Ingredients

• 10 egg yolks or 5/8 pasteurized egg yolk
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 2 teaspoon almond extract
• 3 pounds mascaropne
• 1 cup almond tea
• Add 2 tbsp of almond extract to tea
• 1/2 cup amaretto
• 1/4 cup coconut liquor
• 21 oz. Lady fingers
• Crushed biscotti (4)
• ¹/₄ cup crushed toasted almonds
• 2 tbsp brown sugar

Preparation

Whisk egg yolks & sugar.

Combine tea, liquor & extract. Add 2oz of tea mixture to yolks.

Mix in mascarpone.

Beat 3 cups heavy cream & 2 tsp extract till stiff peaks
form.

Fold in both mascarpone & whipped cream mixtures.
Soak each side of lady fingers in tea mixture.

Now make two layers of each soaked lady fingers &
mascarpone. The first layer should just have a skim
coat of cream. Sprinkle top with crushed almonds &
biscotti.

Refrigerate overnight.

Edgewater Restaurant is about great food and beautiful views. Located east of the Shinnecock Canal in the village of Hampton Bays, The Italian restaurant is vegetarian and vegan friendly. https://www.edgewaterrestaurant.com/

It’s tough out there for a hungry grasshopper on the Kansas prairie. Oh, there’s plenty of grass to eat, but this century’s grass isn’t what it used to be. It’s less nutritious, deficient in minerals like iron, potassium and calcium.

Partly due to that nutrient-deficient diet, there’s been a huge decline in grasshopper numbers of late, by about one-third over two decades, according to a 2020 study. The prairie’s not hoppin’ like it used to — and a major culprit is carbon dioxide, says study author Michael Kaspari, an ecologist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at its highest in human history. That’s probably fine for plants like the grasses the hoppers munch. They can turn that atmospheric carbon into carbohydrates and build more plant — in fact, plant biologists once thought all that extra carbon dioxide would simply mean better crop yields. But experiments in crops exposed to high carbon dioxide levels indicate that many food plants contain less of other nutrients than under carbon dioxide concentrations of the past. Several studies find that plants’ levels of nitrogen, for example, have fallen, indicating lower plant protein content. And some studies suggest that plants may also be deficient in phosphorus and other trace elements.

The idea that plants grown in today’s carbon dioxide-rich era will contain less of certain other elements — a concept Kaspari categorizes as nutrient dilution — has been well-studied in crop plants. Nutrient dilution in natural ecosystems is less-studied, but scientists have observed it happening in several places, from the woods of Europe to the kelp forests off Southern California. Now researchers like Kaspari are starting to examine the knock-on effects — to see whether herbivores that eat those plants, such as grasshoppers and grazing mammals, are affected.

The scant data already present suggest nutrient dilution could cause widespread problems. “I think we are in canary-in-a-coal mine territory,” Kaspari says.

Lower-quality food?

It’s clear that rising carbon dioxide levels change plant makeup in a variety of ways. Scientists have done years-long studies in which they pump carbon dioxide over crops to artificially raise their exposure to the gas, then test the plants for nutrient content. One large analysis found that raising carbon dioxide by about 200 parts per million boosted plant mass by about 18 percent, but often reduced levels of nitrogen, protein, zinc and iron.

Vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes may be sweeter and tastier due to added carbon-rich sugars, but lose out on some 10 percent to 20 percent of the protein, nitrate, magnesium, iron and zinc that they have in lower-carbon conditions, according to another large study. On average, plants may lose about 8 percent of their mineral content in conditions of elevated carbon dioxide. Kaspari likens the effect to trading a nourishing kale salad for a bowl of low-nutrient iceberg lettuce.

Scientists don’t yet know exactly how extra carbon dioxide leads to changes in all these other nutrients. Kaspari, who discussed the importance of micronutrients such as calcium and iron in ecosystems in the 2021 Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, suggests it’s a simple issue of ratios: Carbon goes up but everything else stays the same.

Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, thinks it’s more complicated than just ratios. For example, in the vegetable study, elevated carbon dioxide increased the concentration of certain nutrients, such as calcium, even as it limited levels of others.

One contributing factor could be plants’ little openings, called stomata, through which they take up the carbon dioxide they use to make sugars and the rest of their structures. If there’s plenty of carbon dioxide around, they don’t need to open the stomata as often, or for as long. That means plants lose less moisture via evaporation from those openings. The result could be less liquid moving up the stem from the roots, and since that liquid carries elements such as metals from soil, less of those trace elements would reach the stems and leaves.

Scientists have also posited that when carbon dioxide is high, plants are less efficient at taking up minerals and other elements because the root molecules that normally pull in these elements are acting at a lower capacity. There are probably multiple processes at play, says Ziska. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all mechanism.”

Whatever is going on in these well-studied crops, the same thing is presumably occurring in trees and weeds and other non-agricultural species, says Kaspari. “If it’s happening to the human food supply, it’s happening to everybody else.”

Several studies suggest that Kaspari is right. For example, even though farmers add nitrogen fertilizer to croplands and that nitrogen then washes into neighboring waterways or wildlands, nitrogen availability is on the decline in a variety of non-agricultural ecosystems. In one analysis, researchers examined nitrogen levels in more than 43,000 leaf samples, collected in various studies between 1980 and 2017. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose by nearly 20 percent during that period, and nitrogen concentrations in the leaves decreased by 9 percent. Mineral concentrations are also affected: Scientists who studied trees in Europe between 1992 and 2009 observed a drop in several, including calcium, magnesium and potassium, in at least some of their leaf samples.

Scientists can also examine museum and herbaria samples to study how plant nutrient content has changed as planetary carbon dioxide levels have risen. Ziska and colleagues did so for goldenrod, a key food source for bees. Using collections from the Smithsonian Institution’s natural history museum in Washington, DC, they analyzed pollen from as far back as 1842, just before the American Industrial Revolution. At that time, the carbon dioxide levels were 280 parts per million, compared to just over 420 today.

Pollen protein content, and thus nutrition level, decreased over time by about one-third, the scientists found. Ziska’s modern experiments with goldenrod grown under carbon dioxide levels as high as 500 parts per million confirmed that more carbon dioxide yields protein-deficient pollen. Though it’s not clear yet what this means for bees, it’s probably not good, Ziska says.

The results are striking, particularly compared with crop studies that don’t draw on large historical datasets, says Samuel Myers, a principal research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has investigated the link between the health of pollinators and human nutrition.

Lush grasslands, empty calories

Animals such as bees need more than protein from their diet; they also need micronutrients. Certain minerals, like sodium, are more important for animals than for plants, Kaspari notes. Many plants are fine with no sodium at all, but animals require sodium for brains and muscles to work properly. (That’s why deer visit salt licks and athletes chug Gatorade.) Many plants seem to survive without iodine, but animals depend on it for thyroid function.

Nutrient dilution, then, could affect herbivores in all kinds of ways, and could be contributing to a reported, though controversial, drop in insect numbers that’s sometimes referred to as the “insect apocalypse,” says Andrew Elmore, an ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg. “When insects are nutritionally stressed, they don’t grow as quickly, and therefore they don’t reach maturity as quickly, they don’t reproduce as rapidly, and so population size can decline,” Elmore says.

Kaspari’s study on Kansas grasshoppers, published in 2020, was the first to link nutrient dilution in plants to a conspicuous decline in an insect population. It focused on the Konza Prairie, a natural area in northeastern Kansas that’s been set aside to research the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Konza features shrubs and trees alongside grasses, and is home to rodents, birds, lizards and deer.

The appeal of many floral scents to humans is a fortunate byproduct: We were not even around when they appeared. And, for all the effort, commercial perfumes rarely smell like flowers. Expensive, fancy bottles labeled jasmine or gardenia may smell wonderful but they are sad substitutes for the real thing.

One reason is that flowers generally produce very large mixtures of different volatile molecules, as many as a thousand. Some of these fall into related chemical groups and although they differ very slightly in chemical structure, they can produce very different smells. In closely related flowers, the volatile molecules can vary both in relative amounts (reflecting differential regulation of the genes and gene products needed) and in their chemical structures (reflecting the activity of genes evolved to produce the enzymes needed for synthesis). It’s not easy to figure out which components of a mixture are important for attracting insects or birds or for achieving a perfume attractive to people. It is especially challenging because our own sense of smell depends on a complex set of nerve cells and often differs from one person to another. The manufacture of the odors depends on a plant’s genes, and the ability of animals, including ourselves, to smell those odors depends on the animals’ genes.

As with colors, the chemistry of volatile compounds that affect smell depends on the presence of genes that encode protein enzymes. These enzymes act in sequence to produce the complex scented molecules from precursor molecules whose presence depends on still other genes and enzymes. The relative amounts of the different molecules depend in turn on other genes that code for RNAs and proteins important for the regulation and modulation of the genes required to manufacture the scents.

