“When it comes to the environment, our fates are the same”. FY11 “Green” report card for DC

The District Department of the Environment recently released their FY11 Accomplishments Report which lists the many ways that Washington DC government is working hard with citizens and organizations to keep DC “clean, vibrant and healthy for future generations.” It’s another one of those documents that I really wish I could publish here, in its entirety. But since I can’t, I encourage you to download the document and at least skim it to learn about all of the great things going on in DC.

Here are a few excerpts:

Green Together [teamwork, friends and funds]
Individuality defines who we are. We are unique. One in billions. Yet, the billions of us have one thing in common: our planet earth. When it comes to the environment, our fates are the same. We share the sun. We breathe the same air. Whether we believe the “butterfly affect” – a theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether a distant butterfly flaps it’s wings – as hard fact science or just poetic metaphor, we, as a collective force, have much more influence over climate change, for example, than we could ever imagine.

• The District is #1 per capita in the amount of LEED certified and ENERGY STAR buildings.
  
• The District uses more green power than any other jurisdiction in the US EPA Green Power Community.
  
• The District has the largest bicycle share program in the country and is second in the country in the number of commuters who walk to work and take transit.
  
• The DDOE WPD's RiverSmart team had an outstanding FY11. TheRiverSmart Schools team worked with five District public schools to identify, plan, and construct low impact development (LID) retrofits and outdoor learning gardens, and funded numerous teacher trainings on effective use of schoolyard gardens in the school's curriculum.
  
• Through its grantees—the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Casey Trees, and DC Greenworks—DDOE installed 575 rain barrels, permeable pavers on 14 driveways and patios, and 180 rain gardens; and planted 151 native plant gardens and 681 trees. Collectively the practices installed in FY11 through RiverSmart Homes are treating 21 acres of land in the District.

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Trees Tame Stormwater - cool interactive map

Okay. I know I said I was going to quit writing about trees for awhile, but sometimes trees - and great topics about trees - just sprout right up and can't be ignored.

 I found this cool interactive map on the Arbor Day Foundation website that shows you the benefits that planting trees has on preventing stormwater runoff. 

You can use the slider at the top of the graphic to show the difference that trees play in a landscape.

 As the site explains: Rain refreshes the land and nourishes the green landscape. But as houses, stores, schools, roads and parking lots spread and natural tree cover is lost, so is the absorbing effect of vegetation and soil. The welcome rain becomes costly stormwater runoff. Without the benefit of trees and vegetated infrastructure, waterways are polluted as oils, heavy metal particles and other harmful substances are washed away. Fish and wildlife suffer, drinking water becomes expensive or impossible to reclaim, property values are reduced, and our living environment is degraded.

Placing the slider at the far left, with few trees, shows a fairly bland landscape with popup boxes that explain the various consequences such as overwhelmed sewer systems. Moving the slider to the right not only shows a beautifully, wooded town, but also explains many of the benefits that I listed in my previous post of today, 20 More Benefits of Trees Hop on over to the Arbor Day Foundation website and check out the map. They also have beautiful pdf versions of the files that can be downloaded and printed.

10 Very Human Benefits of Trees

I’ve been writing a few posts on trees lately to go along with this month’s poll (see sidebar). I’ve learned a lot of great things that are worth sharing.

Here is my list of:

10 Reasons that Trees are Good for Humans.

(Sources listed at bottom of post)

1. Trees help children concentrate: Children who have parks and trees to play around concentrate better. MC

• Children have been shown to retain more of the information taught in schools if they spend some of their time outdoors in green spaces. BG
• Girls with a home view of nature score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline (DDOT)
•  Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms in children are relieved after spending time in nature; the greener the setting, the more the relief (DDOT)

2. Trees reduce stress: Trees, community gardens, and parks can help reduce physiological stress and aesthetically improve an area. MC

• It has been shown that exposure to trees can decrease blood pressure and reduce muscle tension FCV

3. Trees lower UV-radiation: Trees provide shade from harmful ultraviolet radiation, particularly in playgrounds, schoolyards, and picnic areas. MC UV radiation is what causes skin cancer

4. Trees reduce crime:  The psychological benefits of an urban forest can reduce property crime by 48% and violent crime by 56%! Dc.gov Aggression and violence are reduced with nature nearby (DDOT)

