SUBURBITAT

https://news.kgnu.org/2023/03/lovelands-high-plains-environmental-center-proves-to-show-native-landscapes-can-flourish-within-an-urban-environment/

Welcome to a Public Affair here on KGNU. I’m Stacey Johnson.

As wildlife and plant habitat continues to decrease around the world and as many communities in the Western United States grapple with water supply shortages and strongly consider putting a halt to water-thirsty landscaping, questions mount if the existing ecological environment can sustain or flourish amongst an ever-growing built environment. In February, I sat down with Jim Tolstrup, executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland Co. The 76-acre center includes gardens and trails, is surrounded by two lakes, and is open daily during daylight hours. What is unique about the High Plains Environmental Center is that this founder is a developer, and the center is located in the heart of the Centerra housing development. Because of its location within an urban neighborhood, the work of the High Plains Environmental Center focuses on a range of conservation issues. Chiefly among them is educating the public on land restoration, native plants, biodiversity, and sustainable landscapes in the built environment. Our discussion with Jim Tolstrup includes those topics and much more, including wetlands restoration, weeds, and turning a lawn into a native landscape.

 What is the High Plains Environmental Center about, and what is its mission?

Our mission is to help communities incorporate nature as part of community design. We’ve worked with many developers and HOAs to create nature in the communities where people live. I say create nature cause these are not places that are typical conservation where we’re just drawing a circle around it and saying, “don’t build here, this is pristine natural area,” but more taking what was weedy-disturbed-farmland and turning it into natural areas, restored with native plants that can create habitat for plants and animals.

Can you briefly overview your professional background and how your journey brought you to the High Plains Environmental Center?

I studied horticulture at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and had a garden design business in Kennebunk, Maine. Among my clients were first lady Barbara Bush and senior president George Bush and I really came into this from a perspective of ornamental horticulture although I’ve always loved wildflowers in nature, turtles, and frogs, even when I was a kid. So, the wildlife and wildflower part of it has always been part of things that I love. I was an estate gardener in Austin, TX, in the 90s and moved to Northern Colorado with my wife in 1998 and did landscape design for about four years. Then I was the land steward for a while, it was called the Shambhala Mountain Center, now called the Drala Mountain Center, and that’s where the notion of creating landscaping with native plants and the restoration and landscape design became one and the same thing. The reason was it’s at 8000 feet in elevation here in Colorado. There’s a pretty limited plant palette in terms of what we typically think of as ornamental plants, and it just made sense in that environment to focus on western native plants and Colorado plants, and that, for me, is where landscape design and ecological restoration really became the same thing. Then leaving there, I came here in 2007 and had the vision from the beginning of creating something like a Botanic Garden completely driven by the idea of utilizing native plants.

So, can you provide a brief history of the High Plains Environmental Center and your emphasis on native plants?

The High Plains Environmental Center is an interesting evolution because it began when Chad and Troy McWhinney brought their plans for Centerra, a 3000-acre, mixed-use, master-planned community, to the city of Loveland in the late 90s. The city said at build-out that this must remain 20% open space, so they hired a company called Cedar Creek to do a habitat evaluation of the land within Centerra. They particularly looked at the lakes, Houts Reservoir and Equalizer Lake, and recommended setbacks from the lake of anything from 75 feet to 300 feet. At that time, McWhinney was working with another company to build the residential part of the development of High Plains village; that company was McStain Neighborhoods. Their president Tom Hoyte was a lifelong conservationist and developer, which seems like two very different things, but he always said that where the bulldozers are out pushing dirt around, that’s where we have an opportunity to do some restoration and some conservation. He recommended creating this standalone nonprofit, donating the land identified by Cedar Creek to the nonprofit, and then creating a funding mechanism connected with a fee assessed along with the issue of building permits in Centerra to help pay for the management of that natural preserve in perpetuity. So, that was the beginning of the High Plains Environmental Center and its unique funding model and way of restoring nature in the midst of development.

Do you see that history or the potential of that being replicated elsewhere with other beginning developments?

Exactly yeah, that is very much what we are focused on. It was never our intention to corner the market on restoration but to make this something that all communities can do, and we actually help a lot of communities up and down the Front Range to either create this natural component at the very beginning and add that in the community design or to retrofit areas that are turf grass. HOAs come to us and say we’re spending $35,000 a year just taking care of this grass, is there some other alternative? We have helped lots of people to transform into restorative grass.

Just to confirm, can sustainable and native landscaping occur within a built environment or amongst urban growth.

That is emphatically a yes, and I think it’s interesting that we have brought plans from the east coast, Europe, or other environments but a concept of what the world should look like. I think it goes back to a lot of people of European heritage and this notion of like the saying goes, “where sheep may safely graze” from England, the idea of these expansive parklands and lawns and so on. It just doesn’t apply to Colorado, but Colorado is beautiful, to begin with, so we worked so hard to make it turn into a New Jersey or East Coast environment, but we have beautiful plants that have evolved here and are adapted to this environment so yes absolutely here at the Environmental Center, we have extensive gardens that showplace the native plants throughout Centerra we’ve used a tremendous number of native plants in the landscaping.

Can you explain your native plant program?