When we smell a rose, we are picking up a mixture of several hundred different molecules. Each one of these is the result of a series of genes and the enzymes they code for that enable particular chemical reactions in the rose petals. Many of the volatile molecules are made from the amino acid phenylalanine.

Plants manufacture phenylalanine from simpler molecules, via a set of genes that code for the necessary protein enzymes. Phenylalanine is a close relative of tyrosine, the amino acid used by plants to manufacture the betalaine pigments, and it too is an “aromatic compound,” with a ring of carbon atoms. The difference in chemical structure between the two is simply that tyrosine has an additional oxygen (in the form of an –OH group attached to the carbon ring). In fact, mammals make tyrosine from phenylalanine (plants use another path). The list of pleasant-smelling molecules derived from phenylalanine and tyrosine is long.

Plants make phenyalanine and tyrosine so that they can make proteins. But evolution, being opportunistic, makes use of the amino acids for other purposes too. Each use depends on evolving one or more additional genes that code for the enzymes that make the aromatics as well as the proteins and RNA needed to make sure that the genes are turned on in petals at the right time. A number of the aromatic volatiles will have originated from gene duplication events followed by mutation of the copies, a pattern we have now met several times. It is one of the most powerful ways in which variations become available on which natural selection can act.

To make a volatile aromatic from either of the amino acids phenylalanine or tyrosine requires chemical surgery on the amino acid by one or more reactions catalyzed by particular enzymes. One such reaction removes the amino group (–NH₂) from the amino acid. If the starting molecule is phenylalanine, the result is a molecule called cinnamic acid; if the starting molecules is tyrosine, the result is coumaric acid. The only difference between cinnamic and coumaric acids is that coumaric acid has the same additional oxygen atom in the form of an –OH group as does tyrosine. Most, but not all, plant aromatics start out as one of these two molecules.

The name cinnamic acid shouldn’t be a mystery. It is what gives cinnamon its familiar smell. Cinnamon is the dried bark of certain evergreen trees of the genus Cinnamomum in the laurel family, which reminds us that many plant parts beside petals make aromatics. The enzyme that carries out the removal of the amino group from phenylalanine to produce the acid is called PAL, encoded by the gene PAL. Most plants have more than one PAL gene. The model plant Arabidopsis, for example, has four PAL genes, and these are active to different extents in different parts of the plant. It makes some sense to have several PAL genes because that same phenylalanine minus its amino group, as cinnamic acid, gives rise to many plant molecules beside volatiles. Among those molecules are lignin, the huge molecule found in tree wood, and the avonoid pigments used in coloring flowers. Some plants use PAL to start the long series of reactions leading to chalcone, the molecule that is eventually converted to the anthocyanin colors.

Another pathway to aromatics from phenylalanine involves two excisions on the amino acid. Here, both the amino (–NH₂) and the acid (–COOH) groups which characterize it as an amino acid are removed. The resulting molecule is the starting point for making many other aromatic molecules. The level of the enzymes required to carry out this surgery in rose petals is most abundant in mature flowers, and in the late afternoon, when it is important to attract pollinating insects. Evolution has ensured that genes are most active when they are needed.

The identification of the gene responsible for the enzyme that removes the acid group from phenylalanine required real detective work. Plant genome data banks were searched for sequences that, by analogy with genes known in other organisms, might produce an enzyme that removes the acid group from phenylalanine. Scientists hit the jackpot when they found plant DNA sequences similar to the sequence of an animal gene that removes the acid group from a molecule called dopa that is related to phenylalanine. Familiar? That’s the same dopa that is used as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. This DNA segment was most active in plants at the times and in the flower parts, petals, and ovaries when production of the volatile molecules from phenylalanine was highest. When activity of the gene in petunias was turned down experimentally in mutant plants, production of the aromatic stopped. The same was true for the rose version of the gene.

The petunia and rose forms of this gene code for protein enzymes that are about 65 percent the same as animal enzymes that remove the acid portion from dopa and are similar to other plant enzymes that also remove the acid portion from other molecules. Together, all these genes belong to a family of related genes. It makes sense to conclude that they all evolved from some common ancestral gene.

Flowering plants have many more genes that code for enzymes required for production of other aromatics. Where did they all come from? Probably most, if not all of them, are related to genes that are important for other plant functions, and arose from past gene duplication events. That is what appears to have happened during the evolution of the genes responsible for the fragrant “tea” smell characteristic of popular tea roses. When ancient breeds of Chinese roses made their way to Europe late in the 18th century, it was recognized that they had a different perfume from European roses. Many years later, these unique smells were associated with particular compounds. By then, hybrids between Chinese and European roses had been bred. The hybrids, known as tea roses, are especially popular and one reason is their strong and appealing perfume, an inheritance from the Chinese parent of the hybrid. Among these perfumes one aromatic molecule (3,5-dimethoxytoluene, abbreviated to DMT) can contribute as much as 90 percent of the volatiles produced by the flowers. European rose petals don’t produce much, if any, of this molecule.

The DMT molecule is related to other plant aromatics constructed on a core ring of six carbon atoms, a few of which are decorated with assortments of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Various genes and enzymes give the plant the ability to make such decorated rings. Two enzymes coded for in Chinese rose genomes and active in Chinese rose petals can make the particular modifications leading to DMT. Why can’t the European roses do this? Because they don’t have the set of genes needed to make the proper modification. Two very closely related but distinct genes lead to the appropriate chemical changes in roses with a Chinese rose heritage somewhere in their past; they are called OOMT1 and OOMT2. Roses of purely European origins have only one of the two genes, while both proteins are needed to modify the aromatic ring in the right way to produce DMT. The 350 amino acids in the two enzymes OOMT1 and OOMT2 are 96 percent identical, and a change in just one amino acid out of the 350 is likely to be responsible for the difference in what they can do in the cells of petals. All this suggests that there was, initially, a single OOMT gene that became duplicated, and that one of the two copies then acquired mutations in its DNA and, as a consequence, changes to the amino acids of the protein enzyme for which it codes.

Which gene came first? If the OOMT genes in many different roses are compared, most have OOMT2 but only rose varieties with Chinese rose ancestors have OOMT1. The evolutionary tree of roses has features that make it likely that the Chinese roses appeared later in time than other roses. If so, that would be a strong clue that OOMT2 has been around for a longer time than OOMT1 and that it was OOMT2 that became duplicated.

Producing roses with smells that please people could not have been the reason for the success of this gene duplication and change by mutation. Why then did the new gene survive and succeed? It turns out to be bees: The important pollinators of roses seem to sense DMT.

Maxine Singer received her Ph.D. in 1957 from Yale University. She served on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Science. She has received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, the National Medal of Science, and the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Maxine Singer received her Ph.D. in 1957 from Yale University. She served on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Science. She has received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, the National Medal of Science, and the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences.

From Blossoms: And the Genes That Make Them by Maxine F. Singer. Copyright © 2018 Maxine F. Singer. Published with permission from Oxford University Press. Previously excerpted in Nautilus.

Hang on. Aren’t weeds harmful to crops—a constraint on our ability to grow enough food?

Yes, they are.

But not always. In the 1880s the European wine industry was on the verge of collapse due to phylloxera, (a type of root-destroying aphid). Today, with few exceptions, all French wine comes from vines grafted onto wild (weedy) American grape rootstock resistant to phylloxera. When modern rice lines where lacking disease resistance to grassy stunt virus, it was the weedy rice line, Oryza nivara, which provided the resistance gene, a gene still present in much of the rice the world consumes. Weeds are weeds because we (humans) deem them to be unwanted or harmful. Yet as with many things human our definitions are fluid.

In fact, weeds may provide a unique genetic resource when it comes to dealing with climate change.

To see why, it helps to have an understanding of how plant breeding works. Traditional plant breeders manipulate natural selection to identify, cultivate and preserve favorable traits; modern breeders may insert a gene or genes to develop a specific desirable trait (genetically modified organisms, or GMOs). Either way the resulting genetic line is then considered “cultivated”, distinct from the “wild” version of that plant in nature. Such selections are known as “cultivars”, short for cultivated variety. But there is a catch—once identified, every effort is made to maintain genetic purity.

There are sensible scientific reasons for this. Say you are a plant breeder and you have discovered, or genetically engineered, a new rice cultivar (“Rice!”), one that is resistant to rust—(a nasty fungus that can destroy the crop). As a breeder you must make certain that this cultivar remains genetically pure—otherwise you run the risk of losing the resistance trait. Therefore, to increase your supply of Rice! you will have to grow it under strict isolation and inspection to ensure that outcrossing (genetic mixing) is prevented and that the seed is “certified”, i.e., genetically pure.

