Cold Moon Newsletter

Hi Plant People,

Happy Cold Moon! Happy New Year! It has been a long time since I wrote a newsletter. In my defense, it’s been the busiest stint of my life thus far and it’s hard to focus on gardens with the world such as it is. Still, somehow, I did a TED talk!!!!!!

It was wild. It won’t post till spring, but it was one of the most difficult and rewarding things I’ve ever done. It’s so much work, like climbing a mountain, but fascinating to take the single thing you are most passionate about, and drill it down to a tiny kernel, fit to fly across the world in a 10 minute package. I worked with brilliant people and learned more about public speaking than I had in my decades of practice. Did you know it’s best to make eye contact with each person for half a sentence? It’s true. None of it would have been possible without the support of 1000 people, so many of you! Sending me photos and listening to me practice. I am forever grateful.

And not only did I not die or fall off the stage, the crowd went wild! It was like a movie. Which is to say, there are SO MANY folks out there who are excited to do this work but have not yet been exposed to it. Many of us lecture to gardeners. But there are millions of not-yet-gardeners who we need to reach. How do we get to them? Let’s discuss.

GARDEN NOTES

Ok, I’m hijacking this section to talk politics. If you just want garden info, you can jump below. But how can you? Gardens are always inherently political. But sometimes they can feel frivolous. It’s hard to think how gardens can help stop the massacre in Palestine. I’m inspired by the statement put out by UK gardeners calling for a ceasefire and an end to the siege. Hundreds of people have signed, all of our favorite designers among them.

We need a US Gardeners’ call to action for Palestine. Let’s make it happen. Pro-justice, anti-war gardeners, please reply to this email if you’re interested in joining a working group. Please share with folks who might want to help.

RESOURCE SPOTLIGHT

• The USDA released a new hardiness zone map to reflect our warming world. Most of us went up a half zone. These maps are helpful but of limited utility, as they track averages of low temperatures, so plant-killing cold spikes are lower than the zone. The maps are also not predictive, they represent what has already occurred.

• A new book on the epic saga of Milkweed is out from Xerces Director Eric Lee-Mäder. The Milkweed Lands is both gorgeous and fascinating, detailing each stage of the plant’s life and illustrating the wildlife it supports. I love how he describes the dynamic between monarch and milkweeds as a “partnership” rather than the all-too-familiar “arms race.” Margaret Roach did an overview in the NYT and then really got into the weeds in her podcast.

• Nerds rejoice! Torrey Botanical Society hosted Harvey Ballard for a lecture on violets of eastern North America. Dr Ballard finished a new taxonomic treatment of Violaceae of the region this year. Dense but marvelous.

• Similarly, a new phylogeny of Solidago was compiled and WOW, there is this totally beautiful phylogenic tree that is worthy of framing. Even if you’re not a specialist, it’s cool to see how the species evolved.

• 2023’s Beth Chatto Symposium is now available online for free! It’s the usual rockstars of UK gardening (Sarah Price, Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart Smith), with newer voices (for me) discussing climate change, insect decline, and rewilding. Dave Goulson actually talks native plants! In the UK!

IN THE NEWS

• OK people, it’s time to talk about Martha. She posted an IG picture of her woodland, just smothered in Euonymus alatus, lauding the beauty of its fall color to her 2 million followers and extolling how it “covered the forest floor brilliantly.” Eco-minded folks sprang into action! Comments ran the gamut from “@snoopdogg come get your girl. She needs an ecology lesson” to “Invasive plants are NOT a good thing” to offers of free help to care for her land. I think everyone is hoping to lure her to the light, recognizing what a powerful force she could be if she decided to promote landscape stewardship. But… what if she doesn’t? What if she is just totally out of touch? Is that the worst thing? Our movement is au courant. What we do is a break from traditional formal horticulture, and it is hard to think of a better figurehead for that old style than Martha. So maybe it’s ok for all of that to just be…passé? Maybe we recognize that she and Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh care more about anachronistic ideas of beauty and their own personal brands than they do about actually taking care of land? There’s always going to be those people who refuse to evolve and sometimes noting the distance between them and yourself can be a good measure of progress.