For years I’ve been giving talks about how we need to create sustainable landscapes that our native pollinators and birds, etc., have coevolved with, and it’s critical that we use them in our landscaping, and it just makes sense because we’re preserving some Colorado’s natural beauty. Then people say, where can we get the plants and that’s a big question, it is it’s difficult to find truly native plants, and as a response to that, we have a nursery here at the High Plains Environmental Center where we’re growing over 150 species of western native plants from seed, and we make those available to the public, but it’s definitely mission driven because it is critical that we begin to change the landscape industry to using things that are what wildlife depends on and also plants that are adapted to this landscape.

I’m noticing the term Suburbitat amongst the High Plains Environmental Center vernacular. Can you define that for listeners and how it fits into the fold of your work and the work of the High Plains Environmental Center?

That term was created by the first executive director of High Plains Environmental Center, Ripley Hines, and combined suburb and habitat. The word itself is a response to the urban, suburban sprawl that started happening, you know, in post-World War Two populations growing and people wanting to have a picket fence and a house of their own and so on, and the problem with that is it’s just displaced so much of the habitat or taking farmland and turned it into sprawling homes and yards. And Doug Thalami, a person who wrote a book called Bringing Nature and Natures Hope, talked about we have 40 million acres of turf grass in the United States; we use more herbicides and pesticides per square foot on turf than any other single crop here in Colorado. We use 18 gallons of water per square foot per growing season for turfgrass, and nationally we use 800 million gallons of gasoline just to mow lawns, so there’s an enormous amount of resources being directed to this one crop that really doesn’t provide much of anything that supports biodiversity.

If you are just tuning in, this is a public affair in KGNU. I’m Stacey Johnson. On today’s segment, we are visiting with Jim Tolstrup, executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center, discussing a range of conservation topics within an urban environment.

Can you describe what a sustainable native landscape looks like, and would that be similar to what the Front Range region looked like prior to non-natives settling here?

Well, using native plants doesn’t necessarily mean the landscape is wild or looks wild. You can use native plants and very formal arrangements, and there are good examples of that here in Centerra. There are these very straight bands of grasses that often use native species versus exotic introduced species. One example is where we have large bands of the little Bluestem grass. I would much rather see that kind of grass because it may go to seed and escape into nearby ponds. I would rather have that than the maiden grass that’s introduced from Asia invading our wetlands, so there is that aspect, too. If plants are going to jump the fence and get into open spaces, I would much rather see the native plants. But I think part of it also is the maintenance of these native landscapes and or habitat landscapes. There is a tendency to clean everything up in the fall, cut everything back make it look very manicured, and that means death for pollinators that might be attracted to that sort of landscape.

The reason is there are a lot of pollinators that might overwinter in the hollow stems of plants or overwinter in the base of the plants under leaves, and so another reason to leave the plants like that in the fall is that it protects the plants themselves from our frequent freeze-thaw cycles and it just creates an interesting textured landscape in the fall. I love to see the little snow caps that collect on top of flowers from the summer, and that’s something unique about the environment here in Colorado. All the plants just freeze-dry, and then in the fall versus on the East Coast or places that are wetter, the plants just turn into a kind of rotting mass in the fall and kind of get crushed by snow. Here they just seem to freeze dry in place, and it’s beautiful that really does sort of replicate something that happens in nature, so I mean, I think native plant landscapes could be anything from just a wild patch that really just kind of looks like a little section of the short grass prairie, or it could be a very intentionally arranged landscape using the vernacular of our western native plants.

Can a novice do native or sustainable landscape work?

Absolutely, yes. I think there are some principles involved, and that is, if we think about our landscape design as an ecological restoration, it means we’re looking at conditions that exist within the site. Even in the tiniest home yard, there are microclimates; they’re shady cool places, they’re sunny hot places, there are wetter places, drier places. If we think about the topography and the hydrology that exists even in tiny little yards and group plants together in communities, then we can replicate some of the functions in the environment. There are so many relationships between native plants and wildlife. We have over 900 species of native bees here in Colorado, and over 100 species of bees have shown up here in our gardens since we started to plant native plants, so it’s a matter of if you build it; they will come.

What should folks consider when attempting to do sustainable landscape design or management they want to convert their yard, get away from ornamentals, get away from Kentucky bluegrass?

Part of it is grouping plants together in communities with similar requirements. So if there are plants that need to have a little bit of moisture, those are grouped together in a zone. There are plants you can plant and water when you transplant them and never water them again, which could be grouped together in a zone. That is one of the seven principles of zero-scaping, which is creating these hydrological zones where plants are grouped together. I think that’s one of the central features of using native plants.

The other thing is, what if we say native plants? I always ask, “Native to what.” I meant to say if we say native to Colorado, that is an arbitrary political designation. Colorado is a state and has this kind of arbitrary boundary, but it doesn’t mean everything within that state is in the same climate zone or same ecological zone. In fact, in Colorado, we have more climate zones than a great many other states because we have the changes in elevation here. I think if we live along the Front Range, we should be thinking in terms of the prairie. The short grass prairie, or just the prairie in general, are ecosystems that we have a lot in common with, and that is thinking of everything from here to Montana to North Texas and East to Illinois. Those are all the Prairie states, so using plants that are adapted to the environment where we’re designing our garden.

