Panelist will include Doug Tallamy from the University of Delaware, Gregg Tepper of the Mt. Cuba Center, Sam Rogers from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Amy Lawton-Rauh from Clemson University, Steve Sanchez of HGOR (a landscaping firm in Atlanta), a nursery person, and a public lands manager TBA.
The purposes of the debate are to provide detailed perspectives about landscaping and land use philosophy and practice and offer ideas, ideals, and possible goals for the future.
Debate Date: 7-9 p.m.,Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Script
The questions below comprise draft three of the debate script. The script is evolving through comments from panelists and conference committee members. The script will be shortened to accommodate the two hour allotted time for the debate.
The conference welcomes comments and ideas about the script from all sources. Please contact Tom Goforth at tgoforth@innova.net
General
1. Landscaping tradition has been guided by a virtual need to create spaces that are more beautiful, more interesting and far safer than regional habitats. In most places plants species are readily available commercially with more colors, shapes, growing habits, and size than exist in regional native habitats. Are native plants enough to satisfy esthetic desires, and are esthetic desires paramount? PUBLIC OPINION
2. Does newness play a significant role in landscaping and horticulture in, for example, philosophy, design, economics, and marketing? How does newness impact landscaping endeavors? Is newness essential for the future? NEWNESS
3. Popular belief says that when you create a landscape, they will come or stay away….birds, snakes, microbes, fungi, ladybugs, weeds, wild flowers, invasive plants, bees and wasps, aphids, herbivores, butterflies, mosquitoes, etc. Has excluding things caused better life quality for humans and broad ecological problems? With more native landscaping, will some ecological problems be solved at the expense of human safety? CONNECTIONS
4. In your experiences, is native landscaping generally successful. Compared to traditional landscaping, are there different challenges in native landscaping, such as in finding plants, obtaining ecological requirements for plants, or providing those ecological conditions for native landscape success. EFFECTIVENESS
Plants
5. Most of us here tonight have been out today looking at protected and isolated native habitats and native plants. There are significant numbers of native plants in habitats out there that are not available for landscaping activities. How might we make those plants available and redistributed more widely? PLANT AVAILABILITY
6. In landscaping and horticulture, we create and plant large numbers of fertile cloned species selections and sterile artificial hybrids. Are there documented and potential effects of the use of clones in landscaping? CLONES
7. Many native plant species have broad ecological ranges and occur, for example, in the Southern Appalachians and northern New York. Species in these different regions are generally called genotypes and are considered to have genetic variations due to regional ecological influence. What are the pros and cons of mixing genotypes across regions? GENOTYPES
8. New non-native species and artificial native species are planted widely without control. How significant is the possibility that the number of invasive species is increasing and may increase? Is invasive behavior always readily expressed? INVASIVES
Land Use/Landscaping Freedoms and Caveats
9. We can assess and predict the effects of landscaping practice through: behavior of individuals and groups of individuals, historical experience, ecological effects in gardens and places near gardens, wanted and unwanted volunteer organisms, aesthetic appeal, sustainability, manageability, and others. Are we neglecting some of these means of assessments and others? EFFECTS
10. Some think monumental environment problems and the effects of traditional "sky is the limit" freedom in land use make broadly effective ecological restoration immediately exigent? Is volunteerism adequate, or do we need statues, zoning, covenants, statutory education, or other social mandates to force change? CONTROL
11. TV series such as "The Victory Garden," This Old House," and "Garden Home" and many gardening magazines typically feature high-end "traditional" landscaping models that include many exotic plants and high environmental impact materials. Do you think the media encourages environmentally unsound standards and practices? If so, what can be done to remedy that? MEDIA
The Future
12. Recovery of economic structures is focusing almost entirely on productivity jobs, buying power, and credit. Infrastructure restoration does not include ecology except indirectly in fuel efficiency. Is the overwhelming current focus on economic restoration greatly threatening ecological needs? Could ecological restoration be an integral and effective part of social recovery/change? RESTORATION
13. Reintegrating native ecology into daily life may help restore some of the natural processes and connections shunned and swept away by humans. Do you think that changes in landscaping philosophy and practice can realistically and significantly change historic momentum? THE FUTURE
14. Native purism landscaping seems to refer to using only genotypic native species and regional native ecological designs. This means avoiding the use of native cultivars, native artificial hybrids, non-genotypic native plants, and native plants from distant continental provinces. Is this landscaping philosophy an ideal direction or overkill? PURISM
15. Campaigns to prevent further misuse of public lands are well organized, widespread, and sometimes effective. But misuse of private land is almost totally ignored, except when all of a sudden, you see a familiar piece of land stripped and dissected. You wish you could have prevented it, but you feel powerless.
Could this conference develop the means for new programs, campaigns, influences, alliances, etc. that could greatly increase public knowledge and interest in ecological restoration? (It occurs to me that the conference could create a petition-type document to send to Barack Obama asking him to include ecological projects as part of infrastructure restoration.) ACTIVISM