Locally Grown? Really?

For those of you who care about this question, the caring usually begins with food plants.  The basic ideas that make locally grown plants appealing are clear and simple.

1)  Locally grown plants need the least amount of fuel, energy and money to get to their destination.
2)  Locally grown plants help keep local money in a local economy
3)  Locally grown plants are less likely to spread pathogens because they don't get moved as far
4)  Locally grown plants tend to be grown by smaller businesses which we hope are more accountable to local values and beliefs.

For food plants there are other benefits, some of which are secondary. 

As the common sense of locally grown sinks in, we tend to think about other things or industries we buy or support, and we start thinking about the prospects for other locally grown or locally made commodities--lumber, fabrics, etc.  It's unlikely you'll be able to support your life using all local products, but I see it is progress by degrees: we try to improve our local quotient as we go.

Have you ever thought about how the nursery industry works, for ornamental plants or nursery stock?  The industry hopes you don't...

Most nursery stock is grown very non-locally and distributed hundreds and thousands of miles to garden centers.  This is why you perceive that all garden centers have the same plants--they do.  It's a direct result of the business model that has supplanted the old-fashioned ways of true nurseries, where plants were grown and raised and sold on site--hence the term 'nursery'.

There is a very disturbing marketing trend rearing its head in the nursery industry, where plants are adorned with pink tags that proclaim "Locally Grown" and then something like "to thrive in your garden".  The "Locally Grown" part is alarming.  Nowhere on these tags does it say where the plants were grown.  It also says nowhere on the tags who prints them, or which company is responsible for this claim.  And that is not by accident.  They don't want you calling and asking questions...doesn't sound like the modus operandi of a local company...

Native plants are unique in horticulture in that we can know where they occur in the wild, in nature.  So we don't have to speculate.  With natives, then, it is helpful to think about where they like to grow--what kinds of spots--so we can make better decisions about where to plant them, and we can trust the basic principle of ecology that says organisms adapt to their environments in order to succeed (i.e., live).  For non-natives, such as Heptacodium (seven-son flower) which has become modestly popular in the past decade or two, most of us never know where they like to hang out in the wild in their home lands.  So we guess, or we read trial and error accounts of where other people have tried them with success or failure.

Native elderberry seedling 1 year old

But with native plant species, we know that stuff.  Which is why it's important to pay attention to where the native plants you buy are from and where they are grown.  The closer you can get to using local plants, the closer you are to tying those loops that many of us feel are more and more important regarding local-ness, locality.  And the closer you get to truly bringing nature home again.  REMEMBER--see the 4 points at the beginning to keep the comparisons with food plants on the forebrain.  It's a good tool and a good barometer.

When non-local brand managers and marketers dabble in horticulture, and they start throwing terms around such as 'locally grown', it immediately devalues the concepts that make localism meaningful.  It'sthe same as if you found out your New York maple syrup was being made in China and sold by a New York distributor.  Is that the same?  Would you feel duped, and would you care?

The only way to make sure these national marketing companies don't undo the ecological progress barely being made in horticulture is to ask any garden center you see selling these plants as "Locally Grown"--locally grown where and by whom?  Why call them locally grown if they are not?  Ask and see what they say.  Virtually every garden center in Ithaca sells them.

We don't grow all our plants locally but we grow the vast majority of them locally, including our native plant propagation program which I believe is the most extensive in New York State for any retail nursery.  If you have any questions about our stock or where it's from, ask.  We are always happy to discuss it.  See if you get the same response from the "Locally Grown" tag places...

Spring Frost, Spring Snow

We all know it's been an odd year.  Here in Ithaca we waited for Winter until Spring, when summer threatened in April.  Warm and even hot days drew some plants out of dormancy 4-6 weeks early, and then prolonged mild temps coaxed them even further along.  Some were the living picture of vulnerability, and making it truly tragic in the Greek sense of the word, they had no idea what fate awaited them. 

The word on the street is that the mild winter and spring felt weird, but downright enjoyable.  I kind of agree.  Most Central New Yorkers find the beginning and the end of our winter season the hardest--but many of us love the heart of winter, with snow and bracing cold.  It hardens us and makes the softening of true spring that much sweeter.  But this winter, once we got over the absence of snow, it was starting to feel sweet having late spring weather in early spring...


Then the first hard freeze came a few weeks ago and we saw some damage to those plants that had leafed out early.  Fruit trees, some grapes, some of the edible crops...and if you love Magnolias, it was like watching a baby bird die...sad and cruel, but a reminder of nature's indifference to the things we cherish.  The magnolias won't die--just their flowers went from pink and white to a dark leathery brown overnight--so the baby bird analogy doesn't hold up all the way.  But it's a graphic reminder of where we live and why certain plants don't persist here.  We can plant them all we want, and many will make it, but nature's enormous data set is cold-blooded and if we have a pattern like that even every 25 years, it will cull out any faint-hearted or ill-adapted plants.

Today a heavy wet snow snuck in on us overnight.  Forecasters, starved for any dynamic weather all winter, seemed to sandbag on this one--at 11:30 last night the call was for possible accumulations in the western Finger Lakes.  I trust weather forecasts and unlike many people, I choose to focus on how often they are right.  To me, the important thing is not whether it's 55 or 60 degrees but whether it's warming or cooling, whether a system is approaching, whether we will see unusually warm or cold trends ahead...so the surprise this morning was just another surprise in life.  I spent a few hours whacking at my mature lilacs and birches with a hockey stick, for lack of a better tool--freeing them from snow weight so they could start to stand up again.  White pines here seemed to take it the hardest--a fateful combination of snow-holding branches and relatively week wood.  We had a similar late wet snow about 5 years ago and I remember seeing Eastern red-cedars (Juniperus virginiana) along Route 13 near Cayuga Heights leaning all the way over under the weight.  To this day many are still crooked.  Remember, it's fine for them--their two main goals are binary: alive or dead?  reproducing or not? 

In a few weeks spring will come again, another pulse of energy from within the ground and from our celestial position.  And then it will rest on a more secure foundation: it will be hydrated.  Enjoy the snow.