There’s a man in Tucson, AZ, Brad Lancaster’s a landscape architect. The story that I’ve heard is that he cut a hole in the curb at his home and let the water flow into his landscape, which is kind of shaped like a bowl, so the water would flow in there and percolate into the ground. The city became aware that he had done this, and they came out they were going to write him a citation. He said OK,  just wait a minute look at this beautiful park-like landscape here full of Palo Verde trees and native birds and so on. I never watered this landscape, and there must have been some conversations back at the city because now you can apply. The city will come out and knock a hole in your landscape, and the city is creating landscapes instead of a traffic island that’s raised up with landscaping. If the traffic island is like a bowl with landscaping and it just is a place where the rainwater goes.

It’s a little bit tricky in Colorado because the state was built on water law, and when a raindrop hits your roof, it belongs to somebody else. Only recently, the law has been changed so that for residential use, you can have a small rain barrel to water your landscape. Still, there is no law against channeling that water through your landscape, letting it percolate into the ground a little bit letting that water nourish the plants as it flows along and then off into some stormwater pond. For some reason, landscapers like to make everything flat, but if we have high areas and low areas again, then we can design our landscapes with this concept of putting things in the right hydrological zone.

So, we have wetland plants that are wetland plants in a landscape that is never watered; the blue vervain, it’s a wetland plant that we planted where our downspouts are, and all that water from the roof is concentrated there. So even the tiniest yard has that kind of different hydrological zones and thinking about where to put plants. In front of our building, we have a bioswale, so it takes all of the water that comes off of our parking lot, and it flows through a series of little pools. It’s not enough that we would have an abortive loss or anything. It’s like within 24 hours, all that water would disappear after a rain storm, but it just slows the water down a little bit and allows it to percolate into the ground, and people always comment about how beautiful the landscaping is in front of our building, and yet we never water that because in the high and dry areas, there are native plants that don’t like any water and in the bottom of it are things like the milkweeds and the tall grass species and golden rods that like a little bit more moisture and the plants seem to find the right zone for themselves and that’s a great example of how we can have these rain nourished gardens and like it’s called passive rainwater harvesting so just slowing down the water a little bit and letting that percolate the ground and nourish our landscapes.

So, for some folk ecology and economy, growth versus conservation are dichotomies, but it seems here at the High Plains Environmental Center that is not the case is that true.

That’s very true, and it’s interesting that you say ecology and economy because those two come from the same root word in Greek, Boyko’s, which is the household, and ecology, is the study of the household, and the economy is the management of the household, and I think there are those absolutely must work together. I think one of the mistakes of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970 is to be ecology versus economy or ecology versus business. Then you get people who are logging on the West Coast saying you care more about owls than you care about my family. I mean, all these things have to be considered and not create a kind of opposition. Still, we have this unique formula here where we’re benefiting the developer in this 3000-acre development. The development is also benefiting us. We’re also benefiting kids who live here because they get to grow up and see a bird and hear a frog, and we’re putting nature in people’s lives who live in this. Because we have beautiful nature, trails, birds, and so on, people want to live here, so it benefits the home builders. It also benefits the Environmental Center because the funding that is collected from the building permits is actually going to the restoration. Hence, it’s a really cool model where the business interests are funding the environmental interests, and the environmental interests are making a more marketable place to live. I think environmental and ecological or ecological and economic interests are also always impacting each other we just don’t always see the real cost of things, and people ask sometimes, you know should someone be able to have a 20,000 square foot home I think if they have the money, they could, but we need to charge the real cost for things like what it cost to dispose of waste and so on. If we’re paying the real costs and not just deferring those costs to future generations, to people who are in disenfranchised communities or other parts of the country where we’re taking their resources and they’re just becoming poorer, and we’re not really demonstrating the real cost and the source of our wealth is always from natural ways from the Earth so if we’re not managing that well we are in essence and in fact degrading our future economic prospects.

You’re listening to a public affair on KGNU. I’m Stacey Johnson; you’re visiting with Jim Tolstrup, executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center, discussing a range of contribution topics within the High Plains Environmental Center is available by visiting the website suburbitat.org.

On the website of the High Plains Environmental Center is a downloadable copy of a book called Suburbitat what’s mentioned in that book, and I’ll try to paraphrase this it says even with irrigation, the prolonged ugly duckling phase of native open space can be challenging for developers and HOA’s with many eyes and opinions surrounding the project.

What is your advice for overcoming those sorts of challenges?

Also, in a recent talk, you mentioned a quote by Rob Proctor, who said gardening is the world’s slowest performance art, and so for those who need immediate gratification or just stop with the finger beauty.

What’s your advice on overcoming those sorts of challenges?

That’s absolutely true. That is a big challenge because people’s expectations and development timelines and restoration timelines are not the same, and this is not like a landscaper putting down Assad Man that they basically roll outside, and when they drive away, you have a lawn. This can take years even under good conditions, and I think it’s critical that people understand going in the realistic timelines for getting results. The benefits are that native grass costs a fraction to maintain of what it costs turf grass lawns and uses a fraction of the herbicide, pesticide, water, or any of those other things that are used so heavily on turf grass so it’s really worth it in the long run but there really is no way to move the dial ahead faster and if you have a situation where there is no water, and you’re just putting down native seed, and it could take a decade for that to establish. Particularly since the last two years, they say they aren’t the driest years in 1100 years in this region, so we’re just not going to see results without irrigation in that kind of situation, but the other part of this discussion is we don’t have the water. We do not have water, yet they keep doing this repeatedly, putting down these thirsty landscapes.

