Santa Barbara on fire – against board of trustees of botanic garden

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden was developed to showcase native plants and the natural beauty of California. Source: SBBG

THE MAY fire that damaged an estimated two thirds of the 65-acre Santa Barbara Botanic Garden masks deeper damage being done by the garden’s Board of Trustrees, claimed an article in Saturday’s Santa Barbara Independent and responded to today by the garden’s Chairman of the Board, former Arizona Governor Fife Symington.

Every public garden has its politics, but the castigation came from one of the best known names in California horticulture, Owen Dell, Santa Barbara landscape architect* and author of Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies.

In the article, Dell claimed that the current board of trustees has squandered resources on costly land acquisition, constructed a controversial folly that divided the community, operated with a board missing seven of the legally required 15 trustees and concentrated spending on high salaries for an elite clutch of executives.

According to Dell,…

“Carving Up the Commons” explains the dark art of Western land deals

To download this book for free, or to order a copy for $10 from the Western Lands Project, click on the cover art

IF YOU have ever driven the stunning reaches of the Mojave, Sonoran and Great Basin deserts and wondered who owns them, the answer is: You do. It is almost all public land.

But for how long and under what terms is by no means certain. Janine Blaeloch’s new book Carving Up the Commons: Congress & Our Public Lands explains the history of that land, the challenges we face in preserving it and the dark art of Congressional land deals that are steadily wheeling millions of acres and the region’s best resources into private hands.

Carving up the Commons is of especial interest to Westerners. While the fate of public land is decided in Washington DC, most of the land itself is in the West. The pressure to exploit it for housing,…