5. Trees strengthen neighborhoods: When neighborhoods are full of trees, residents spend more time outside mingling with neighbors—building personal ties, stronger communities, and a greater sense of well being. MC

6. Trees help heal - Hospital patients have been shown to recover from surgery more quickly when their hospital room offered a view of trees. BG

7. Trees provide lumber to build things - Downed trees can be used for more than wood chip production. Depending on the tree size, species, and how it is removed, the wood might be re-used for a new purpose such as art or furniture. Think outside the chipper! MC Trees also provide firewood and kindling

8. Trees Calm Traffic - The Institute of Transport Studies at England’s University of Leeds has found that street tree plantings have a traffic calming effect. Tree lined streets act as psycho perceptive measures, which subtly slows traffic and encourages speed limits of 25, 30 or 35 mph by making roadways appear narrower. PT

9. Trees provide food – almost too obvious to list, but so important to all of us!

10. Trees can be planted by one person but benefit many

Sources: Casey Trees (CT)
Montgomery County Department of the Environment (MC)
District Department of Transportation (DDOT)
District Department of the Environment (DDOE)
Fairfax County Virginia (FCV)
DC.gov
District Department of Transportation (DDOT)
Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDNR)
Plano Texas (PT)
Bowling Green Kentucky (BG)

The Woods in Your Backyard – a Workshop

Although this is a little outside of the Metro DC area, it sounds like a very interesting workshop and goes along with the theme I’ve been writing about lately – TREES!

The workshop, entitled The Woods in Your Backyard, consists of two sessions, scheduled one week apart, to give you time to put what you’ve learned into practice between sessions. It is geared towards property owners that own less than ten acres of property – wooded or not! The primary focus of the workshop is to learn to create and enhance natural areas around your home so that certainly can apply to any size property.

Workshop dates are 2/15 and 2/22 from 6:30 pm – 9:00 p.m.
The sessions are being held at:

Howard Conservancy -Gudelsky Center
10520 Old Frederick Road
Woodstock, MD 21163

The workshop uses the manual The Woods in Your Backyard: Learning to Create and Enhance Natural Areas Around Your Home.

And includes the following topics:
• Forest Ecology
• Wildlife enhancement
• Woodland inventory techniques
• Tree & shrub identification
• Tree planting and care
• Invasive species control
• Developing goals and objectives
• Resources for your land

You can register and download the brochure about the program on the Forestry for the Bay website.

Why there will be trees in Heaven

Oh course, none of us really knows what happens after we die. But I have this theory about Heaven. I think that if there is a Heaven, then it will be filled with everything that we took the time to love and appreciation in this lifetime. If you love something, then you get to spend eternity with it.

So when I die, if there is a Heaven, it will be filled with trees.


Here are ten reasons that I would love to spend eternity surrounded by trees.

1. Trees gather together to create forests – I am just completely at peace in a forest. When I die, if there is a Heaven, mine will be wooded.
2. Hummingbirds like trees – There is something magical about seeing a tiny hummingbird sitting in the branches of a huge, giant oak. Both hummingbirds and huge oak trees fill me with wonder.


3. Trees Provide habitat for other wildlife- I’ve seen a LOT of creatures hanging out in the trees of our little wooded forest. Owls, woodpeckers, hawks, squirrels….even swarms of bees. If I ever need to get back in touch with nature, all I have to do is look up.
4. Trees play with the sunlight – I absolutely love to start the day with the sun shining down through the branches of the trees, creating big rays of light. It’s like the trees and the sun are working together to say “Behold! A new day is here!”
5. Trees whisper – If you don’t know what I mean, go stand in the woods for a while when there is a gentle breeze blowing. Listen quietly until you hear their whisper.
6. I love wood grain – I know you can’t really appreciate the grain of wood without chopping down a tree and making something out of it, but I just love wood grain. Hickory and oak are some of my favorites.


7. Candy bars grow on trees – Who doesn’t love chocolate bars filled with nuts.


8. Books grow on trees – Forget the internet, Kindles and books on tape. I’ll take a good old fashion book, that I can hold in my hands and turn the pages, any day, both for reading and for writing. And paper, of course, comes from trees.