The average person in Colorado uses 150 gallons of water per day, and 60% of that goes to landscaping, so it’s 90 gallons of water per person per day to keep exotic landscapes on life support, and we do not have the resources for that so we’re going to have to come to terms with this and part of it is accepting we have to play by nature’s terms of what landscapes require, what is really sustainable here, and how long does it take to get things to establish.

One thing I’d like to do is take photographs of these areas because, as you mentioned you know Rob Proctor called gardening the world’s slowest performance art, and if you take pictures, you can see how things evolve over time you can see that something is happening it’s just happening at a, you know, different timeline than the way we usually see things getting built.

Does the work of the High Plains Environmental Center have any special significance for those that do not have a yard, have no access to the natural environment, or folks that are disabled indigenous people of color people from all walks of life?

There’s a lot in that question. I think one thing is that all of the programs we offer are free. We offer all of our educational programs at no cost; we offer raised garden beds to people in our community garden at no cost, and those could be people who live here in the likes of Centerra or nearby or anyone. So as a nonprofit, our mission is environmental education and environmental stewardship, and we are mandated by IRS to offer that to the public in general.

In terms of specifically the reconciliation with indigenous people, that is a big focus here at High Plains Environmental Center. We have both a garden that showcases plants used by tribes of the High Plains and frequently host events here that are culturally oriented events about the indigenous people who have existed in this region for over 12,000 years, so we are very interested in creating awareness of how Colorado didn’t just spring into existence in the 1850s, there’s been a culture here that has existed for over 12,000 years, and there are values connected with that culture that we need we need to understand a little bit more about our relationship to other things, that the world isn’t really just here for us to use, but we are part of the community, of the land. Aldo Leopold says when we see land as a community to which we belong, we will begin to use it with love and respect, and I think that’s an important aspect of understanding indigenous cultures. I also think that there is some reconciliation that needs to happen because we live on land that was taken through violent means and without the compensation that was promised through treaties and so on, and I don’t think that you can build a successful and sustainable future on that kind of foundation.

The Suburbitat book mentions that wetland environments comprise less than 2% of Colorado’s total land area and are utilized by 75% of all wildlife species at some point in their life cycle. Can you expand upon that and what the significance of that is for listeners.

Well, one of the earlier governors, and I can’t recall which one, wanted to arrange counties in Colorado along watersheds which really would have been a very smart way to do things because who is upstream and who is downstream are dependent on one another and we have significantly altered the hydrology in this area. They used to have this thing called the June Rise when all the snow melted that would just tear trees out. the South Platte River that didn’t have the trees on it that it had now. Or the North Platte, the South Platte, these rivers didn’t have the trees they have now because they were just come tearing down from the mountains and rip all that stuff out. They actually have to create sandbars now in Carney, Nebraska, for the Sandhill cranes because the scrubbing action of that sort of flood doesn’t exist anymore, so they have to replicate it.

One of the interesting things that we can do is whenever developers build impermeable surfaces, rooftops, parking lots, and roads, the government requires that flood mitigation be put in place so that all that water doesn’t go someplace where we don’t want it to go. So, stormwater ponds and stormwater conveyances are created. The previous version of this in the 1950s and 60s is that water just went in the storm drain, and it was piped raw into a lake or river and dumped with all that sediment and runoff into the river. Now there’s more of an idea of creating water quality ponds that allow the sediment to drop out of the runoff, and if those ponds contain native vegetation, it can help to sequester some of the nutrient runoff that comes from various activities in the way that we live, fertilizing and so on. Using that nutrient runoff can prevent algae in our ponds and lakes. The algae reduce the oxygen in the water and can kill off fish and other aquatic life. These urban stormwater ponds are a tremendous opportunity for restoring habitat for wetland plants, amphibians, birds, and all kinds of things. I think this is one of our best opportunities for restoring nature in the built environment as we look at building stormwater ponds and conveyances.

If you are just tuning in, this is a public affair on KGNU. I’m Stacey Johnson. This evening we are visiting with Jim Tolstrup, executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center, discussing a range of conservation topics within an urban environment.

Some other statements stood out to me in your book. One is the short grass prairie, the area most impacted by agriculture and land development and is considered the most degraded ecosystem in North America. Another quote it’s important to note that merely planting native grass does not make a Prairie a real Prairie is like an old-growth forest that requires centuries, if not millennia, to establish. Once destroyed, it does not reestablish quickly, and so those statements seem daunting for folks considering native landscapes or HOAs and such can the High Plains Environmental Center is a place of hope amongst those sorts of daunting realities.

If you fly into DIA and you look down, you can see how dramatically altered that landscape is; you see all those crop circles with irrigation. They say that the High Plains, the region that we live in, which extends from North Texas up to southern Montana, is one of the most degraded ecosystems in the United States. Less than 3% of the high plains are still intact. So that means all the animals that live there, the Black Tailed Prairie Dogs, the Black Footed Ferrets, and so on, disappear because that environment is gone.  