There are also strong economic reasons to maintain purity. If Rice! was genetically engineered, and it loses even part of its DNA, you (or your company) can’t get any proprietary money for your GMO patent.

Finally there is this–for developed countries farms are large—about 450 acres in the U.S., over 500 acres in Brazil. To run such a farm you need to mechanize. One family can’t hoe hundreds of acres. You need tillers, tractors, combines, spreaders, cultivators, sprayers, balers, etc. Diversity? It’s hard enough to grow one cultivar. There are good reasons why large farms are run as monocultures.

And our food economy reflects this lack of diversity. Let’s focus on one popular item from the McDonalds menu—French fries. If you dine at McDonalds, you do so in part because you know what to expect– whether you dine in Albuquerque, New Mexico or Zanesville, Ohio. So McDonalds relies on a small subset of potato genetics, primarily Russets (with Russet Burbank being the most popular) for their consistency and their taste. Consequently, if I’m a potato farmer, I grow Russets. Indeed, almost every current business model for food production relies on a small subset of existing genetics, from potatoes to chickens.

We have assumed for sound reasons from plant breeding to farm size, the faster, uniform, cheaper assembly line model of food production. A model that doesn’t reflect the inherent genetic variation in nature for a given crop—but a narrow subset that meets economic needs. That’s fine—as long as the climate is stable.

And there’s the rub. Accelerated climate change is resulting in unprecedented uncertainty. Rapid environmental shifts do not favor a single set of genetics (Russets), no matter how popular those genetics may be at McDonalds. Relying on a single, limited, set of genetics increases risks—from vulnerability to new diseases (e.g., Avian flu), to extremes in rainfall (flooding or droughts). To reduce these risks requires an increase in genetic diversity, the antithesis of the current agricultural model.

So now we revert back to the beginning premise—that weeds may provide a means to improve genetic resilience, to allow us to adapt to climate change. And not just any weeds—we want to examine the “worst” weeds –weeds within a given crop system that cause the most damage. But why?

Well, simply put, the worst weeds are often wild relatives of the crop. Worst because the conditions you have fostered to get your cultivar to grow are also the same conditions that suit their weedy “cousins”. In addition, we rely on visual cues to remove weeds—but if a weed looks at all like what you planted, you aren’t likely to remove it, at least until it gets big enough so that the damage has been done.

The worst weed in rice? Weedy or red rice. Worst weed in oats or wheat? Wild oats. Worst weed in Sorghum? Shattercane (wild sorghum). Worst weed in potato? Nightshades (both in the Solanum genus).

Yet these wild relatives of the modern crop cultivars are genetically diverse and subject to multiple selection factors; including environmental (e.g., temperature, rainfall) and management (e.g., land preparation, use of herbicides). Overall, weeds are characterized by rapid growth, high seed production, environmental plasticity, and genetic variability. And they are highly adaptable as a result—growing on asphalt on 100°F days, in polluted soils, even on the sides of buildings.

And it is that ability to respond evolutionarily to rapid change that makes weeds so desirable; they may provide a unique set of genes, genes that could transform, diversify, our current, limited set of crop genetics, increasing our ability to respond to climatic uncertainty.

It may already be occurring. Think back to your elementary school science class—and learning what makes plants grow. Sunlight was mentioned, as were nutrients (fertilizer) and water. Perhaps, in an advanced classroom, mention was even made of carbon dioxide, CO2, that more of it in the atmosphere can stimulate plant growth.

Rapid increase of a plant resource can be a powerful selection factor. Since 1970, the concentration of atmospheric CO2, the primary global warming gas, has increased by 30% from 320 to 420 parts per million. So have cultivated crops responded more than their weedy relative to this resource change? Is human selection keeping pace with natural selection?

No. Based on published studies weedy rice was able to convert more CO₂ into growth and seed yield, and it was better able to do so even at higher temperatures relative to cultivated rice. Other studies that have examined how weedy relatives of crops might respond to projected increases in CO₂ also demonstrate that it is these weedy lines, with their greater genetic and morphological diversity, that responded more to CO2.

And human selection via plant breeding? Unfortunately, that potential remains untapped. The breeding priorities continue to be those of modern farming–the cultivation of uniform monocultures that provide an economic need (e.g., Russet Burbank potatoes for McDonalds’ fries). Consequently, most breeders are only evaluating a small percentage of the available germplasm for things like disease resistance or cooking characteristics—not for environmental resilience.

By shifting the paradigm to climate change and environmental stress, the science of plant breeding has a unique opportunity to utilize weedy, wild germplasm as an effective means to maintain food security as CO2 increases and the climate changes. Yes, weeds can represent many undesirable qualities, but their ability to adapt, to grow in the most undesirable of circumstances may, if we are wise enough, provide a source of genetic diversity to address climatic change and maintain food security. If we are to feed 8 billion, soon to be 10 billion, diversity is key.

Lewis H. Ziska, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and is on WS/C’s Board of Advisors.

References:

Ziska, L.H., Tomecek, M.B. and Gealy, D.R., 2014. Assessment of cultivated and wild, weedy rice lines to concurrent changes in CO 2 concentration and air temperature: determining traits for enhanced seed yield with increasing atmospheric CO 2. Functional Plant Biology, 41(3), pp.236-243.

Ziska, L.H. and McClung, A., 2008. Differential response of cultivated and weedy (red) rice to recent and projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Agronomy journal, 100(5), pp.1259-1263.

Wang, D.R., Bunce, J.A., Tomecek, M.B., Gealy, D., McClung, A., McCouch, S.R. and Ziska, L.H., 2016. Evidence for divergence of response in Indica, Japonica, and wild rice to high CO2× temperature interaction. Global change biology, 22(7), pp.2620-2632

As a landscape designer since 1984 you have worked closely with nature, from analyzing soil and existing vegetation, to focusing on aesthetics and plant selection. But a project in Panama took your involvement to a different level of sustainability. Tell us about your work on Panama’s Biomuseo (Museum of Biodiversity) with Frank Gehry.

The project with Frank Gehry was to design a park for the museum of biodiversity, which ultimately became called the Biomuseo. It was part of the lands that were returned to Panama when the agreement was forged for the canal to be returned to Panamanian control, there was a lot of really amazing real estate involved.

Frank Gehry’s wife is Panamanian. That was where the connection came in, and they did a master plan for what the Panamanian government could do with all these amazing properties. The only one of all of the different options that actually was chosen for development was the Biomuseo, and it’s on a bit of land that separates the Bay of Panama from the mouth of the canal. The museum building, his first in Latin America, is classic Frank Gehry but with primary colors. We had always had this conversation about how he wanted to design a building that really reflected what was going on both outside and inside the building.

He knew that it was always important to me to design landscapes that reflected the building and the place it was in; then how do you create a landscape that’s just this really seamless segue from the ego of architecture to the intensity of nature. In a way, I’ve always felt that I need to write myself out of that because otherwise it starts getting to be a lot of powerful voices and a bit chaotic, and I’m going for peace and seamlessness. Luckily it all worked. The budgets were low, so it wasn’t really something that he could hire a big famous landscape architecture firm to do. I could go and work out of Frank’s office, be in Panama for weeks at a time learning about the native plants because, of course, as a museum of biodiversity, it had to primarily celebrate the natural history of the biodiversity and ecology of Panama. That’s what it has done. Then we got involved. One thing led to a next.

Where did the native plants that were used come from?

There were no native plant nurseries in Panama. Even now, 20 years later, there are only a few doing private nursery work. Basically, plants are coming from the soil, in many cases, from spontaneous generation and transplant. We also brought in specimens that people donated, some cuttings but largely seed.

There wasn’t a budget to plant trees, and rather than put in 6-inch trees used for reforestation projects, we decided to let the healing power of nature do its work. So, this is what secondary successional looks like when you garden with nature. They do not have a lot of pressure from invasives there, just some canal grass, but that’s easy to control it in such a small space. It was possible to just let things happen.

Let nature do what nature does so well…

So, someone donated an orchid collection, but I was always like, “I don’t think so.” Because orchids are the first thing to get stolen. Then there was a bunch of cycads, because one of the professors at the University of Panama had an amazing cycad collection. We used some very nice cycads, but not the really valuable ones because it’s just too…

Risky?

Well, yes. Too risky.

So after, in 2008, you co-founded the Azuero Earth Project in Panama to promote chemical free reforestation and habitat restoration with native trees on the Azuero Peninsula.