9. Trees smell beautiful – Both the flowers and even some of the wood itself (think cedar) provides wonderful fragrance.


10. Trees make perfect memorials to people I love – I can plant a tree in memory of someone I’ve loved, and take comfort in the thought that when I get to Heaven, they will be right there waiting for me, under our tree.

And so I plant trees.

Number one reason to plant trees: Hummingbirds Love Them

I’ve been running a poll on this blog and on our Facebook page, asking why people plant trees. To go along with it, I started a post this morning listing the benefits of trees. Well, the list just kept growing and growing and growing so I haven’t gotten it finished just yet.

In the meantime, I wanted to share one of the main reasons I love trees – they attract hummingbirds!

People sometimes ask me how they can attract hummingbirds to their property and I often mention that they should plant a tree. Yes, hummingbirds are attracted to certain tree species that have nectar flowers, but they also love having trees that provide them with a place that they can sit and keep an eye on their “domain”. Hummingbirds are very territorial and they love to sit in a tree and overlook the other hummingbird plants in your garden or the feeders that you place out for them. As soon as they see a rival hummingbird appear, they will immediately swoop down and chase them away, and then return to their perch in the tree.

They also eat gnats and other small insects that fly around trees and certain species have been known to eat sap that oozes  from holes created in trees by woodpeckers and sapsuckers. Hummingbirds also typically nest in trees.

The first time I saw a hummingbird sitting in one of our oak trees, I was in complete awe. And I have to admit that I spent a good part of that summer moving a ten foot ladder around my yard and taking thousands of photos of those little guys.

So, the number one reason that I will ALWAYS recommend that people plant trees is, hummingbirds love them!

Gardening for Hummingbirds

Plants to Attract Hummingbirds

“America’s Great Outdoors” starts in your own backyard

The America’s Great Outdoors Initiative was established by President Obama in April at a White House Conference to start a “National Conversation” to gather input for projects to help reconnect Americans, especially children, with nature.

The Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality were asked by the President to host 12 -20 “listening sessions” around the country to hear from people and groups involved in conservation and recreation efforts and programs. The topic was: how do we get more people outside, involved with nature.

In addition to the formal and informal listening sessions (some of them were online chats), comments, stories and ideas were collected through the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative webpage on the Interior Department’s website: http://americasgreatoutdoors.gov/

Anyway, as soon as I heard about the Initiative, I started inundating the website (listed above), their Facebook page, and their online chats. What were my ideas? Basically, that connecting people with nature doesn’t necessarily mean taking a trip to a park somewhere. Nature starts right outside our back doors, in our gardens.

Well, the results of all of their surveys and data collection were recently released in a 111 page report: America’s Great Outdoors: A Promise to Future Generations February 2012. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but what I have read has inspired and enthused me. I wish I could print the whole thing here, but I encourage you to download a copy for yourself and give it a read.

Below are some excerpts of the report:

• “America’s Great Outdoors begins when you open your front door and step outside— whether it is onto an urban stoop, a suburban sidewalk or a rural front porch. Before we can reach the National Parks, Trails, or Wilderness Areas, we enter into our neighborhoods, downtowns, community gardens and parks. Appreciating the Great Outdoors means exploring the places where we live, work and play; the places that define the human environment. By first cultivating a sense of stewardship in our communities, we encourage stewardship of cultural and natural resources beyond our immediate surroundings.”(Written comment from website)
  
• “We need a philosophical change of what the great outdoors is. We don’t need to go out west or to some faraway place. It can be a little stream, out your door, even if it’s in the city. It exists where we exist.” (Listening Session Participant, Hyde Park, NY )
  
• Many people articulated a need to redefine the “great outdoors” to include iconic national parks and forests, wildlife refuges, and cultural and historic sites, as well as neighborhood and city parks, community gardens, and school yards.
  
• AGO (America’s Great Outdoors) seeks to empower all Americans—citizens, young people,and representatives of community groups; the private sector; nonprofit organizations; and local, state, and tribal governments—to share in the responsibility to conserve, restore, and provide better access to our lands and waters in order to leave a healthy, vibrant outdoor legacy for generations yet to come.
  