• Just how hip are we exactly? Fashion, baby. Hermes hired gardeners to create an indoor autumn meadow for their Paris Fashion Week show this fall. Designed by Luciano Giubbilei and built by Jonny Bruce, it was stunningly beautiful, totally wasteful, and filled with North America’s chicest residents: Deschampsia, Echinacea, and Gaura. Work.

• And if that were not a healthy measure of how much Hermes loves gardens, an heir to the brand, billionaire Nicolas Puech, has begun the process to formerly adopt his middle-aged gardener and bequeath him half the fortune. The family is suing of course. And who knows what sort of plants this gardener was growing… We’ll have to wait for the telenovela.

• Ecological gardening strategies were all over the news this fall. The WSJ wrote a piece on “the new luxury” of a rewilded yard, featuring beautiful photos of a Colorado garden by Kevin Philip Williams. And the Washington Post gave instructions for its fancy readers to craft and deploy seed bombs. Meanwhile every single major paper ran a piece on “leaving the leaves.” The NYT reminds us that “90% of moth species attach themselves to leaves and spend the winter in cocoons buried among the foliage.” The WSJ focused on “leaf thieves,” stealing the paper bags of their neighbors for mulching. And Dana Milbank ties leaving leaves into the inevitable miseries of the insect apocalypse in the Washington Post.

• Seriously awesome news alert! NY’s Gov Hochul signed the Birds and Bees Protection Act! The bill is the first in the nation to prohibit the use of soy, corn, and wheat seeds treated with neonicotinoids. It’s an incredible accomplishment that will have major environmental impacts, while also being the absolute lowest bar given how harmful AND ineffective coating seeds in pesticides has been shown to be. Once the ban is fully enacted, it will eliminate 80-90% of the neonics entering New York’s environment. The hope, of course, is that more states will enact similar legislation and the ban will spread. THANK YOU to those of you who made this happen. XO.

• I’ve read this piece on winter birds and native plants three times. Shannon Currey details which birds use which plants and how. For example, “Hermit Thrushes eschew their usual ground foraging for worms and arthropods and venture into the [shrub] layer in winter. There, they subsist mainly on the nutrient-dense berries of shrubs like winterberry holly and flowering dogwood.” It pairs well with Tovah Martin’s comprehensive piece in the Washington Post on the most important winter berries for birds. She writes that “native berries …provide the high fat and calorie content that birds need” while exotics are “like fast food: prevalent, but not a good fit for native songbirds’ nutritional needs.” Fantastic species lists. Highly recommended.

• Hilarious win for urban ecology folks: larger-brained bees seem better able to adapt to city life than their smaller brethren. This migration is increasingly important, as a new study shows just how toxic rural areas have become for bees, impacting their microbiomes. While less diverse, “urban areas support elevated levels of microbial diversity and more complex networks between microbes and plants than rural areas.”

• We can add “conservation gardening” to the ever growing list of terms to describe the work we do. Whatever we call it, how cool to see actual research on the practice published in Nature? German researchers took data on rare species, garden-worthiness, and commercial availability, and put it all in to an app that helps gardeners decide and locate plants for their work. It’s a handy tool that we have versions of in the US. This one seems better but also less accessible. I do love the of lists rare plants for balconies!

• Life is a constantly shifting thing. Every flower reveals a relationship with the pollinators and the environment around those plants over time. We can sometimes read those dynamics on the faces of the flowers themselves. A new study out of Paris looked at Pansy populations who had lived in pollinator “impoverished” environments for 20 years. Modern pansies had smaller corollas, less nectar, and fewer nectar guides, as they evolve towards “selfing” as a reproductive strategy. Bees of course preferred the older flowers. Study here.

• OK! Insect Bad News Roundup: We all know by now how ecologically harmful honey bees can be, but new research has documented honeybees physically stealing the collected pollen of other foraging bee species. US coverage of the ecological damage of pesticides tends of focus on neonics, but a new study out of the EU shows that “less harmful” pesticides are also reducing bumblebee colony health across the continent. And a massive study in Nature has found that arthropods (insects+) with abundant past populations also show the strongest average declines. This is a big deal: while most land dwelling insects are declining at a rate of 1.5% / year, the abundant species who feed so many other organisms, are closer to 8%!!!