Yes, a Prairie is like an old forest; there’s a lot more going on there than just grass; almost all of the biodiversity of the Prairie is below ground, and there are all kinds of soil microbiota and things happening there. That doesn’t automatically replicate, and it isn’t like EO Wilson called the New England Forest the ecological wonder of the 20th century; at the beginning of the 20th century, Massachusetts was 90% agriculture; at the end of the 20th century, it was 70% forest, and that forest replicated itself but that’s a region that gets about an inch of rain a week, and here we get 12 to 14 inches of precipitation in a year and some years we don’t get that so there’s no grass Prairie isn’t just going to restore itself.

There has been in a lot of places along the Front Range this buy and dry strategy where municipalities would buy farms, strip off the water rights and just abandon the land, and the land just turns into kosha weeds, and it’s not just going turn back into short grass prairie. Laws are changing, so that isn’t possible anymore. If that land is going to be stripped of water rights and abandoned, it has to be restored with native grass, and as we’ve said earlier, that is a long process but an interesting example of how the short grass prairie could be restored, lies in the story of the black-footed ferret reintroduction. This is the most endangered mammal in North America and was thought to be extinct until a few animals, I think maybe a total of 16, were found around Matisi, Wyoming, and from that, through a federal program, the ferrets have been bred. There’s a facility in Car Colorado just north of Fort Collins where these animals are born and introduced into the wild. Though lots of ranchers are resistant to the idea of releasing a federally protected animal onto their land, and also the Prairie dogs require large expanses of Prairie dog colonies, something that ranchers also don’t like but a monetary compensation was put in place to pay the ranchers for the areas that are kept in Prairie dogs and the Safe Harbor Agreement was put in place so that if somebody runs over black-footed ferret with their pickup or something like that, unless they intentionally harm the animal, there is no penalty. So again, the Safe Harbor Agreement protects them from any liability, and I think in that there’s a great example of how we can restart the short grass Prairie and it goes back to your prior question about ecology versus economy. There needs to be some kind of monetary compensation if somebody is putting in the time and expense and limiting their own use of their property in restoring the environment. In the built environment and designed communities, many developers are attempting to use the native grasses because they understand that, in the long run, it costs a lot less to manage, and it doesn’t use lots of water that they may not actually have available. I think developers get it in terms of the economics of the situation, and again, you know, it’s how to get these ecological restoration values to work together with economic values. When you can get those to work together, that is our recipe for success.

How should listeners think about weeds within the concepts of restoration, sustainable landscaping, or native plants as a person who has been a gardener and knows the land

 As a person who has been a gardener, we have many more challenges in this region than what is typical, partly on the large scale, if you’re a developer and you’re trying to establish native habitats and native plants. What other properties around you are doing is really critical. That’s why we have things called the weed cooperative. If you manage weeds and the adjacent landowners don’t manage weeds, there’s going to be a kind of blowback, like quite literally on your property, and that’s an important consideration in terms of strategies of how to manage weeds.

One thing I have to say is we are not averse to the use of herbicides, and people will ask, “you’re a Nature Center; why do you use herbicides?” I would say since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a lot of chemicals have evolved that are very specific targets. They don’t even kill all plants. They’ll kill certain plants; there are some like that Canada Thistle that can really only be controlled effectively with some very selective herbicides and one thing is in restoring natural areas, we use a fraction, a tiny fraction of the amount of chemical that is used on your typical school ball field, on people’s front lawns and we use it on very specific targets so here at HPEC. I employ people who have master’s degrees in Agronomy, who have degrees in range management, and so on, and these people know the difference between plants. They can identify plants in the field and use a particular chemical on a specific plant. So, it could be like, you know, ounces per acre of chemicals that are being used a fraction of what’s being used on turf grass and used on very specific targets. Our goal is to have fewer invasive plants and more native plants, and it isn’t something that is going to fix itself without human intervention. Some of these plants are like Pandora’s box, really, once it’s out in the environment. There are weeds that have been introduced from Europe and Asia that are really never going to be completely gone from this region, and if we want to have a healthy ecosystem, we are going to have to manage those on our property because the invasives just outcompete the native plants and don’t provide the same benefits to pollinators and wildlife that evolved with the native plants.

One of the things I think is who gets their first wins, so if you see native grasses but lots of invasive plants come up, they can outcompete the native grass. But once you have a healthy stand of grass and native plants, it’s very difficult for weeds to get established in a healthy plant community. It’s also essential to manage that so people are planting native grasses, but they’re treating it like a lawn, and you’re scalping the native grass. I’ve seen a lot of disasters with Buffalo grass which is great turf grass, but people scalp it, and then they like water it like it’s Kentucky bluegrass, and you’re just going to have a weedy unhappy stand for grass. Because we haven’t seen a lot of good examples, I think that that’s why more people aren’t doing it.

Is there anything you would like to mention that hasn’t been covered?