Yes, we started in 2005, but it was in 2008 when we finally got a US 501c3 for the Azuero Earth Project. It was difficult and took us a few years to get non-profit status for this native species reforestation project because if you’re raising money in the United States and sending it to a foreign country they’re careful because of the potential of terrorism and so forth. The Azuero Earth Project was the first one in the country, perhaps the world, to use exclusively native species and zero fertilizers or pesticides.

Can you explain more about the project, and chemical free reforestation?

I went out to the Azuero Peninsula to meet the landowner who was putting up the land and the money to do the first native species reforestation project, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute based in Panama and Yale Forestry. While I was there talking with all these guys from STRI and Yale and looking at how much the land has been unnecessarily degraded, and how it was working against the local farmers. By cutting all the trees, their lands were becoming less and less and less productive. This was an interesting conversation. There was a lot of new material coming in about silvopasture, the practice of integrating trees, forage, and the managed grazing of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way. We thought, “Oh, hey, let’s start a little nonprofit. Let’s look at what we could do here.” They said, “Well, this is how you do it.” How you do it included fertilizers and pesticides.

I said, “Well, why don’t we leave out the fertilizers and pesticides because it doesn’t make sense for us to be promoting the idea that the only way you can grow a native plant is with chemicals. That’s not a good message.” They say, “Oh, you got to.” I said, “Well, no, we don’t have to. Why do we have to?” Turned out the reason why is that they come from the world of forestry. Forestry is about growing trees as products. The idea is that you’re a tree as fast and as clean as possible. We we’re growing trees for our key indicator species, which was the Azuero spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi azuerensis), a critically endangered spider monkey, close to extinction. That monkey probably would be better off without the chemicals. We started looking around because they started pushing us saying, “You can’t do it.”

We kept saying, “Well, I don’t see why not. These trees were here long before us and long before chemicals.” We thought, “Well, let’s see who else is out there, who has done it?” We couldn’t find a single project anywhere in the world that had made that commitment. I made the commitment. Basically, I got to because as these things go, the rest of the guys from Yale, they were young, they went off to get their PhDs, get married, have kids, and I was left running the show. I said, “It’s what we’re doing.” And we did and it’s become a really wonderful foundation for our message.

It’s thriving these days?

It is. And now it’s a fully Panamanian nonprofit. It’s run by a Panamanian, and the board’s all Panamanian. There are some of us gringos who just remain as friends and advisors and help connect with what’s going on in the States and different things that we can do to support it but it’s doing well. An added component, which has been extraordinarily effective, is sending teams into local schools and teaching the children there the benefits of trees. It’s been going on so long now that some of those students have come back as teachers themselves and cite our programs as very instrumental and inspirational in their decision to return to the Azeuro, which is really the middle of nowhere, and teach environmental studies.

In addition, we created a program where local women collect seed and grow the seedlings and then sell them to Azuero Earth Project. AEP gives them what they need to do it, the training and the materials, and they collect seed and germinate them and sell us back the seedlings for the reforestation project, so they didn’t have to leave home to do that. It was a great income opportunity for families during COVID.

That’s wonderful. And then you thought it was important to bring it in the United States?

Well, it wasn’t really planned.

My dentist asked me, “Well, you do this environmental stuff and, I’d like to do my lawn without chemicals because it’s next to a water body in the Hamptons and kind of seems like I should be able to do it organically. Where can I get information?” I said I would check, and I found out there really wasn’t any place. It sort of hit me that maybe it’s time for me to ease out of Panama. The Azuero Earth Projectwas doing well and coming into its own, and this would be the ideal next step for me. I could help preserve ecosystems and biodiversity and create community in a place where I speak the language well, and I really know the plants the best, and I really know the neighborhood-so to speak. I started the Perfect Earth Project.

First, I started just checking to see why people do use all these chemicals on their lawn. The answers were scary and a lot more intense than I’ve expected. There was also some good new–people use chemicals on their lawn because they’ve been told to, it’s as simple as that. Because they’ve been told that they can’t do it without them and that they won’t like what they get without them. And their neighbors will, I don’t know, shun them or something if they don’t use them, none of which is accurate.

What is nature-based? 

Here’s the nutshell: Healing, not Harming. Let nature do the nurturing.

• No toxic fertilizers or insecticides. Fertilizers overstimulate plants and make them susceptible to disease. The right plant for your soil, doesn’t need them. Insecticides are not target specific, they kill beneficial insects and soil organisms. You don’t depend on your landscape to eat, so why not share it with a host of wonderful life forms that could find refuge there?  
• Retain, recycle and reimagine all biomass.Keep what your property produces (grass clippings, leaves, twigs, weeds, etc.) and feed it back to the soil. It is the food your place made for itself. Better than anything you can buy, and without the carbon footprint. (See PRFCT Lawn Basics for more).
• Plant at least two thirds native plants.Plants did fine without us humans for eons, so if you plant the ones that evolved in your conditions, they will still be fine with very little from you. Plus, they provide just the right food and shelter for local birds and pollinators. (See Two Thirds for the Birds for more).
• Avoid and remove invasive plants.Get to know which plants are invasive. (See the Invasive Plant Atlas for more). Don’t buy them. Remove and replace any you have already got. (See Beyond Pesticides for more).
• Water properly. Very seldom. Very deep. Over-watering is one of the most common landscape malpractices. It leads to a wide range of plant and soil problems and promotes tick and mosquito populations.  
• Minimize pruning.Every cut is a wound. Plant with plenty of space for trees and shrubs to grow to their natural shapes. Leave deadwood and standing dead trees, unless positioned dangerously, they provide unique food and nesting opportunities.
• Relax and enjoy.Your landscape is not your living room; forcing it to be tidy, clipped, and fixed in time is “dead room.” Let it be alive; always changing and creating new surprising delights for you.

Hooray, eco-anxiety reduction in action! You are doing something unquestionably good for the earth. (Not to mention yourself, your family, and your pets). Once you get started, you will find there was nothing to fear. It is all fascinating, joyous, and beautiful. 

Learn more: https://perfectearthproject.org/pep_tips

This was 2013 when you founded The Perfect Earth Project?

That was when we officially launched. It started when we put up the website, we put it out there. It is doable because I had examples that I had built with my clients.

You were able to convince your clients that this would be the way to go, and they trusted you and went with it?

Well, in the beginning, like I said, I didn’t know. I did know to look into what chemicals were used on their properties. So, everybody went into their files and pulled out all of their maintenance contracts with their various people, and we looked at what they were putting onto their yards, and then I looked them up to find out what are these chemicals? Oh my gosh, it was pretty scary. Then I went back to them and said, “Would you do this with me? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, we’ll just go right back to what you got.” They said, “Sure.” Then I had to find people who could do it, who would be in the landscape world, who would be willing to work with me on it and assure them that no, they wouldn’t lose the job if it didn’t go well. How do we work this out and how do we find people who know about it? We did. That was in about probably 2008, no ’10, 2010, about 2010 when I really started looking into it. 2013 Earth Day, I launched.

You are a proponent of Douglas. W. Tallamy’s books “Bringing Nature Home” and his 2020 book, “Nature’s Best Hope — A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.” You speak publicly, write and advocate for Tallamy’s action plans and have lots of experience advancing adaption and conservation measures for your clients. You were already a conservationist when the books were published. How did these books resonate with you? Was it easier to hand your client’s these books rather than persuade them without them?

Well, his first book, the Backyard Book, I knew it was there, so it was like Noah’s Garden and all of those kinds of standard books. I wasn’t really pressing them on my clients because I don’t know, it sort of didn’t occur to me come to think of it. Of course, they were foundational confirming pieces of seminal works.

Well really, we just focused on the lawns and the lawn chemicals and getting them fixed. That meant no chemicals on the entire property. It wasn’t for a few years that I started really incorporating the biodiversity message, the native plant message. I sort of took it one thing at a time, because then it just started to become too much … Books like Doug’s started really paving the way, but still native plants were considered for a long time to be not a pretty garden. In addition to the books, I think the biggest influence was Piet Oudolf in the Highline— with perennials and grasses in naturalistic design defined by the ecology. I think his work was probably the single largest motivating factor.

Absolutely, I’ve enjoyed watching the High Line plantings move through the seasons and mature.

Then there was the Brooklyn Bridge Park and people could see it. People could see that an ecologically minded approach is gosh darn beautiful.

That’s so true. Those inspiring works really opened people’s eyes to nature-based planting.

So, in recent years, you also launched Two Thirds for Birds.

That was totally inspired by Doug’s book, Nature’s Best Hope. Even though it’s more specific and less a general overall backyard kind of habitat book, that’s one I do give to my clients, the one I do recommend everywhere. That book raised awareness about the need to combat the decline of bird populations.

