Why the crisis at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden affects all Californians
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Photo: Marilee Kuhlmann
FOR THOSE who missed it, last weekend the LA Times followed up on the troubles at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. A very capable round up it was too. Yet, roughly three months since crisis gripped one of California’s most important botanic gardens, there remains a great unsaid. That is: As a matter of urgency, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden must reinstate Carol Bornstein.
The April decision to dismiss the former director of horticulture, a 28-year veteran of the garden, is described as a matter of cost efficiency. But if the garden can afford a highly paid PR to gloss over the crisis that has driven half of its volunteers from service, then there is no conceivable rationale for sacking a woman who is the living embodiment of the garden’s mission to foster stewardship of the natural world through inspired learning, rigorous scholarship, …
Drink from the sink
THE TITLE of a Government Accountability Office report “Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water” released yesterday underscores what inside water people have said for years: forget bottled water, drink from the sink.
From the Associated Press via the Denver Post today, “The GAO and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose. The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water ‘a distant second choice’ behind filtered tap water because there isn’t enough information about bottled water. But the working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter.”…
Sober from lawn
KILLING grass is relatively easy. Don’t water it. However, creating a beautiful, low-maintenance garden in its stead is the hard part. Help is at hand. From a large selection of dry gardening courses offered this summer, the theme that dominates is how to transition from lawn to a drought tolerant garden, one step at a time.
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How does your garden grow?
WHILE this could be seen as a case of the dry polling the dry, when Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden asks the gardeners it serves about how it may serve them better, it is incumbent on the dry gardening community to respond.
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Alligator in Vegas, two in LA
(07-07-09) LAS VEGAS, Nevada. AP Reports:
Animal control officials say a man angling for catfish at a Sunset Park lake instead reeled in a 3 1/2-foot-long alligator.
For the full story, click on the alligators.
Over in Los Angeles, Saturday July 12 is Reptile and Amphibian Appreciation Day at the Natural History Museum. Crafts and activities for families, along with experts from the California Herpetological Association and the California Turtle and Tortoise Society. Animal guests include a duo of American alligators, a 13-foot Python, California rattlesnakes, Indian cobras and poison arrow frogs. Click here for details.
July 8: This post has been updated to add the Natural History Museum event.
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
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