We are now in a situation where our landscapes must be more than just pretty. The human population on Earth has doubled; we are now over 7 billion people. I heard the statistic from David Attenborough that 96% of the weight of mammals on Earth as human beings, their livestock, and pets, and the other 4% are what we call wildlife. That is a very daunting statistic. There was a time when human beings struggled to claw their survival out of the wilderness and nature. It is completely turned around to the point that, as Doug Thalami says, 98% of the lower 48 states have been altered for human use, and we are outpacing nature dramatically on Earth. This is more than just saving nature because it’s pretty or saving nature because you know birds are nice or because we like to see animals. We cannot survive without biodiversity on Earth. We cannot survive on a planet that is occupied only by human beings and their livestock and pets, so it is our own qualified self-interest that we have to work to save biodiversity.

All extinctions happen at home, we don’t have elephants and lions wandering around our gardens, but if you are a farmer in Africa, you might want to see elephants disappear because they’re stomping through your fields. We need to think in terms of how we can preserve the biodiversity where we live. Audubon did a study in 2019 that said that 60% of birds in North America are threatened with extinction due to climate change, and that is just a catastrophic number. I mean, we talk about how we are in an age of mega extinction; you know, a huge period of extinction. We have to do everything we can to prevent that from happening, not only because we have no right to destroy life on Earth but also because we will be destroying ourselves. But turning our lawn into a native landscape is the low-hanging fruit; this should have been done yesterday. It’s something that’s very easy to do, it’s beautiful, and it’s appropriate to the climate where we live.

Jim Tolstrup, I appreciate your time today and sharing your wisdom with listeners of KGNU. Thank you very much.

By: Jim Tolstrup

Across Colorado and the West there is a growing awareness of the high cost and in many cases the lack of availability, of water for landscaping and development. Since 2001, our team has been exploring alternatives to thirsty turf grass and exotic landscape plants by focusing on native plant species that require little or no water. Our nonprofit environmental center is celebrating the 20th anniversary of our founding, spurred by the concept of a homebuilder, McStain Neighborhoods, and McWhinney, the master developer of Centerra, an award-winning 3,000-acre master-planned community in Loveland, which readily adopted the visionary idea for preserving and managing open space within the development.

Over the past two decades, our center has worked with McWhinney and other landowners, within Centerra and beyond, to establish or restore hundreds of acres of native vegetation. The cost of maintaining native grass can be 90% less than turf grass due to the avoided costs of mowing, watering, fertilizing, and other maintenance. However, managing these areas
requires specialized skills and knowledge to be successful. As the executive director of HPEC, I’ve recently published a book, SUBURBITAT, that highlights the center’s work and tells the story of Colorado’s history from its primordial past to the present-day development of the land.

The book provides detailed information on how to establish and maintain beautiful, sustainable landscapes that conserve natural resources and provide a distinct sense of place, celebrating Colorado’s unique natural diversity. The book provides detailed instructions for others who wish to create water-saving native landscapes, as well as explore the social aspects of landscaping in collaboration with nature. This includes managing expectations and establishing realistic timelines for the establishment of native open spaces and living with rather than eradicating the wildlife that is attracted to them.

The development community has the opportunity to create landscapes that are vibrant and interesting year-round, in a way that will allow people and wildlife to continue to thrive. We have observed firsthand how dramatically and rapidly our local birds and pollinators recover when we grow native plants in our gardens. There are over 40 million acres of turf grass in the U.S. More herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers are used on this crop, per acre, than any other crop. Some 800 million gallons of gas are used every year to mow American lawns. Here in Colorado, a minimum of 18 gallons of water are needed per square foot, per year, to keep lawns green. The average use of water in Colorado for landscaping alone is about 90 gallons per person per day.

Over the next 20 years, Colorado’s population is expected to grow by roughly 30%, increasing from 5.7 million in 2019 to 7.52 million in 2040. As populations grow, particularly along the Front Range, pressures on our dwindling water resources will continue to increase. Rising temperatures cause plants to accelerate transpiration, which increases the amount of water used to maintain landscaping, putting additional strain on water supplies. There is simply no question that our water usage in landscaping is unsustainable. LEED construction, which reduces energy consumption in commercial buildings, is a great example of the way that businesses cannot only anticipate and respond to environmental issues but also can lead the process toward sustainable development in ways that are in turn rewarded in the marketplace. Sustainability is no longer an isolated movement but rather an imperative and an expectation for many environmentally conscious homebuyers. Sustainable landscaping is a natural extension of this concept.

Access to trails, nature, and open space are also frequently rated as highly desirable amenities for potential homebuyers. Far from being an inferior concession to economy and practicality, native landscapes can be beautiful and provide year-round interest while supporting wildlife in the midst of the communities that we design and build – restoring nature where we live, work, and play.

Jim Tolstrup is the executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center, located in the Centerra master-planned community in Loveland. The environmental nonprofit is focused on open space management, wetland restoration, native plant propagation, and environmental education and outreach. He can be reached at jim@suburbitat.org

By: Jim Tolstrup

(Originally published in the Elephant Journal – 2009) I felt a bit depressed and aimless before Christmas last year. I know I’m not unique in this. Many people say that helping others makes one a happier person and I’ve experienced this myself.  So when the opportunity came to drive a truck full of donated toys, food, and clothing to the community of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, I jumped at the opportunity.