As you know, everywhere we turned at Davos this year a speaker warned us about ecosystem and biodiversity collapse. In the Two Thirds for the Birds website, you state, “Birds are the messengers for a much larger problem: canaries in coal mines, they are warning us about ecosystem-wide biodiversity collapse.” What do you advise your clients to do?

Well, Two Thirds for the Birds came about because it’s all interconnected. When I read about the bird decline, it made me sad. I wrote about it in my monthly newsletter and many people came back to me with real heartfelt responses. This was really touching people. The state of birds was touching people in a way, whereas me talking about Aesculus parviflora just doesn’t quite resonate. I said, okay. And then just about that time I’d gotten to know Doug because we shared the stage often for various speaking engagements. He said, “Oh, I have this book coming out and it’s kind of stuck because of COVID, but here I’ll send you the manuscript.

In it was the missing piece, the science, the actual number that I could say to people, if you plant, not just plant native plants, it’s really nice. If your landscape is 70% native plants, you will, without a doubt, scientifically proven by our beloved Doug, providing sufficient habitat for birds, and birds indicate the general health of a landscape and an ecosystem, and you’re restoring the bird population and you just have to provide the plants and not the pesticides and you’ve done your job. That’s a really strong message.

It was still COVID of course, and so I decided I’m going to add this to my messaging. I thought, “Well, he says 30%, but if I just make it two thirds, it rhymes with birds.” That was the origin of Two Thirds for the Birds to encourage people. We’d been looking at different things, how do you create a community around this? Everybody wants to know, well, who do I hire? We tried building a directory of landscapers and then people would call me and say, “That guy’s no good.” And whatever. He told me to use … He said, “Oh, this is not working.” Or other people say, ‘Oh, you left me off.” Or “I live here and there’s nobody listed.” I can’t do that.

I said, well, what if I create a self-aggregating, self-regulating community of practitioners? That’s what Two Thirds for the birds is. You just sign up and you say, “I’m doing this.” If you are a landscape designer, you say you’re a landscape designer, and it’s only filtered by state. If you’re a homeowner and you say, who are the landscape designers in my state or my adjacent state who say they’re doing this, “Oh, there they are.” Then you have this conversation. The fact is, if you put your name on that list and you’re not doing it, that’s going to be darned obvious really quick, because the criteria is fairly simple.

We also, in our resource pages, which are ample, have lots of things that you as a homeowner can do to vet what your landscaper or landscape designer should be doing. There are questions to ask them. There are ideas of how you know a good landscaper when you see one, because that’s a problem for people who don’t garden. But the idea is that, the Two-Thirds for the bird’s list is just that. It’s just a list and you sign up and you put how you want to be categorized, and then other people can search you by your state and your category. I’m hoping that over time people will start to create kind of subcategories or just be in touch with one another. The thing I now have to do is put energy into getting people to post their projects. People want to see what you’ve done. That’s going to take time. I think I’m going to have to push people a little harder. It’s not happening spontaneously.

Anybody out there who we are reaching—please post your stuff. We’d really like to see it, but also– sign up. It’s probably the only environmental program out there that will never ever ask you for money. We will never ever ask you to sign a petition. That’s not what it’s about. It’s just about creating a community.

Your mantra has been “70 percent native plants and no pesticides… and remove invasives.” However, as we have discussed, not everybody feels that this is the way to go. Removing invasives to protect native species is believed to be wrongheaded by some experts who say we need a new way of viewing flora. Some experts, like plant neurobiologist and botanist Stafano Mancuso, don’t believe in the concept of invasive species. He calls them “the most beautiful plants you can imagine,” and points out that plants have been traveling around the world since before humans appeared on the planet. And birds continue to carry plant seeds and place them in other areas and countries as they migrate. This is the natural way that plants distribute-

Yes.

... Within ecosystems, as we have discussed, these plants have incredible qualities—medicinal and nutritional values et cetera.

Yes. Culinary value, building materials… incredible. We have stopped putting our predatory pressure on many of them, which allows them to increase without boundaries. I totally agree with him. I still don’t think that people should plant plants that we know are going to invade their neighbor’s property or something. I just think they should be aware. For me, it’s about awareness and it’s about engaging in the conversation. A lot of the behavior that environmental organizations are employing concerns me. The first being applying war terms to plants. Their war on invasives or battling invasives or fighting. I’m with Mancuso on that, I don’t do war on plants. I do think that it’s always about educating people. It’s about let’s have this conversation. I know that a lot of the conversation is around using herbicides on invasives. If you look on Facebook and elsewhere there’s all these crazy heated discussions, much of it is fueled by the chemical industry and they’re putting out incorrect information.

They’re seeding it in there. We’re trying to create a forum and a place where people can come that is a safe place to talk about it. Doug Tallamy, actually recommends using Roundup. We have a really different opinion there. He says, “Well, I’ve got so much bittersweet on my property, I could never in my lifetime control it without Roundup.” I said, you surely don’t want bittersweet taking over your property. He’s got a lot of wonderful native plants there that bittersweet would probably just annihilate. At the same time, if we don’t look for the alternative, nature-based things, how would nature do this? If we waited forever, it would figure out, it would somehow sort itself out. But we don’t want to wait. This is my yard and I’m going to be here for just this much time, and I want it this way. Which is okay… How can we look at that system? How will we ever come up with those solutions if we just take the easy out? We won’t.

No, and I think you’ve certainly have gotten a lot of experience with helping your different clients try these things and you have evidence that it works.

I’m so lucky. It’s not just me. Every landscape person has the opportunity in a way, if you look at it that way, to get paid to learn. Every job is a learning experience.

What are the key advice points about property management that you would like to share with anybody with a yard or some property?

It depends on what are they struggling with. My key point is to relax. Just relax. Number one, question your goals, not your motivation because your motivation is real. We are motivated to garden. We love gardening. I question goals. What do I want this garden to be for me? My suggestion is, are you listening to what your garden would like to be, and do you know how much easier it would be if you let it be what it wants to be than you deciding what it wants to be? I’m not saying this is for everyone. There are maybe a lot of people out there with amazing native gardens who are already doing this. We must learn to step away from the need for ‘neat’ and let nature play a role in how we perceive, design and maintain our human dominated lands. There are many ways that you can stop, so to speak, battling your piece of land and look at it and know.

One of my most favorite books is. I recommend that right up there with Nature’s Best Hope and a couple others. It’s about starting by loving your Earth like you love your children, like you love your pets, you would never harm them, you just would never harm them. Can you fold your landscape into that circle of love and approach it with that? Just go out there and sit for a moment. Another good thing to know is to get to know your eco-region. You kind of know what a place historically has been and what it wants to be. I’m not a fanatic for that you can only plant plants from your very exact eco-tome and all of that. Not unless you’re being hired to do an exact ecological restoration. Then of course you would want to be precise.

Otherwise, you want plants that are going to be happy. They’re going to be happy and they don’t need you fussing over them with watering and fertilizing or pesticides because they’re going to get a fungus problem. The ones that don’t perform, I let them die. Sorry. You’re not happy here. Why would I keep you suffering forever?

You’ve said that “landscaping is not a product, it’s a process and that it is ongoing cooperating”, which goes along with what you’re saying, about cooperating with nature and letting it be what it wants to be makes that process so much more rewarding. Do you have anything else to add to that?

Yes, it is the ultimate relationship and it’ll never let you down.

I do think that in the face of climate change, people ask me if I get discouraged because so much is not being done right. Even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, people are still doing really crazy things. To my mind, if you can get it right in your yard, that’s an amazing start. By doing so, we will lessen the blow. Good conservation can help people be more resilient as nature starts to fight back.

One last question, would you tell us about the best smell on Earth that you experienced in the jungles of Panama.

Yes, it was in the remote, untouched tropical forests of the Darién, Panama (on the border of Colombia). The area is undisturbed and breathtakingly beautiful. Its smell is unique, extraordinarily complex, subtle, but pervasive. The ranging ecosystem contains extensive flora and fauna, many endemic–they only exist there. The indigenous elders said that there are many different smells and smelling is how they hunt and find their way.

Edwina von Gal is an award-winning landscape designer investing in species protection and habitat reconstruction. She is the founder of the Perfect Earth Project, a non-profit that promotes nature-based, toxic-free land care practices and the program Two Thirds for the Birds, to help stop bird decline. You’ll want to join both.

Gayil Nalls, Ph.D. is the creator of World Sensorium and founder of the World Sensorium/Conservancy.

Sited on a hillside with a long row of windows set precisely to let in sunlight, the house impressed visitors with the most up-to-date technology of the late 1970s. Adjustable solar shades blocked the sun in summer and on cold days an array of solar panels supplied heat. Owner and architect R. Randall Vosbeck, FAIA, understood the opportunities in energy-conscious design.

