hard pan, clay), high pH, low organic matter, debris, under-farming, and under-funding.
Speaker #3: Adrian Galbraith-Paul, Farm Manager, Heritage Farm: Spoke on Heritage Farm, a baseball field turned to farm lot to teach kids and give food away. Its goal is to be environmentally and economically sustainable using the Korean Natural Farming method to improve fertility, the microbiome and micronutrients: Healthy plants “power” healthy soil and photosynthetic efficiency. Flavor and nutrient density are closely linked. Waste is a resource.
Heritage Farm, image from their website
Speakers #4, Robert Grey, Farm Education and Outreach Coordinator, and Nick Lubecki, Braddock Farms Manager, Grow Pittsburgh: Grow Pittsburgh, founded 2007, to grow food and sell to the neighborhood, a food desert with limited access to fresh vegetables. Provides a work-trade program where participants receive produce for 4 hours of labor. Also has an education outreach/apprentice program. (Note — Seems not unlike Rid-All, in Cleveland).
Heather’s notes: Inclusivity is important. Community engagement and buy-in is key. Some of the speakers mentioned setbacks when creating new programs/gardens without talking to the residents of the community to be “helped.” Having the support of a non-profit organization allows urban garden projects to survive while working towards self-sufficiency.
Third Session: Stormwater and Resilience in Urban Soils.
Take away-s: Speaker #1, Dr. Dustin Herman, Research Scientist, ORISE Research Program with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Evidence of a universal urban soil profile. Urban soils have fewer horizons. What is lost is the B horizon, which is unique to each place. Big equipment determines soil properties (excavation/fill) and changes water infiltration. Pre-urban soil evolved with climate and ecosystem. The convergence theory for urban soils – urban homogenizes heterogeneity. The simple needs of infrastructure and those of complex ecological support are opposites.
Speaker #2, Zinna Scott and Mike Heller, Community Activist and Director of Policy and Outreach, Nine Mile Watershed: Rain gardens built/incorporated into infrastructure were used in the Nine Mile Creek stream restoration, a buried stream/storm sewer.
Rendering from Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority
Speaker #3, Beth Dutton, Senior Group Manager, PWSA: there were 27 one inch rain events in the last decade creating excess stormwater. Green infrastructure is planned that ameliorates this problem. (we assume you know what is meant by green infrastructure – see speaker #2).
Heather’s notes: Urban soil functioning no longer matches the climate and ecosystem. Also, I learned about snakeworms (Amynthas agrestis). I knew that the European earthworm was invasive, but hadn’t realized that their Asian cousins were nearby and causing so much damage. More info here.
Fourth Session: Urban Habitat, Trees, and Greenspace.
Take away-s: Speaker #1, Dale Hendricks, President, Green Light Plants: Anthropogenic (man-made) charcoal acts like glue and sequesters carbon in the soil long term. Biochar is charcoal made in a low-oxygen environment and is added to soil. U.S. prairies were originally up to 40% pyrolytic – not all fire is destructive. Hardwood makes more char than soft wood. The Stockholm Biochar project is large scale biochar processing, making biochar from food and yard waste.
Speaker #2, Miles Schwartz Sax, Arboretum Director, Connecticut College: The Urban Horticulture Institute (Cornell) — soil conditions outweigh tree selection. First thing to do is a soil assessment. Recommended book – Trees in the Urban Landscape. Soil remediation is a scoop and dump process by which compost is added to soils beyond a trees drip line, not directly under existing trees.
Speaker #3, Stephen W. Miller, Bartlett Tree Experts: Root invigoration helps restore health to existing trees. First do assessment. Then air channeling under the tree is done to loosen soil. Then add nutrients, including biochar.
When we were there, Phipps was in the midst of setting up their Holiday Magic Winter Flower Show and Light Garden. In my (Heather’s) opinion, it’s well worth the visit. Protip: Go on a weeknight after 7:30 pm, and dress warmly so you can enjoy the outdoor garden.
A brief summary follows of the talk by the keynote speaker at the 2019 pollinator symposium — Larry Weaner: Breaking the Rules / Ecological Landscape for Small Scale Residential Properties.
