The Art Garden, Mississippi Museum of Art

Edgeland Excerpts: Is Native Purity a Viable Option?

Quoted from Dr. Colin Meurk: “But, what is “wild?” There is an appetite again for “rewinding” and using “cues for care” (Nassauer) in urban environments to make this acceptable. The niche envelopes can be as surely defined in these contrived ‘wild’ urban environments as in the real wild. With many environmental stress/disturbance combinations, native species will individually survive by chance at some points and places, in combination with some (weakened) exotic species, then reproduce and eventually find their ‘natural’ position in the gradients provided as self-sustaining populations. That may be the future of many lowland, open habitat herbs. Then invertebrates, birds and lizards will find these plants and establish their ‘natural’ interactions. Meta-populations of such plants may form on roofs, walls, pavements, rock gardens, lawns etc. These habitats can be seen as forming an archipelago in urban environments!"

Dr Colin Meurk is a senior ecologist at Landcare Research, New Zealand. Quotation from Global Roundtable Green Form and Function versus Green Nativism at the Nature of Cities.com (http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2015/11/05/green-form-function-versus-green-nativism-in-changing-urban-spaces-full-of-novel-ecosystems-and-natural-assemblages-is-native-purity-a-viable-option/)

It's Better to Leave Your Leaves

Experts from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) reported that it's definitely better to leave your leaves, where they lay. Gardeners and landscapers know that plants grow better in mulched beds. Decomposing leaves contribute nutrients back to the soil, screen sunlight from hitting plants roots in summer, and protect from moisture loss due to evapotranspiration. But wildlifers are interested in the ground habitat that leaves provide. NWF says that worms, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and many insects depend upon leaf litter in which to lay eggs or hide. Randall Hitchin, University of Washington Arboretum, says he rarely rakes leaves because "it changes the habitat, and makes it unfriendly for (insects)"(Dan Cassuto, KING 5 news, Nov. 3, 2015).  Areas that are currently in lawn grasses can be easily converted to planting beds by simply raking the leaves to areas underneath trees or around shrubs. Thick layers of leaves will choke out the existing turf and become soil habitat in no time. And the surrounding trees and shrubs (and critters) will immediately benefit.