• Whew! Thank goodness for Camille T. Dungy bringing hope that gardens can help solve problems in the world. In this BBG interview, she connects gardening and activism “I am doing something literally in my own backyard—and that gives me a sense of accomplishment and participation that then emboldens me and strengthens me to move further.” Gardens, she writes, allow us “to see beauty, and see hope and potential and revitalization and growth and development.”

• Dan Pearson wrote about his new sand garden, which features 6” of sand on top of the clay loam that stops him from growing many water-sensitive plants. It reminds me a bit of Sara Price’s Chelsea garden this year, with the defining feature being the distance between plants. Dan tells us this is a Japanese concept called “Ma” which refers to “the space between.”

• As if lawns weren’t lame enough, a new study found that two-stroke turf equipment released more than 68,000 tons of smog-forming nitrous oxides, roughly the same as 30 million cars, and as much carbon dioxide as the city of LA. Thank goodness that adorable pigs are taking direct action. Javelinas in Arizona have been destroying golf courses, hunting the worms beneath them, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. No wild pigs in your neighborhood? Margaret Roach and Todd Bittner detail turf alternatives in the NYT.

• This is a heartwarming piece in the NYT about NY-ers getting things done. Passionate monarch advocates worked with this awesome guy at the DOT to protect milkweed patches along the highway and everyone, even "overbearing" butterfly ladies (cough cough) ended up working together to support wildlife.

• There is no longer any excuse for allowing a cat to roam outside. A new study in Nature Communications found that free roaming / feral cats kill more than 2000 species, about half of them birds (2.4 BILLION in the US alone), followed by reptiles (including BABY SEA TURTLES) and then mammals. If these stats fail to move you, please consider the wellbeing of the cats themselves: the lifespan of an indoor cat is 10-15 years. Outside? 2-5. Catrin Einhorn lays it all out in the NYT.

• Gardens Illustrated interviewed “superstar” Piet Oudolf with a focus on his history. Always poetic, he says, “a garden is not a painting, but a performance in time. I put plants on a stage and let them perform. You can’t control the planting, just conduct it.”

• Even birds are impacted by environmental racism. The history of redlining is reflected in the biodiversity of our cities. In 2020, a landmark study (well worth reading) illustrated how redlined neighborhoods have less parks, more highways, worse air, and therefore vastly different flora and fauna that whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. Literally, bird species are racially segregated. The NYT published a fantastic long read on the researchers working to merge justice, equality, and biodiversity. “It’s very much a colonial perspective to think about humans and wildlife as separate. We need to start thinking about humans and wildlife together in the landscape and mitigate things that will help both.”

• Congratulations plant people! You’ve made it to the end. If you’ve hung out with me for 5 minutes, you likely already know that certain flowers can pick up the vibrations of their pollinators and up their nectar sugar concentration accordingly. This fun Economist piece reviews all recent research into plant “hearing,” from leaves that can identify the vibrations of a caterpillar’s chewing, to roots that grow towards the sound of running water. It’s fascinating how quickly this topic went from “hocus pocus” 20 years ago, to “of course plants can interpret vibrations” now. I love to think what discoveries the next decades will reveal.

UPCOMING EVENTS

• New Directions in the American Landscape

  January 10-11 & 17-18

  Virtual and in person

  This might be my favorite conference. For 35 years, they have curated high-level lectures that push professionals forward. I’m looking forward to speaking on the movement of ecological horticulture, where we are and where we’re going.

• Plant-o-Rama!

  January 30

  In person with virtual options

  If you’re an NYC gardener, you are already well familiar with this bedrock of a conference. It’s a party. There’s a jobs fair. All your friends go. What more could you want? I’m not speaking but Claudia West is! As well as many other local rockstars. Hope to see you there!

• ELA 30th Anniversary Conference

  February 21 - 22

  Virtual

  What a total thrill to keynote this special conference for the ELA alongside Camille T Dungy. The ELA has been formative for so many of us, providing both entry level and professional garden info. Are you a member? You should be. I’ll be speaking on the recent and hard-won explosion in ecological horticulture, with a focus on goals for the future.

• Best Practices for Pollinators Summit

  February 27 - 29

  Virtual

  This looks like a one stop shop to manage land and design gardens for pollinators. I’m not speaking but Heather Holm is, as well as like half of the Xerces Society. Amazing.

www.rebeccamcmackin.com