The biggest take-away from Larry Weaner’s talk for this Gardenopolis writer/editor was the difference, as he saw it, between traditional landscape design – which he described as seeing the garden as separate plants in ‘designs’ — and a contemporary response of seeing the landscape as an ecology, as an evolving restoration. That traditional garden scale, says Weaner, doesn’t work, and, indeed, many of his examples were of large scale projects, though the process is workable at any scale, as one picture of his own backyard patio showed.
What is meant by seeing a landscape as an ecology? Such an approach begins with native flora because one needs native flora (supplying food, water, cover) to attract native fauna – no; not talking about our backyard deer. Rather, he gave the example of putting a stick over water to draw in dragonflies, an example that begins to bring an awareness of nature’s micro-scale natural complexity and inter-connectedness. Within this context, however, he stipulates that the client’s level of comfort – he calls it ‘happiness’—with this concept, dictates how far to push. It is a different kind of order, one that by its very nature changes over time.
This is a key point: Natural compositions do not remain stable over time.
An aside here – what garden designer/artist/architect does not have a client or clients who expect their landscape to remain static, like a living room that’s been decorated and expected to forever remain just-so?
Forget ‘proper spacing’, said Weaner. Forgo mulch – which has no value at all for animals — in favor of suppressing weeds with dense planting. Allow natural succession. Plants go – if you allow them – where they want to grow. Knowing this one can use targeted disturbance to achieve design by removal. Notice where and how each plant grows. There is a learning curve: one plant teaches you about many. Species can be planted as seed sources that will find their own places to grow – and not necessarily where you planted them. Weaner stresses habitat fidelity over imposed design – use plants that have traditionally grown together.
Become aware of micro habitats in site design. There are plants that Weaner calls ‘generalists’, and then there are ‘specialists.’ Knowing the levels of disturbance, for example, offers opportunity to use plants like cardinal flower whose seeds will migrate to disturbed areas. This is ‘design’ that allows the landscape to be a series of evolving compositions, multi-layered evolving composition, over time.
Go ahead. Break the rules.
After lunch I attended a breakout session lead by John Barber, who spoke on planting native plants for birds. Want birds? Here’s what to do: provide clean and safe water; plant native trees and shrubs; never use insecticides (95% of birds feed their chicks insects) or rodenticides (hawks eat rodents — you end up killing the hawk also); and never ever let your cats outside.
Further, bird feeders, says Barber, have no real positive impact on birds, and winter survival is not actually improved by winter feeding. Additionally, the foods you are providing may have a large carbon footprints. Feeders also may concentrate birds unnaturally, making it easier to spread diseases. Additionally, feeders bring blue jays and grackles. Both are baby bird predators of cup nests birds.
Instead of bird feeders, plant native plants. They have co-evolved with native birds, are adapted to the environment, are more nutritious, and, once established, require less maintenance. Birds have highest nesting success when at least 70% of the plants in a landscape are native. In the fall avoid the nursery and landscape maintenance model of landscape care—i.e., early fall cleanup. Leave plants up longer; leave some litter, logs, and bare earth.
And finally, did you know that Virginia creeper won’t make berries unless it climbs? — Neither did I.
The last speaker I heard was Susan Carpenter, Senior Outreach Specialist at the Wisconsin Native Plant Garden, who spoke on creating and maintaining Pollinator habitat. This was a dense fast talk and I was not able to get much of it down on paper. She said, however, that it is all accessible on line at https://go.wisc.edu//pg8340.
Sorry not to report on Przemek Walczak’s talk Restoring Bell’s Woodland, or Sam Droege’s talk Native Bees: Protecting our Urban Pollinators. I was obliged to miss these.
Join the Spirit Corner neighborhood on Sunday, June 30 for a neighborly get together to celebrate this friendly, quirky, ‘spirited’ gathering space. The event takes place from 12 noon to 2 PM.
I recently saw this short piece by Bob Brown on Next Door Neighbors. It was charming, and spoke to what makes a place special, the space being, in this case, Spirit Corner.