The name Wounded Knee is infamous in American history because of one very dark day, December 29, 1890.  On this day 350 men, women, and children, members of Chief Big Foot’s band of Minneconjou Lakota (Sioux,) were mowed down by the guns of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry and buried in a mass grave. Big Foot’s people were practicing the Ghost Dance, a non-violent prayer for the restoration of the environment, the return of the buffalo, and the return of their many dead Lakota relatives. The Ghost Dancer’s dream of protecting the culture and ecology that existed on the Great Plains for over ten thousand years died there in the bloody snow at Wounded Knee and the legal right to practice their traditional religion would not be returned to the Native Americans until a special act of the U.S. Congress in 1978.

 In 1986 a group of Lakota including Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a descendant of Chief Big Foot, initiated an annual commemorative ride on horseback that retraces the journey to Wounded Knee by Big Foot’s people. The Ghost Ride, as it is called, was intended to “wipe the tears” of the Lakota people and release the psychic trauma of a troubled place.  

In typical Lakota style, these warriors endured great hardship on their cold journey and laughed the whole time. Once when the riders had not eaten for a long time they came to a small town with a Chinese restaurant that had an “all you can eat” buffet; after watching some of these big guys were chowing down a very anxious owner came out of the kitchen and shouted, “You go now!” The telling and re-telling of this story provided them with hours of entertainment on the long ride.

Chief Looking Horse has worked to protect sites sacred to indigenous people in North America and around the world and received the Temple of Understanding award at the United Nations on October 18, 2006, for his work in promoting world peace.

Today Wounded Knee is a small community of about 300 people in Shannon County, S. D. the second poorest county in the United States. Toward the end of his second term, President Clinton visited Pine Ridge Reservation and pledged to do something about the poverty there but like so many other promises made to the Indians, so far nothing has happened.        

Our travel weather on December 23^rd was sunny and strangely mild but the snow from a recent blizzard was piled deeply along the roadside. My companions traveling in a separate vehicle were Beverly, a Buddhist, who has organized these donations for Wounded Knee for many years, and Christinia a Lakota woman whose sister-in-law was recently killed in a car accident in the reservation, leaving behind 5 children. My co-pilot in the truck was David, a member of the Unity Church, three times divorced, and like myself looking for a little bit of meaning in the holiday season.         

When we got to Pine Ridge we stopped at Big Bat’s store and gas station, a local landmark whose name derives from Baptiste “Bat” Pourier, a French trader of the 1800s who married a Lakota woman.  At Big Bat’s two local Indian women, Loretta and Misty offered us beaded earrings which they make to sell for a little holiday cash for their families. I bought two pairs for our young friends Lauren and Mikayla with whom we spent Christmas day back in Colorado. A couple of local drunks panhandled us and harangued us about Jesus.

We arrived at Wounded Knee around 10 p.m. The night breezes remained warm. I have been to this place a half dozen times since the mid-seventies and it always feels like a place where there is some kind of gap, where seen and unseen worlds, past and future overlap in a way that can be unsettling.

Stopping at a little church, we unloaded our U-Haul truck which was filled floor to ceiling with frozen turkeys, potatoes, carrots, apples, oranges, and canned goods, as well as 4 or 5 bikes, presents marked for recipients by age, and lots of new clothes with the labels still on them. I felt heroic and happy like one of the characters in the Christmas specials I watched when I was a kid or maybe the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes.       

 In the midst of this reverie on the meaning of Christmas, I saw one gift in the pile which really hit me. The gift was a puzzle for a toddler that had elephants, tigers, and monkeys on it. These questions struck me, “How many children that age will ever see those animals?” and “Will those animals continue to be part of our world in the near future?”

The Lakota have a prayer “mitakuye oyasin” which means “all my relations.” To this day at the core of their culture is an ingrained sense of not taking more than one needs and always leaving enough for other beings, “our relations.” This is one lesson that our indigenous brothers and sisters dearly wish that we would learn also.

 It struck me that the whole Christmas iconography is threatened. The little town of Bethlehem now lies in the midst of a region that has long been divided by violent conflict and due to global climate change, reindeer, and polar bears; even the North Pole itself is in jeopardy. Whether we think that Santa Claus is silly or charming the question looms large, what will we tell our children and ourselves when the very heart of our Christmas dreams, the North Pole, ceases to exist? It may seem like a foolish question, but after all, who has actually been to the North Pole? The plight of polar bears drowning because they can’t swim the increasing distance between the shrinking polar ice and the mainland may seem remote, maybe even inconsequential. But what is truly at risk here is the essence of our humanity and possibly our continued existence as well.                  

The stories we live by during this season are important, whether it is Santa Claus bringing toys to all the children of the world, the blessing through the long dark nights, or three wise men guided by a star, seeking a holy child born into humble circumstances. These stories point to the best potential of the human spirit. Christmas is one time that we seem to recognize that giving to others brings us great joy.

 Perhaps we could transfer this important lesson, learned in the Christmas season, toward giving a little bit back to the Earth which is our only home, as well as the home of every known living creature. Leading scientists say that we may have ten years at best to fix the problem of Co2 emissions and climate change; beyond that, the damage may be irrevocable. But solutions to this looming ecological crisis exist, awaiting implementation.

