A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

HORSE MANURE

&

HOT AIR

There is a game called “What Doesn’t Belong” which is often used by teachers to teach children to categorize ideas, objects, or just about anything.  Mostly it teaches children to think.  Controversial radio talk show host, Don Imus, regularly included a version of the game in one of his show’s satirical bits.  Needless to say, when the game was played on the Don Imus show, some self-righteous politician, businessman, or celebrity was getting skewered. 

So here’s a landscaping version of “What Doesn’t Belong”.   What doesn’t belong and why:  A.  The horse  B.  The internal combustion engine  C.  The IBM Selectric typewriter   and D.  The irrigated bluegrass lawn.  ---Of course it’s a trick question.

It would be comforting to think that this argument is going to be settled by reason.  A look at history, or more currently at C-span, would suggest otherwise.   I’m placing my hopes squarely on the side of the darker forces that have always driven changes in human behavior—greed and self-interest.   For reasons completely unrelated to writing this column I recently did some fairly extensive internet research on alternative energy technologies.   I wouldn’t sell my oil stock yet (as if I actually had any), but I suspect that our current “pollution” problem (if it is one) will be solved by a surprisingly rapid incorporation of alternative energy technologies into our world-wide human economies.   If you don’t think that’s possible, just ask
 

Previous Articles

A Loooooong Winter
March 10

Just Dirt March 18

2009 Articles

2008 Articles

2007 Articles

2006 Articles
 

The topic today is actually sustainable landscaping.  But I’ve noticed that the phrase “sustainable landscaping” tends to cause an immediate and almost universal response among Wyobraskans of yawning and eyes glazing over with boredom.   So instead of taking the subject on directly, I thought it might be better to tell an interesting story that I only recently came across. 

In the last few decades of the 19^th century, large cities in Europe and America faced a huge pollution problem.  The problem was so severe that many social planners predicted the downfall of large cities unless some solution could be found to clean up the problem.  The pollution was horse manure.  At the turn of the century in New York City horse manure was piled everywhere—in windrows along streets and in large piles on vacant lots.   In the summertime, the stench and the swarming flies made life in the city almost unbearable.  It was an unsustainable circumstance, but no one ever directly solved the problem.   The solution came out of nowhere.  It was the internal combustion engine and the “horseless carriage” that it powered.   Within 20 years of the introduction of the first automobiles the seemingly insurmountable problem of horse manure in cities had virtually disappeared. 

Now, of course, the internal combustion engine—the icon of fossil fuel consumption with all of its related problems has  environmentalists, climatologists, and pretty much everyone else on the planet embroiled in a heated discussion of its sustainability.   Many scientists and most environmentalists say that the evidence is clear that the earth’s climate is heating up as a direct result of the carbon pouring into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels in automobiles and power plants.  Those with vested interests in the continued operation of automobiles and power plants aren’t convinced.   And if the stench of piles or horse manure in the summertime coupled with swarms of flies wasn’t enough motivation for our recent ancestors to change their lifestyle it’s unlikely that something as abstract as global warming or climate change will change human behavior barely 100 years later. 

yourself, “When was the last time you used an IBM Selectric typewriter?”
So now you’re thinking that it’s “D. The irrigated bluegrass lawn” that doesn’t belong.   Well, you’re wrong—it’s “C.  The IBM Selectric typewriter”.   Because, the irrigated bluegrass lawn, like the horse and the internal combustion engine are all aspects of our modern human lifestyle that turned out to be “unsustainable”.    There’s that yawn-inducing, eye-glazing word again.   But here’s the point.  I don’t think that there is a rational argument that will convince any homeowner to change from a traditional irrigated bluegrass lawn-landscape to a “sustainable” landscape.    The only motivations strong enough to convince homeowners to make that change will be the motivations that historically have always worked—greed and self-interest.   

Fortunately for us all, greed and self interest are on the side of changing to sustainable landscapes and away from the traditional irrigated blue-grass lawn-landscape.  There’s the issue of rapidly rising water bills in many Wyobraska communities.  Those bills are rising, by the way, not as a result of bureaucratic incompetence, but because of the increasing difficulty of finding and maintaining wells with water that is pure and clean enough to drink.   The volume of water used to irrigate lawns in the summertime is generally 30-40% of all the water used in a municipal water system.  You don’t need to be a rocket-scientist to see where that circumstance is headed.  

But just as the solution to the horse manure problem came in the form of a device that represented overwhelming but unrelated advantages to the horse, the sustainable landscape will offer similar overwhelming advantages of greater beauty and ornamental interest, greater diversity of birds, butterflies, and other wildlife, and less work and expense for maintenance.   Those are far more powerful reasons to make your landscape “sustainable”. 

Take another gulp of coffee—it should stop the yawning.

Don’t forget—tonight (Thursday, March 25th) at 7:00 p.m. the Midwest Theater is showing the movie “Dirt”—it’s a great movie for experienced and aspiring gardeners—and yardeners—alike.