Serendipity at Spirit Corner
It never ceases to amaze me how our little Spirit Corner green space is put to such unexpectedly wonderful uses! This morning as I walked Ori down the block, I saw a group of little children and parents at Spirit Corner. When we walked onto the site, I saw that they had a large silver cooking pot sitting on our tree-stump table and a copy of the book “Stone Soup.”
I saw the children collecting stones and sticks and dropping them into the pot. When I asked what they were doing, I was told that they were on a little outing to act out the story of Stone Soup.
Since I didn’t recognize anyone in the group, I asked one of the adults how they had chosen to do this at Spirit Corner. The lead person in the group said simply, “This is such a magical place. The children love coming here.”
Moments later another visitor arrived at Spirit Corner. It was a lone deer, who surveyed the activity on the site, apparently decided that all was well, and then proceeded to munch leaves on one of the trees, while the children continued to make their stone soup.
When we designed Spirit Corner, none of us expected it to become the site of a Stone Soup cook-off! Just as none of us expected a group of Tibetan monks to hold a ceremony here and consecrate the site (as happened last year). And certainly none of us expected Spirit Corner to become a Pokemon Go gym, which it is!
We named Spirit Corner after the spirits who were assumed to inhabit the house that sat here vacant for over 55 years. Maybe we should expand the name of the place to become “Serendipity Place at Spirit Corner”! What do you think?
The Origins of Spirit Corner
How did Spirit Corner come to be? A few years back (8? 9? 10?) Green Paradigm Partners (and Gardenopolis Cleveland Co-Editors) Tom Gibson and Elsa Johnson taught a class on permaculture (Tom) and design (Elsa), which was attended by Cleveland Heights resident Laura Marks, who was at that time living on upper Hampshire Road in the Coventry neighborhood. Instead of working with her own plot Laura chose to work with a plot across the street. This was a small corner lot that had had a house sit vacant on it for 55 years. A mythos had grown up around the structure. I was supposed to be haunted. It was a little spooky, and very, very sad. Finally came a release from its misery, and the house was torn down (in itself an event that is always a little sad, though it was a very tight cramped fit on the lot).
Laura wanted to see the space become a public green space. She got the neighborhood engaged in this project and we worked closely with Laura and the neighborhood to design a space that the neighborhood could call its own. It included two gathering ‘pods’ and a walk-through pathway that crossed the site diagonally. It was originally intended to follow permaculture concepts and include appropriate permaculture plantings, and also include as many native plants as possible.
Delightfully, the City of Cleveland Heights was willing to support the project, and supplied many of the trees, as well as ground bricks for the path, and some tree stumps for children to climb and play on. A friend who was deconstructing a tepee donated the long pole supports, which were used to create a sense of enclosure in which a picnic table now resides. Several benches were donated, and two more were constructed from raw materials. A man driving by saw the neighbors building a stone wall and stopped to help. The neighborhood took the space, made changes, donated plants, and made it their own.
Spirit Corner, as the following pictures show you, is not a groomed, polished public space. It is rough and ready; full of weeds as well as flowers; a place where imagination can find space to play. It is a place where this is not forbidden by the unwritten codes of ‘Behavior for Polished Public Spaces’.
It has not evolved exactly as intended: It has strayed from its permaculture intentions, and, to be completely honest, as a landscape architect, there is a part of me that is disappointed by Spirit Corner — that it is not that more polished public place. It will never win an award from the Society of Landscape Architects.
But perhaps that is a good thing. It is a place to hold a stone soup cook-off; that is irreplaceable.
Spirit Corner is one block east of Coventry Village on Hampshire Road. Parking is available in the city parking deck off Coventry.
The Biggest Little Farm is playing at the Cedar Lee Theatre through June 13. It tells the story of how one family converted a conventional lemon farm into a successful organic orchard with diverse crops and wildlife.
The filmmaker and his wife, John and Molly Chester, were interviewed on Fresh Air.
If you have the time, you should see this film! Showtimes here.
Sustainable Suburbia. It seems like an oxymoron. Yes, there are a few gem homes in the lower latitudes that have achieved just that, zeroing out their lives’ inputs and outputs without retreating to the remote country side.
Just think: how lavish and sustainable would the world be if everyone could live such a life? Yet I could find no model for this in northern climates: urban farms – yes, zero energy living – yes, but no combinations mooshed into the size of a suburban lot. I guess we can blame the cold.
