Metro and the Far Southwest Neighborhood Association put on a Basic Naturescaping Workshop at PCC. It was a free workshop that introduced the concept of naturescaping, which Betty, one of the presenters referred to as “Ecological restoration on a personal scale.”
It was similar to Xeriscaping, though less concerned with water conservation, and more concerned with reducing work, reducing pesticide use, increasing habitat, improving water quality, and using native plants.
It was a wonderful workshop that refocused a lot of the concepts I’ve been gleaming from other sources. Now I’ve just got to remember that I don’t own the house I live in, so I shouldn’t invest too much time or energy into it.
Metro offers a number of the classes throughout the year, so catch one if you can.
that sounds like a really cool workshop. Lindsay and I are constantly trying to push the limits of apartment life. We can’t wait until we get a house of our own. Then we can do whatever we please. (in an ecological way of course)
Do you have room for container gardening? A friend of mine from school made containers out of old tires. He’d cut the sidewall off of one and line it with plastic, then fill it with compost/soil. Worked well for rooftop gardenting, etc. I think he grew tomatoes, snow peas,spinich and other smallish plants.
http://home.messiah.edu/~jebeneze/UrbanAgriculture/Garden.htm
We employ a form of gardening in our house known as “feeding and entertaining the damned cats.” Heather had a pretty cool avacado tree in a big pot that is now a stick protruding out of dirt–dirt that is still IN the pot because it’s too big for them to spill. Which can’t be said about the small windowsill plant that has been stubbornly repositioned on said windowsill eleventy times despite having been knocked off and vacuumed after eleventy times. It’s retarded. Anybody want a cat? It’s only mildly mentally retarded (we suspect), and his outgrown it’s FREAKISHLY UGLY kitten stage and entered it’s mildly ugly young-adulthood. Let me know if you’re interested!
I don’t see how 100 plastic kiddie pools on a roof helps the environment :)
I was going to go to that workshop, but I noticed they’re offering it a bunch of other times . . .
ya,
we are already doing container planting. Last summer I took apart some wooden pallets, and built them into planter boxes. All it cost me was a box of screws. I’m planning on building a few more this week. This summer we should have twice as much stuff, making for a very full balcony. As long as there is still room to sit out there and drink a beer, then we should be okay.