Over the next two decades he championed the design of buildings adapted to the climate and resources of the region in which they were built. As a co-founder of VVKR with his brother, architect William Vosbeck, FAIA, he led the firm’s architects and engineers in designing energy-saving systems for buildings in the mid-Atlantic region. He described their approach saying, “orientation, siting, materials, daylighting, natural ventilation, thermal mass along with efficient electrical and mechanical equipment [and] economizer cycles … were all important factors the design teams considered.”

In 1981 he envisioned a movement with architects taking the lead in planning for energy conservation, and as president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), he chose the theme “A Line on Design and Energy.” He supported Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) in discussions with members of Congress, and while on the Council of the International Union of Architects, he wrote, spoke and advised architects worldwide.

Given his extensive experience and the perspective of his 92 years, I wondered how he would view our current progress. He answered my request to reflect on the status of design, energy efficiency and sustainability in today’s world.

Early in your career you emphasized the important role architects had in energy conservation in the built environment. In this period of climate change, minimizing a building’s energy footprint has never been more important. What do you think architects can do today to help preserve the environment?

It’s been well documented that the built environment is now producing close to 40 percent of the total greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, released to the atmosphere. This can be attributed to carbon produced by buildings during construction, as well as by heating, cooling, lighting and other sources after they are built. So, the design of new buildings along with the renovation of existing buildings to reduce greenhouse gases is vital to making our world more healthy and resilient in the future. Architects must be ever aware of the best design practices to mitigate the carbon footprint of the buildings they design.

I’m aware that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is promoting this emphasis in a number of ways. They are encouraging firms to design toward net zero emissions, which means achieving an equal balance between greenhouse gases released and those removed. That is a phrase you see a lot now in the AIA material: net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by employing energy efficient measures and by utilizing low impact building materials. The AIA also urges architects to encourage renovation of existing buildings with energy conserving measures, something which is too often neglected. The AIA continually offers education for architects on net zero design and energy efficient modeling.

Architects have an essential role in designing built environments that are sustainable and use energy as a form giver. I recall that phrase from many years ago during my AIA presidency. I used to say that energy is a form giver, and with that I was stressing regionalism in architecture. When an architect uses energy conscious design techniques in a particular region, the process and materials will have an impact on the form of the architecture that is created.

It’s interesting that you say regionalism is something to consider.

Yes, that has often been overlooked. For many years the same building in New York could be found in San Antonio. Now in its Framework for Design Excellence, the AIA offers guidelines with examples of outstanding regional design in buildings throughout the United States._*

What about green building materials? Have you seen any that could change building design?

I’m sure there are many. As I’m no longer in practice or even consulting, I hesitate to mention specific materials. However, I do see more and more high performance low-e (low emissivity) glass being utilized and it is manufactured with coatings to control heat loss or gain, as well as the transmission of infrared and ultraviolet rays. You know that glass has always been a part of modern contemporary architecture and in my era if you got double-paned glass, it would be good. Now there is exceptionally high-performance glass and it’s here to stay.

And that will allow for more natural light and views to the outdoors. How about other ways the built environment can renew and strengthen connections between people and nature? You have begun to talk about that. Do you have other thoughts?

Yes, I do have some general thoughts on that subject. The population of the world keeps growing and, unfortunately, putting more stress on our natural resources. Growth is inevitable, but it must be managed. It takes some doing. There has to be more attention on how built environments, along with important lifestyle changes, dramatically adjust to provide more sustainable environments. There are a lot of factors, particularly here in the west where decreasing water supplies have become a huge issue. With drought areas ever increasing, availability of water has an impact on where you can have growth and how it must progress.

Our forests and natural spaces are diminishing. The infrastructures for vehicles, and by that I mean paving, parking lots, garages and other impervious types of structures, are taking up an increasing amount of real estate. Also, superhighways continue to be built and more lanes are being added to highways like those between Denver and the mountains. The expansion of impervious pavement and structures is fragmenting and damaging our natural resources.

I read a report recently that two-thirds of the world’s glaciers are now on track to disappear by 2100. That is still more than 70 years away and I don’t have a solution, but we certainly need more attention to dealing with climate change. Climate issues coupled with population growth are creating massive challenges for planners. I fear our government agencies, land planners, developers and architects are not sufficiently addressing these issues and must give more attention to the preservation and revitalization of nature.

Are you saying it takes a community effort – that it can’t just be government or corporations or individual citizens — everybody has to look at what they have power over and work toward a solution?

Yes, absolutely. Government agencies usually have the right intentions, but in the public sphere there is pressure from developers, land planners, architects and many other groups. The point that everyone has to cooperate and participate is an excellent one. We know there are climate change naysayers, including many who passionately feel we are just in a cycle of warming and cooling that the world has experienced for centuries. But hopefully, even if they continue in that belief, they will ultimately recognize the social, economic, and health improvements that will result from a built environment that addresses climate changes, no matter what its cause.

Do you have any thoughts about density, whether we should make our cities even more dense to allow our agricultural and forest areas to remain, so that development doesn’t encroach into them? It’s not an easily solved issue.

No, it’s not, but we have to try to increase density – not just in the big cities but in suburban areas as well. Most people like their individual residence and green yard around it, but if you look at some of the older cities in Europe the densities are high compared to the density of most of our cities and suburbs. It will be a hard sell for the US, but it needs to happen, sooner rather than later.

Then back to the traffic issue. We’ve got to have more and more rapid transit. I know people still like to have a private vehicle, but in the long run, if you think about the train system in Europe, people ride trains everywhere. In this country not so much. We use cars and trucks and buses, but the more impervious areas we have, the less green space there will be. Transportation systems have a long way to go to address this impact on nature.

I want to ask one last question on a lighter note. Do you have a memory of an aroma associated with a plant or landscape that you’d choose to share?

I have a memory that might relate to this, not exactly an aroma but a strong sensation. To me there is nothing like getting off of a ski lift or gondola at an elevation of about 10,000 or 11,000 feet with a beautiful clear blue sky and crisp air and looking around at the landscape of snow and mountains and pines and aspens. It’s a memory that I cherish — just thinking about how I used to ride the chairs and ski on those blue-sky days. When you’re up at 11,000 feet the sky is even bluer.

Now with rising temperatures I fear experiences like this are fading away for future generations. Let’s hope not—but the world must act now to protect these resources.

His image of mountain skies and the slopes covered in snow – now in absolute peril—captured my attention and stayed with me. As a pioneer of energy conservation and sustainable design, he offered the possibility of an alternative, but the necessary steps are up to us. We must work together and adapt, if we want to preserve our abundant and awe-inspiring world.

_*You can learn more about the American Institute of Architect’s Framework for Design Excellence Program at their website:

https://www.aia.org/resources/6077668-framework-for-design-excellence

For information from the UN Environment Programme’s COP27, 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, which found that the sector accounted for over 34 per cent of energy demand and around 37 per cent of energy and process-related CO2 emissions in 2021, see their website:

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/co2-emissions-buildings-and-construction-hit-new-high-leaving-sector

Liz Macklin teaches in the educational outreach programs of the Virginia Master Naturalists and has worked as an architect, artist and writer.

• 300 g (1 1/2 cups) Basmati rice
• 150 g (1/2 cup) of pumpkin puree
• 8 boiled asparagus
• 90 g (2/3 cup) of grated Grana Padano
• 200 g (1/2 cup) of cauliflower puree

Preparation:

1. Wash the basmati rice at least 5 times each time using clean water. Cook it in a pot with salt. Cook with a low flame and let the water evaporate. While still hot, put the rice into individual glass bowls and press it lightly so that it will have a dome shape after it cools.
2. For the Grana Padano, cut a square of baking paper and place it in a flat dish that can be put in the microwave. Spread the grated cheese using a spoon in a circular pattern to make a ‘fan’. Cook in the microwave for 2 minutes at maximum heat.
3. Cook, cool and salt the pumpkin and cauliflower purees separately.
4. Cut the asparagus stems, peel the asparagus and cook in salted water for 4 minutes.

Serving:

• Turn the rice bowls over onto a serving dish.
• Pour a little pumpkin puree on top and decorate with the Grana ‘fan’.
• Place the asparagus on the side and pour the caulifower puree over it.

Chef Giovanni Parlati was born in Genoa, Italy. He has been an Executive Chef in many restaurants in Genoa, Milan, Paris, the Grenadine Islands and Berlin. He was a private chef for the Campari family and now is a Chef for private yachts.
giovanni.parlati65@gmail.com 

It’s February, the light lingers a little longer, and you decide that you would love to have a spring garden! I turned with this question to Vivian Berry, cultivator and steward of Berry FarmZ. Tucked just off a major thoroughfare in the lower Hudson Valley, the expanse of green nestled behind the house appears as a surprise. It was this open space that captured Vivian’s imagination when she bought the property 25 years ago. Ever since, essentially singlehandedly, although friends and family occasionally stop by to give a hand, she has been shaping the land into the vibrant and nourishing place it has become.