It is a seemingly impossible challenge, therefore, naturally, I have to try with my small suburban home. First: as any good planner would do, I calculated the possibility. This is in order to keep God laughing (as the saying goes: Man plans, God laughs). Stark Brothers has a chart on fruit tree yields and, with some quick conversions from bushels to units I recognize in a grocery store, a semi-dwarf apple tree can yield approximately 1,000 apples.
Square foot gardening and permaculture also make high claims for sustainable living. Integrating those techniques and performing a cross- check between my comprehensive grocery list and their yield potential seems promising. Despite the north’s limitations on growing, my home landscape could produce almost everything I need except some very important staples: cinnamon, coffee, cocoa, beef, dairy, and cumin. Ok, maybe not very important, but those we are not willing to give up—yet anyway.
As for the rest of our home being sustainable, the calculations were simpler. Insulate the house, add window treatments, compost, recycle, redirect water for multiple uses and keep it on the property; investigate and balance solar, wind, and other types of electrical energy; reduce and refine our use patterns for low waste.
The biggest problem with the structural changes, such as the gobs of insulation that need to fill our attic is either money, time, or both The money can, I reason, be saved from the garden. I can generally expect an annual savings of at least $200 off of my annual veggies and berries. The time to install will come in winter when it is too cold to garden.
As my skill improves, my seed selections are refined, and my perennials begin to fruit, my savings increase.
In fact, it’s the rate of return that led me to the garden first. Rarely are investments found to have as high a gain as a garden managed by a knowledgeable gardener. Fertilizer can be free, if you know where to look. Because I have a low fertility soil I demand a lot from, I would need to do a lot of hustling to get enough free fertilizer to meet my demand. Since I already have a plate full of hustle, I supplement my free fertilizers with organic fertilizers.
Seed and plant stock can also be free. Look no further than your trash bin or compost pile. However, there are plants you may never meet at your grocery store that would fill both a niche in your diet and landscape. Thus, in order as much as possible, I decided to order some plants via catalog.
Most seed and plant sellers are happy to send you a free catalog. These are great antidepressants for bored gardeners frozen out of their hobby during winter and great learning tools for new gardeners about variety, timing, and the abundance of species available to us humans in a global world. Such plants as Hardy Kiwi, super sweet wild tomatoes, flowering bush cherries, currants, and more are all available to be mailed to your doorstep in spring.
I figured the $5/bareroot hazelnut bush was worth the $25 of fruit it would yield per year upon maturity. This reinvesting helps increase my annual gains in the garden, as long as a niche needs filling, and it is amazing how many niches there are! I guesstimate that by filling such niches I can save $200 more per year.
This is similar to building a business. The business is our food bill, utility bills, and our health. All which are monetized in our society and at rates that make this a “lucrative business.” The starting pay for any new business is, however very bad. There are one-time efforts and purchases that cost a lot with returns only to be seen years down the line. This being a sustainable business is no different. Fruit trees average three to five years to yield anything substantial, but require TLC every year.
The calculations I described thus far are about what is needed for a homestead outside the city. In the city there is another factor – aesthetics. Some cities require lawns or tell you “no vegetable gardens in your front yard”, or even more commonly, “no chickens.” We chose to live in a city without those rules, but we do not feel that gives us license to annoy our neighbors. Plus, the nicer sustainable gardening looks, the more likely it is to be adopted, making the whole city more sustainable, not just our backyard.
More research was needed on foliage color and shape, flower color, bloom time, fall foliage color, etc. As it turns out, since fruit come from flowers, most plants have an aesthetic element that makes them compatible with the average flower garden, accept maybe the tomato. Those small yellow flowers and well known fruit just shout “veggies here!” A maypop or echinacea, on the other hand, would camouflage into even the most stringent suburban landscape. All this research led me into the business of garden design and my Facebook page “Imitating Eden Garden Design.”