• Americans communicated clearly that they care deeply about our outdoor heritage, want to enjoy and protect it, and are willing to take collective responsibility to protect it for their children and grandchildren. In fact, they are already doing so. They are restoring rivers and streams, building and improving hiking trails and bike paths, ensuring the long-term conservation of their private lands, sponsoring beach and roadside cleanups, planting trees and gardens, and restoring migratory bird habitat and populations.

What’s really great about this whole project is that we, the citizens of this country, were asked our opinions about what needs to be done to reconnect people with nature. And from our answers, action is being taken to help make a positive difference. You can see a list of some of the projects that are being implemented across the country in response to the input from the Great Outdoors Initiative by visiting this website: Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program. Projects include:

• Interfaith-Intercommunity Nature Gardens in Washington DC - Work with partners to develop a “toolkit” for greater Washington, D.C. houses of faith that will help create a multi-denomination Sacred “Green Corridor” in the greater Washington, D.C. area.
• Patuxent Tidewater Conservation Plan in Maryland - A regional landscape conservation plan for Southern Maryland guiding land conservation efforts of the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust and encouraging collaborative initiatives with local public and private partners.
• Groundwork Richmond - Develop plans for adaptive reuse of Richmond brownfield sites that support environmental restoration, neighborhood revitalization, youth engagement, and urban park development goals.

Go Green on Martin Luther King Day

Martin Luther King was a man who dedicated his life to standing up for the projects in which he believed. And Lisa P. Jackson, on the EPA website, reminds us that Martin Luther King day is a great day to volunteer for the projects that we believe in and want to support.

“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve.” Those words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have inspired millions of Americans over the years to step up and serve. And they’re the words that come to mind each January, when we honor Dr. King’s legacy on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. Each year, people across the country come together for volunteer service, to strengthen their communities and make a difference for the people around them.

The Martin Luther King website that Ms. Jackson mentioned allows you to put in your zip code and locate volunteer activities in your area. There are plenty of opportunities to find a project to help you answer the question that MLK once posed: "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'"

If you can't find a project that compels you to participate, Ms. Jackson has several suggestions for making a "green" difference on a personal level.

There are countless ways to be part of a Green MLK Day: Start using biodegradable and environmentally friendly cleaning products. Learn about composting and give it a shot in your own backyard. Pick up litter at a local park or field. Organize a “green club” in your workplace, school or community.

There are many more suggestions for going green on this blog, including eliminating chemicals, creating compost, and installing rain barrels. You can use the search tab at the top of this page to find a great green option to get you started or check out a post such as this one on Bare Naked Gardening, that sums many of them up in one place.

Whatever you decide to do on this day of remembrance, Jackson encourages you to share your project on twitter with the hashtag #greenMLK

Right Tree, Right Place Workshop

Virginia Cooperative Extension, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia and Arlington-Alexandria Tree Stewards will present a forum on “Right Tree in the Right Place: Selecting, Planting and Maintaining Trees and Shrubs” on Wednesday, Jan. 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Fairlington Community Center.

The program is free. For information, call (703) 228-6414

Event Location:	Fairlington Community Center 3308 South Stafford Street Arlington, VA 22206
Contact Name:	Master Garden Helpdesk
Contact E-mail:	mgarlalex@gmail
Contact Phone:	703-228-6414

Global Warming? Blame it on termite farts

My friend Sidney emailed me a cute article she found online about a speech a young girl named Sophie Paterson from  New Zealand made about farts. (see copy below) The article is getting passed (no pun intended)  around the internet quite a bit, mostly because no matter how mature or sophisticated we think we are, farts still make us titter.

So, of course, I had to try to find a way to fit it into my eco-friendly blog, and here it is:

According to Ms. Paterson's essay, termites are number one on the list of top farters. AND, according to the EPA website, termite farts are the second largest natural source of methane emissions.

Termites. Global emissions of methane due to termites are estimated to be between 2 and 22 Tg per year, making them the second largest natural source of methane emissions. Methane is produced in termites as part of their normal digestive process, and the amount generated varies among different species. Ultimately, emissions from termites depend largely on the population of these insects, which can also vary significantly among different regions of the world.

And methane is one of the contributing factors to global warming.

So quit blaming the cows, sheep and elephants for all of that errant methane. Blame it on the termites.