To fortify us for this conversation at the end of January, Vivian cooked up a lunch with ingredients mostly from her garden: a puréed Butternut squash soup, with roasted seeds on the side for a delicious crunch; a quiche with peas; garlic bread; and for dessert, a Chia seed pudding with blueberries and raspberries. The Chia seeds, she explains, are not from her garden, although she did try one year to grow the Salvia hispanica plant they come from, but it needs a longer growing period to produce seeds.

If one is starting from scratch, other than digging up the grass and clearing out the rocks, is there anything special one needs to do to prepare the earth for a garden?

Not really. A virgin garden is probably the best grow you are going to get, when you first start growing in a spot where you’ve never grown anything before. Every year since, I augment the soil with chicken manure and I mulch with hay, so a lot of organic material is in the garden.

How early does one need to start if one wants a garden in the spring?

Spring gardens can really be started at any time, but you need to have pots big enough to hold all your seedlings. You have to work backwards from when you want to plant, because every climate, every area, is going to be different. So here, it used to be that May 31^st was our last frost date but that has changed. Our climactic zone used to be a five, now it’s a six. As the numbers go up, it’s generally warmer. Around here, I can safely plant May 15^th, so that’s why I now start my tomatoes in March—it used to be the first of April. My season has shifted two weeks in advance.

There are some things that I prepare in the fall for spring planting, like peas. Peas go into the dirt as soon as it can be worked, so sometimes in March, the dirt is thawed and ready to plant, and peas will germinate when the soil temperature is cold. I prepare the pea trellises and the soil in the section that I determine that year for the pea planting when I plant the garlic in the fall. This way in the spring, it doesn’t matter if we have an early warm spell, I don’t have to race and chase things around.

Where do you get your seeds? 

I generally order from a company called Fedco in Maine, an excellent company, that lets you order seeds in different sizes. Most companies will sell you a packet of seeds, but Fedco gives you different options, a size A, B or C, depending on the quantity you need. Peas, for instance, I need a lot of seeds, because I’m planting four 15-foot rows. You can be very mathematical about it, I’m more visual, so I look at the plot and estimate how many seeds I think I’ll need. But I have had times where I’ll only have ninety seeds, and I want to plant them all, and I want to plant them most effectively in terms of being efficient with space. So then you divide—the seeds need to be 2 inches apart, you have a ten-foot row—and you do the math.

Do you ever get seeds from local seed banks? 

My cousin is involved with the library in Tarrytown, NY, and they have a seed exchange program where people bring in their excess seeds. Then they put them in kind of a card catalogue and people can go in and take out seeds, so it’s kind of a cool thing for a library to do. You do always want to think about where the seed comes from.

Do you ever plant wild seeds?

Not really, but I will sometimes dig up a plant and transplant it.

Can you describe your technique for seed processing and storage?

I try to save seeds from just about everything I grow—lettuce, cilantro, edamame—but here’s the issue I’ve had with edamame over the years: squirrels really like edamame. So, when I leave an edamame plant to grow to full maturity, for the seeds to be viable, the squirrels find them. So I used to save my edamame seeds, but somehow the squirrel population has really increased. Cilantro, which is one of my favorite herbs—I love it when it’s green and leafy—then goes to seed and becomes coriander. I grow tons of it, I let it go to seed, and then I love the green coriander, when it’s just become a seed. I grind that up and use it all the time, and that’s about mid-summer. The rest I leave on the plant and let it dry out, and that becomes my seed for next year. I go into the garden with a paper bag and pull it off, and whatever falls on the ground is fine, because it just reseeds for next year. I keep the seeds in a paper bag or a paper envelope—if there is any moisture, the paper will absorb it.

How do you take care of your soil?  Any tips on how to nourish your soil? Horse manure?

Before I had chickens, I would go around to various farms collecting manure. Horse manure isn’t the best. I think cow manure is the best, because cows have more than one stomach, so they digest what they eat very well, and you’re not going to have a lot of seed in the manure. One year I borrowed a friend’s truck and went down to a local farm that used to sell cow manure and filled up the whole back of the pickup truck, but the cow manure was fresh, so I had a pile of it right by the street and had to let it sit for a year. Or you can drive around to a bunch of farms, like I did one year with a friend who also loves to garden, and we would just ask if they had any aged cow manure that we could fill a few buckets with, and we were both very happy about it. And there was a year that I got horse manure from a company that has dumpsters and takes away manure from horse farms. Somehow my cousin found a company that would deliver a dumpster full to you, and I got probably around 60 yards of horse manure, because they saw how much space I had—I had them dump it up the road—and they kept coming. That lasted me a few years, because I just wheelbarrowed it back to the garden all the time. When you plant, you can dig a very deep hole, and put the manure in the bottom of the hole, so that when the plant gets big enough to start fruiting, it reaches all those nutrients and fruits better.

And now with your chickens?

Chicken manure is very hot, meaning it’s very, very raw, when it first comes out of the chicken. Very high in nitrogen and uric acid, so using poop that isn’t aged will burn your plants. I have a “manure-tea” bucket that is brewing right now in the basement, that has chicken poop in it, and eggshells from the eggs, ground up into a powder, so that they become a little more easily bio-available in the soil. So I have my manure tea brewing through the winter, and I start feeding the garlic in March. I dilute it, like one cup per gallon of water, and I have a watering can and go out there and start feeding. The manure tea I usually use for plants that are already established or that are coming, because you can foliar feed plants, so that you feed the leaf. I’ll go around the garden about every two weeks and sprinkle over the top of all my plants so that the foliage will absorb all the nutrients. You can feed topically, and you can also feed from underneath, but when you feed from underneath, it’s before you plant.

What do you use for natural pest and disease management?

My fingers…. There’s the green cabbage worm that comes from that little white butterfly or moth, and they dance around each other and are very pretty if you don’t know how destructive they can be. But all butterflies and moths lay their eggs generally on vegetation, because they need to lay their eggs where, when they hatch, there is immediately a food source. So, my relationship with butterflies, much as I appreciate them in the cycle of life and how beautiful they are, I’m always like, oh, there’s a butterfly…. Early on, I couldn’t handle the worms, they were so gross to me, so I would ask my neighbor to come over and help, but now I pick off my own cabbage worms. I collect them into a little container and bring them over to the chickens—they go crazy for them.

Any tips for beginners on what vegetables might be easier to grow?

Well, tomatoes are weeds, they’ll grow anywhere. Beans are very easy to grow. If you grow pole beans, they need a trellis, but if you grow bush beans, they only grow about a foot or more off the ground. But I like whenever I can grow something on a pole because it makes the harvesting that much easier—I don’t have to bend down.

Can you talk a little bit more about what it means to grow something on a pole and how you do it?

Well, if you look out at this small round garden, you see three metal poles, about six feet tall. I run strings from the top of the pole that go right into the ground with little stakes, like a little tepee, and I plant the bean seeds at the base of the string, right where it goes into the ground. So when the beans start growing up, they have the string to connect to and they just kind of grow. It’s an amazing thing, really, that they know to climb this string, but that’s just their growth habit, it’s to grow up and then around. You can grow pole beans on any kind of trellis you want, but this system I really like because it’s pretty and I can pull it up and put it in the next spot next year, it’s easy. I don’t use this technique for other things that climb. Peas will climb—you can get bush peas, but I think there are only one or two varieties that can grow in a bushy sort of way, most peas are vines. For those I use just basic fence posts and fencing. A tomato is a vine too. I came up with a trellis system for tomatoes that is, again, poles, with fencing, the fencing is four-by-four, so there is a big space between, and you can pick the tomatoes from any side. You tie the tomatoes up to the fence, because I find that tomato cages are not big enough for my tomatoes—my tomatoes will grow six or seven feet tall.

Other things to be on the lookout for?

Well, there are some types of nutrient deficiencies, like tomato blossom-end rot, where the end of the tomato will start rotting, it starts to turn black at the bottom, and that’s often associated with a deficiency in calcium. And then there are different kinds of fungal things that attack tomatoes, you have early blights and late blights, and you can get a lot of organic sprays that will address those issues. I just don’t like using sprays. Occasionally, when the caterpillar worm gets out of hand and I can’t keep up with it, I’ll use an organic spray called BT (Bacillus thuringlensis), which is a bacterium that, when it gets on the worm, sort of disintegrates the worm. But when it comes to bigger worms, like the tomato hornworm—they are the size of your thumb—I plant a lot of flowers in the garden as pollinators because I want to bring in good wasps and bees, and there’s a particular wasp that will lay its eggs on that tomato hornworm, and the eggs, when they hatch, will eat the worm….