With the calculations complete, it was time to get cracking. That was four seasons ago, when we started turning a typical suburban lot to a food forest paradise. The transition continues with some good early results. We are sustainable in or nearly sustainable in: most herbs, onions, garlic, squash, wine, fresh tomatoes, salad greens, snap peas, rhubarb, and most berries. Our diet has changed. After 3 frustrating years trying to grow poppies, I found out broad leaf plantain has small edible seeds that could be used to decorate bread, like poppies or sesame. My celery always turned out stunted at best, so I substituted the more attractive—and still quite edible—prolific rhubarb.
My cooking now more resembles the show Chopped, than following Tollhouse’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.
The conclusion of this study is so far unknown. The data gathered has many positive indications. This recent harvest season has dropped our food bill, despite our growing family. Certainly, if nothing else, there are many lessons to be applied to a general northern city living which reduce the suburbanite foot print. I try to share these lessons on my Facebook page, through the volunteer-led gardens I run, my business, Permies.com and the occasional article or talk. I hope to publish more as the data arrives. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. My Facebook page has the details.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Ohio Governor’s Residence for a tour of the house and gardens. The house is beautiful, full of Ohio furniture and handicrafts (the furniture, needlepoint, and rotating art exhibits that feature Ohio artists could be featured in their own post), but the gardens are stunning.
From the website: the Heritage Garden was first conceived in 2000 as a way to showcase Ohio’s natural history and environment to the thousands of yearly visitors to the Governor’s Residence. The garden features habitats from the five physiographic regions of Ohio. Former First Lady Hope Taft was the driving force in building the gardens (as well as stitching many of the needlepoint pieces inside the house). In my opinion, she and her team did a wonderful job of creating a welcoming garden representative of the entire state. I wanted to sit on one of the benches or swings and knit or read for several hours.
Our garden tour guide was Guy Denny, who is currently the Board President of the Ohio Natural Areas & Preserves Association (ONAPA) after leading the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves for several years. Guy worked closely with Mrs. Taft on the prairie garden (as he maintains his own prairie in Knox County), but he also shared a wealth of information about the garden in general.
The Governor’s Grove is in front of the house, where each governor since William O’Neill has planted a tree.
There’s a woodland shade garden, and a pergola with water features that provide habitat for turtles. (If you look closely in the first picture, there’s a turtle head behind the rock in the center.)
When we toured at the end of July, the prairie sunflowers were in bloom. There are several helianthus species in the garden, including the threatened Ashy sunflower (helianthus mollis).
In 2011, the Heritage Garden was designated a monarch waystation.
Towards the rear of the property, there’s a medicinal garden and a Johnny Appleseed tree.
Along the side, there’s a greenhouse and vegetable garden. There is a solar array that provides backup power to the greenhouse and carriage house.
Circling back to the house, there’s a kettle bog with cranberries and pitcher plants.
I strongly encourage readers to schedule a tour and take a Tuesday road trip to Bexley, just east of Columbus, to visit the house and gardens.
If you can’t make the trip, the Columbus Dispatch produced a video tour of the residence, available on youtube:
In a not so secluded section of the city lies an urban sanctuary maintained and nurtured by Rid-All Green Partnership. Rid-All, which stands for redemption, integrity, and determination for all mankind, is a dream come true for “soil brothers” Damien Forshe, Keymah Durden, and Randy McShepard. These three men, along with the talent and expertise of Dave “Dr. Greenhand” Hester (a 50-year vet in the agriculture industry), are the blood, sweat, and heartbeat of this green initiative, that is empowering the community. Their dedication and hard work has made Rid-All a success story worth sharing.
Rid-All’s mission, in a nutshell is to transform communities, one city at a time. “We are promoting peace, harmony, and solutions to people in the community, by people in the community” says co-founder Marc White also known as “The Urban Farm Doctor”. You can find him at the farm teaching and blending up something that’s good for the body and spirit – “inside-out beautification”, as he calls it.
All-natural drinks aren’t the only good-for-you products you can get at Rid-All Farm. Through Groupon, Amazon, or a quick visit to the farm, customers can purchase produce and tilapia; and you can be certain it’s all good for you. The produce which is grown in the best soil possible is picked at the time of purchase to keep its freshness and so the customer can get the maximum nutritional benefit. The tilapia which take about four to five months to mature are fed plant-based pellets and live in environments that reflect their natural habitat. In the symbiotic relationship between the plants and fish, the plants provide nutrients to the fish which in turn provide nutrients back to the plants.
