Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 15

The Ethics of Care and Place

More and more support for the way our relationshops are changing and must change even more in the natural and built environments. And by extension how our gardens play a key role in this change.

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Business Rambling from the Prairie

Our dream is to run a small, boutique prairie nursery with local ecotype seeds (100 or less species). We'll have a 1/2 acre display garden that's highly designed and will be a destination in its own right, as well as idea generating. Out back will be a prairie. We may have a field solely for generating prairie seed. An artist or two will stay in small cabins in residency for a week or two at a time, helping give prairie another artistic voice. All of it will be tied together with events, acti...

Images of a Nebraska Winter's Soul

I'm in love with winter. Head over heals. "Brown is a color, too" is something we should hear much more in the gardening world. Summer gardens don't do it for me anymore. Maybe in winter I enjoy the peace more, the cloistered silence that is perhaps the first reason we have to create a garden -- it's an escape from overt thought, the world out there, the din of the mind and the business of life. Winter gardens show me the base structure, the heart of the matter, the absence which is the fulle...

Stages of Environmental Grief -- Deep Love & Loss

In my presentations on the ethics of designed landscapes in a time of climate change and the 6th mass extinction, I make my way to what I consider the heart of the matter: that facing the reality of how we live on the planet is not healthy or sustainable. Immediately, this can become for some an indictment, judgement, or even sermon in the most traditional Baptist way -- which is unfortunate and not my intent. We should be aware of our role on the planet, how our land and fossil fuel use is l...

Poll -- Why Can't We Have 100% Native Plant Gardens?

This is a genuine research question as I work on a book; it's not me baiting anyone. I'd love to hear your genuine reasons, those you've heard as well as those you believe, in why native plant gardens aren't practical, possible, or desired. Or whatever. I want to hear it all![image error]

Love Winter, Love the Miracle of Earth

Stop dreaming about spring and summer and get your head in the game, back into life. I've found that in those all-to-rare periods in my life when I am fully here and now, everything seems more balanced, wholesome, fresh, and empowering. Embrace winter, which teaches you patience, silence, reflection, and a whole new realm of beauty and overcoming that the other seasons can't. And when you live winter fully, those other seasons have a deeper resonance when you get to them. I feel blessed to ex...

Embrace Native Plants & Redress Climate Change

I've been waiting for western religion to get on the climate change bandwagon, seeing creation care as a more prominent moral & ethical issue. Love seeing Mr. Pope stand up. As climate change increases extinction rates for plants and animals, how we manage private and public landscapes is a direct response to our moral and ethical beliefs toward ourselves, one another, and all life. Choosing native plants in our gardens is certainly one way to celebrate life, to become empowered, and to c...

Picture Perfect Holiday

I was in Minnesota over Christmas and just as we were settling down to unwrap gifts winter arrived. While my family ate lunch I headed out for a walk in the woods where the snow hitting the trees created a simultaneous cocoon and unceasing echo chamber. I was in heaven.


The creek had only one place where water was flowing, a steady trickle of a dozen feet or so that vanished underneath the ice:


The next day 4" of snow covered the prairie -- the grasses created this lovely effect:

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Novel Ecosystems and a Deep Love of Place

Novel ecosystems -- places so altered by humans they can't support the native life that once thrived there, so a mix of exotic and native move in and create a new ecosystem. Let's get one thing clear: nature no longer exists. With methane and CO2 emissions there's not one place on earth that hasn't been substantially altered, but to say that humans have always been altering the earth is a bit of a false argument for accepting and adapting to novel ecosystems. The most often used example is Na...

Larry Weaner Preaches

I've enjoyed the free online December issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine -- and primarily for a piece on Larry Weaner. I did not go to school for landscape design or horticulture, I've never worked on prairie restoration projects, but every time I go to a client's house and look at their landscape this is what I think:

When Weaner first looks at a site, he asks himself, “If I d...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>