Can you talk a bit more about planting for pollinators?

I put so many flowers in that garden, it’s like a row of vegetables, a row of flowers, a row of vegetables, a row of flowers. I have as many bugs as I can possibly attract, because there’s no way I am going to keep up with all of them, so I need good bugs, and in order to get them, you need to plant stuff that will be attractive them, and often the flowers will attract them. I love zinnia because, people don’t realize, you put the seed in the ground, and it grows into a beautiful plant that can be three or four feet tall that blooms beautifully and is so easy to grow. Some people wouldn’t think so because the flower can be so big! I plant a lot of different varieties of zinnia in the garden, in every color imaginable! I try to have as much variety and color as possible.

Do deer like zinnias?

Deer like everything, even the things they are not supposed to like. I have a single strand baited wire that’s electrified, two and a half feet off the ground. People, when they think of deer fencing, usually think six to eight feet tall, but this system is really ingenious, because I don’t like looking at fencing, and I certainly don’t want an eight-foot fence around 5,700 square feet of garden back there, and then to maintain fencing, it’s a job. This system is such that 2½ feet off the ground is kind of where the deer’s nose is always foraging, so it’s down, and there it is. They’ll find the wire because I’ll grease it with a little bit of peanut butter. So, it’s a single strand baited wire, and they’ll sniff the wire, or they’ll lick the wire, they’ll get a shock, and they never come back, and I swear they tell all their friends, I really do! So that’s something that is very important in this part of the world because the deer are prolific, they want to eat and, like us, they like variety!

Have you found that certain species / varieties do well in your area and why do you think that is?

Well, the Butternut squash that we had. I plant lots of different winter squashes, but it’s the Butternut and the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin that survive. Every year I’ll plant at least four varieties, because I just can’t resist, and I think that the Butternut and Long Island are somehow able to resist the bug, which is a borer. It’s a bug that bores into the stem of the squash plants, lays its eggs, and after that there are all sort of worms in there. It’s always about laying eggs. The squash plant, the stalk itself, is hollow, so the borer bores into the center of the stalk and thinks it’s found a new home. How these animals know these things, I don’t know, but somehow, they know. For years I had a beautiful asparagus patch, and then I started getting the asparagus beetle, so sometimes it takes a while for the bug to find the plant that it really likes. Now that I have this asparagus beetle, I am fazing out the asparagus patch, and I planted some asparagus in this little peace pole garden, which is doing beautifully. Either they haven’t found it yet, or because that garden is all wildflowers—echinacea, which is native, and black-eyed Susan—they kind of camouflage it. But lately I get the best asparagus out of that garden.

How can one support biodiversity in one’s garden?

Plant as many varieties of vegetables and flowers, that’s really all it is. And you must give everything enough space to grow. I’m learning—over the years I’ve gotten better at it, because I used to grow very close. Even though I have a huge garden, I used to plant everything very close, because you have this tiny seedling. So, over the years I’ve just learned, this plant needs three feet by three feet, so measure the three feet, although you can plant very intensively. My cousin has a very small garden, she lives in Westchester, and she’ll grow forty tomato plants in a tiny little garden. I have a huge garden and I put up two 25-foot trellises, and I only plant eight tomato plants on one 25-foot trellis. Her plants tend to grow very tall and spindly, because they’re trying to get to the sun and they’re being shaded out by their neighbors, so they’re growing as tall and as fast as they can, racing after the sun. Plants adapt.

Any tips on dealing with critters like moles and voles?

I have a problem with moles and voles because I give them a really good environment. I mulch with a layer of newspaper and hay, so they can kind of walk underneath all that, they don’t even need to dig all that much. So, I noticed over the years I’ve gotten more moles and voles and they destroy everything from underneath. Now what I hope for are predatorial birds, like owls, and I have an owl box in the woods. People can put up things like a nesting box to attract them, and the more food sources there are, the more animals come in.

What about poison ivy?

Really the only way to get rid of it is to pull it out. When I see it in the garden, that’s what I do. Otherwise, there is poison ivy everywhere, and I just clip it back, it’s so established. Sometimes, if I see that hairy vine going up a tree, I’ll cut it at the base, but that just means that the vine will start spreading out. But with one of these invasive plants, Japanese Knotweed, I saw a patch, and thought, I’ve got to get rid of it, so I dug it up, and the next year it came right back, as if I’d done nothing. The following year I cut it and put a few drops of peppermint essential oil on the stem as close to the ground as I could, and it didn’t like it. I’ve used peppermint oil in the garden to detract the moles and voles, because a lot of animals don’t really like peppermint oil. But one year I overdid it and I killed all the stuff that I was growing, and when I saw that I thought, hmmm, peppermint kills. So now I order peppermint oil in big containers, pour it into smaller bottles and carry around a dropper, and drop it onto cut stems of things I don’t want to grow. It was a totally accidental discovery.

Do you compost?

I used to compost before I got chickens. Now the chickens compost for me. I put all my food scraps into the chicken yard, and they turn it over for me. So, I don’t have to compost anymore. I go and dig up the dirt in their yard and it’s black and beautiful. If you’re thinking of getting chickens, I think to be fair to them, you need to have at least four, because they are a flock animal, so you don’t really want to have just one or two. I think four is a good number to start, and no rooster, unless you want to hatch out your own birds. But you can get birds anywhere in the United States, so you don’t really need to do that.

What about watering?

Well, as I said, I mulch with newspaper and hay to retard weed growth and to maintain moisture, so I find I really don’t have to water that much. Last year we were in a drought, we didn’t have rain for two months, so I did a little bit of watering—if I had done more, my plants probably would have been a little happier. I water when I first transplant something into the ground, because it needs to maintain moisture, and then I do very little. If I see something that looks like it needs water, I’ll water it, but it’s all hand watering. Last year the extreme conditions made me think about doing some sprinkler watering, and I have a sprinkler that I can use. But if you think about it, what we call a good rain is when it rains all day, so a sprinkler, when you think of a rainfall…. But even last year I didn’t use that much water.

Anything else to share?

Every year I have an experiment crop, I grow something I’ve never grown before. I love eating out of my back yard—living off the land is what I’ve always liked to do—but, really, my passion is watching something grow, and when I’ve never seen something grow, I’m like, how does that grow? Last year it was oats, how do oats grow? I had about a fifteen-foot row, and it’s a beautiful plant, but of course the squirrels figured that out, so the squirrels attacked my oats before I got to eat one.

Any special recipes that you grow for?

Well, the Butternut squash soup, it’s not a special recipe, it’s just whatever I throw in the blender with the roasted squash. I am a very basic cook, I can cook anything, but I’m not a gourmet cook. I like to eat a lot of greens so kale salad to me is like heaven. I have a kale salad that I make with the corn that I grow. I cut up the kale really fine and I put in the corn and dress it with lemon and lime. One year I had nine different varieties of kale.

Any tips for people?

Just do it. The way I’ve learned is by doing it. I’m not a book learner, I’m an experiential learner, and because I’m so fascinated by growth habits and germination, when I see a seed pop through the ground, it’s so exciting! So basically, what I do is I just do! I’m constantly experimenting, because I don’t know what’s going to happen, so why not just try it and see what happens? I’m really a Let’s see what happens kind of person, and that’s how I’ve done the whole garden—let’s plant it this way this year and see what happens!

Final musings?

You know, a garden is the most unnatural thing there is, because in the natural world, plants grow where they grow, where they like growing. They find a place, or a bird drops a seed somewhere, or a root takes hold somewhere. It finds where it likes to grow and it grows there. In a garden, you’re saying: I’m going to put you there and now you are going to grow. And the plant is saying: well, I don’t really like it here, so I’m going to do what I’m going to do, but am I going to thrive here? Maybe not! So gardening is really a very unnatural thing to do, and you sort of have to recognize that going into it. I used to, in the very beginning, say: well, let’s see what happens if I throw some seeds over here, and throw some seeds over there… but it doesn’t work. You don’t take a handful of seeds in nature—I mean, you can broadcast things wildly, and maybe one in those 500 seeds will germinate, but I really think in gardening you have to be OK with trial and error. You have to spend time looking at what’s happening and try to encourage growth. Using your eyes in the garden is important, and spending time—it’s really about spending time. The more time you spend somewhere, the more you see. But you’re never going to be able to control it entirely.

(January 27, 2023)

Véronique Firkusny is a literary translator as well as a diction coach for singers and serves as the Executive Director of the Avery Fisher Artist Program. She is on WS/C’s Advisory Board.