Rid-All has several hoop houses: greenhouse #1 which serves as an office space and vendor space for special events such as weddings (the man-made treehouse was used for such an occasion); greenhouse #2 which is used for classroom teaching and lab training, aquaponics and a greeting station; the high-tunnel hoop house where winter crops such as kale, sorrel, garlic, and spring onions grow; the gothic “cathedral” hoop house where swiss chard, lettuce, and beets grow; the double gothic hoop house which is used for special events, training, and growing herbs, spices and flowering plants; and finally an additional hoop house where other super greens are grown.
Mike Parker, Rid-All’s Compost Manager, dedicates his time and energy to the Rid-All Project because it keeps him motivated, knowing that he is helping to heal [his] people. Parker, who grew up helping in his family garden, has traveled the world but always found his way back home to Cleveland. He believes that what Rid-All has done so far is a “cultural renaissance” and that “if you eat right, you will think right, and [then] you will do right.” These are the goals and desires of the soil brothers, for their community: to create a self-sustaining community, to see exponential growth, to promote community development economically and emotionally, and to show people another way of life through health and wellness.
For the beneficiaries of the shared knowledge that the Rid-All instructors provide, attending the Rid-All Training Program is “an opportunity to start your business, become your own boss, and learn [independence]”, says Hassan, a young man who was introduced to Rid-All and the program by his grandfather. Hassan is a student of the 5-month program that is offered to adults and youth. However, Rid-All has a 12-week program specifically for youth (ages 14-17) where they can learn the fundamentals of eating healthy, harvesting, and growing their own food. Through the program, the youth are equipped to start and assist with community gardens in their respective areas, says Dr. Greenhand who personally visits local schools to give classroom presentations.
Leah, a Rid-All Training Program participant describes the Rid-All farm as a “magical place” that takes a different approach to agriculture; Rid-All is all about “returning the soil to its original state” which is evident in its composting efforts. Rid-All has several large compost bins on site where the soil is made (combining a variation of natural ingredients) and sits for two to three months before it is ready to be sold or used in the farm. For sustainable and healthy produce, the solution is undoubtedly in the soil.
Rid-All Green Partnership is indeed a gem in the city of Cleveland, changing the lives of everyone who experiences the spirit of the farm. In addition to training programs, Rid-All sponsors workshops, Soul Vegan Saturdays, and community events such as the most recent MLK Community Awareness Day. To learn more about Rid-All visit their website at www.greennghetto.org.
Can concentrations of pocket gardens help rejuvenate neighborhoods? That’s the question a coalition of Cleveland Heights partners is trying to answer. They are working with neighbors on Langton Road, just off Quilliams Road in the Noble neighborhood, to install 10 pocket gardens this spring. The gardens will consist of either native perennials or a tree surrounded by Russian comfrey and other plants that suppress weeds and provide extra fertility.
“We want to provide sustainable beauty,” said Barbara Sosnowski, who heads the beautification committee of Noble Neighbors, a local activist group. “That means that any garden we plant should look as attractive after four years as it does after one.”
Sandy Thompson, Mani Pierce and Tom Gibson plant a plum tree in the Oxford Community Garden. [photo by Barbara Morgan]If the effort succeeds, the group intends to take the Langton Road model and apply it elsewhere in the neighborhood. “The exciting thing about this project,” Sosnowski added, “is that it is intended to be scalable. If we succeed with 10 private residences, we can succeed with 50, and so on.”
Noble Neighbors’ partners in the effort include the Home Repair Resource Center (HRRC), Cleveland Heights High School, Rust Belt Riders and Green Paradigm Partners. HRRC will provide classroom space and instruction for the Langton Road neighbors, high school students will provide paid help with construction of the garden plots, Rust Belt Riders will provide specialized compost, and Green Paradigm Partners will provide landscape design and community organizing help. Funding will come from grants and crowd funding via IOBY Cleveland. Look for the Noble Neighborhood pocket garden project at www.ioby.org/campaign/cleveland.
To address the problem of long-term maintenance, the group has devised a three-pronged plan. At the horticultural level, the group has selected plants that grow well in Northeast Ohio. It will test soils for mineral deficiencies that attract noxious, high-maintenance weeds, such as bindweed, and then add mineral amendments to correct those deficiencies. Compost with high fungal content, which reduces the need for watering during droughts, will be applied.
At the immediate neighborhood level, the beautification group is asking homeowners to take a two-session course at HRRC on plant selection and care. The intention is to bring immediate neighbors together on a common project and create a greater sense of neighborhood spirit and purpose.
At the broader neighborhood level, the support and participation of Noble Neighbors and Heights High, among others, is intended to raise the project’s community profile and foster its success. “We are employing a number of approaches to community revitalization,” said Brenda May, a leader of Noble Neighbors. “We see this project as one way to make pocket gardens a signature of the neighborhood, thereby enhancing both local identity and property values.”
The effort has attracted wide support. Cleveland Heights Mayor Carol Roe, herself a Noble resident, called the effort “an innovative approach to building community spirit that comes at just the right moment of upswing in the Noble neighborhood.” Kay Carlson, president and chief executive officer of the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, said, “We find the project’s combination of cutting-edge biology and creative community involvement promising and likely to have much wider application.”
Watch for more information as the project progresses.
Mentor Marsh has been a National Park Service-designated National Natural Landmark since 1966 for being one of the most species-rich sites on the Great Lakes shoreline. The Marsh was named Ohio’s first State Nature Preserve in 1971 and is a National Audubon Society Important Birding Area. This unique wetland suffered dramatically in the 1960s when salt-mine tailings leached into Blackbrook Creek. By the early 1970s, most of the swamp forest trees and marsh plants had died. The 765-acre wetland basin was overtaken by reed grass (Phragmites australis), a 14-foot-tall nonnative invasive plant from Eurasia. Phragmites grew so densely within the nearly 4-mile-long former river channel that an estimated 1 billion plants were growing just a few inches apart. Partial abatement of the salt source in 1987 lowered salinity levels to borderline brackish conditions along one-third of the marsh and lowered the salinity to freshwater levels on two-thirds of the wetland.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History began a large-scale restoration of Mentor Marsh in 2012. Guided by Museum restoration ecologists, the Phragmites is being sprayed with an aquatic-safe herbicide and then physically mashed flat to allow native plants to grow. The results thus far have been heartening. Dozens of native plant species are sprouting from the soil seed bank, and Leopard Frogs are expanding throughout. Rare marsh birds—such as American and Least Bitterns, Virginia, King and Sora Rails, and Common Gallinules and Wilson’s snipe—are now nesting. Fish, such as Northern Pike, are spawning, and Yellow Perch fingerlings are starting to use the Marsh as a nursery. Otter, beaver, wading birds, waterfowl and shorebird migrants are starting to use the restored Marsh as stopover habitat. While recent surveys have confirmed Blanding’s and Spotted turtles are no longer present, their recovery is possible.
As Ohio’s largest stand of Phragmites, the perennial roots of these tall invaders are well established. Results so far have eliminated 85% of the Phragmites basin-wide, with some older treatment units nearly in the clear while other newer units are experiencing an anticipated bounce back rallying from the massive network of root reserves, or emerging as seedlings from the seed bank. Follow-up on the remaining estimated 15% is critical, requiring an intense commitment of time to traverse the sticky Carlisle muck soil to cover a wetland basin with 12 miles of perimeter.
During the 2017 field season, in an effort to accelerate desired ground cover to outcompete other invasive species lurking nearby, Museum staff, partners, contractors, volunteers and inmates planted over 19,000 live plants of 23 native species in the Marsh. Some of the plants were grown from seeds collected onsite and propagated at a local prison as part of a horticultural job skills program. Other plugs and live stakes were purchased from restoration nurseries and conservation seed growers. We plan to redouble our efforts in 2018, with continued efforts to raise funds towards this worthwhile project.
We could not have undertaken this monumental task without the assistance of the many partners, grant funders, volunteers and donors who believed in what we are doing.
David Kriska, Ph.D., is a Restoration Ecologist in the Natural Areas Program of The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