The real test of the human spirit will be whether we can learn, like Ebenezer Scrooge, to care about others, keeping Christmas in our hearts throughout the year and possibly conserving a little bit for the future. Or will our own children of the next generation (over nine billion of them) wander like poor Tiny Tim, hungry, sick, and neglected, due to our present thoughtlessness? Will our own fate be like that of the ghost dancers, fervently wishing for the return of all that was beautiful and dear to us after it is gone, never to be seen again?  

Driving back from Wounded Knee on Christmas Eve I made a silent prayer for the thousands of little birds who had been pushed by the snow to the highways cleared edge, and for the rest of us as well, “May all travelers on this uncertain road arrive home in peace and safety, All My Relations.”

By: Jim Tolstrup

When developers build rooftops, parking lots, and other impermeable surfaces, rain, and snowmelt can no longer percolate into the ground. The resulting stormwater runoff must be managed to prevent flooding. It once was common practice to collect stormwater in concrete pits and dump it into nearby rivers and streams by piping it underground. In some cities, entire rivers have been channelized and sometimes buried. Many of these rivers have been restored in recent years after people realized the ecological harm that this practice caused, as well as the recreational, aesthetic, and educational benefits that may have been previously overlooked.

Over the last few decades, the standard for stormwater engineering has moved toward creating water-quality ponds that slow down the turbulence of the water and allow sediment to drop out. Ponds and conveyances that include vegetation can also remove nutrients the stormwater may have picked up in its flow. These nutrients come from natural deposition, landscape fertilizer, pet waste, soap used for washing cars, etc. Nutrients that reach ponds and lakes encourage the growth of algae, which can
reduce oxygen levels in the water, killing fish and other aquatic life.

Here at the High Plains Environmental Center, within the Lakes at Centerra neighborhood, we have far less algae than typical lakes within a residential development. The unmown native vegetation (shrubs, grasses, and wetland plants) in the setbacks
and stormwater conveyances around us function as a biological filter, helping to sequester nutrient run-off from adjacent developed sites. The proof of our strategy’s environmental success is measured and proven in periodic water quality testing.

Well-constructed, and well-managed, stormwater ponds can be aesthetically pleasing amenities that benefit wildlife while offering educational and recreational opportunities for residents and visitors

Stormwater ponds, though necessary, often are viewed by developers as a liability. They can be unsightly when not well-designed, fill up with trash carried along by storm flows, and take up space that would otherwise be buildable. Well-constructed, and well-managed, stormwater ponds, on the other hand, can be aesthetically pleasing amenities that benefit wildlife in the built environment while offering educational and recreational opportunities for residents and visitors. An artfully designed pond or natural area can allow residents access to nature while protecting wildlife from excessive disturbance. Although it can be hard to resist the temptation to put paths all around a pond, or throughout an open space, the benefits of limiting wildlife disturbance are well worth the effort. Providing a cover of vegetation around ponds can increase nesting habitat for songbirds
and allow wildlife to retreat to a place of peace and safety when necessary.

Wetland

One of the most difficult things about vegetating stormwater ponds is predicting the amount of moisture the pond will ultimately hold. Wetland plants tend to grow in very specific hydrological zones, and choosing the appropriate species can be challenging. We have addressed these issues by using diverse seed mixes that include various grasses, sedges, and rushes. Using this “shotgun” approach helps to ensure that there will be sufficient plant diversity. In the beginning, when the pond is first excavated, it may be drier. Over time, as the area around the pond gets built and runoff increases, the pond will become wetter, and plants will distribute themselves in accordance with the changing hydrological regime. In general, cattails, while native, should be discouraged in wetlands and stormwater channels. Although cattails provide filtration and cover for wildlife, they are aggressive and can reduce
habitat quality by creating a monoculture. Our goal should be to create a diverse wetland plant community.

When designing a pond, it is desirable to create an undulating shoreline and varying topography on the pond’s bottom. Shallow, flat-bottomed ponds should drain completely, or they can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Ponds that include plunge pools 5 feet deep or deeper can hold some water year-round and allow minnows to survive over winter. Holding back any amount of water in a stormwater pond may require water rights to offset the evaporative loss. People may be concerned about mosquitoes in deeper water, but mosquitoes can breed in an inch of water in concrete drains. Natural predators like minnows, tadpoles, and dragonfly larvae also will be present in the deeper areas of these ponds and can help control mosquito larvae.

By: Jim Tolstrup

Many people don’t realize how degraded the environment was in the United States in 1970, without the environmental protections that exist today. 

In the summer of 1969, the Cuyahoga River burned because of the petroleum distillates that were being dumped into it. Three million gallons of oil spilled in Santa Barbara, killing sea life and ruining the beaches. Dioxin and other poisons were dumped directly into lakes and rivers. Whales were being hunted to the brink of extinction and the bald eagle, the symbol of our nation, was reduced to the brink of extinction.   

Within the next two years, under President Nixon, the Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act were passed through bilateral collaboration in Congress, and the Clean Water Act was amended and strengthened. 

As a result of these efforts, the aggregate emission of six industrial pollutants has decreased by more than 73 percent, bald eagles have recovered to the point where they are relatively common, and whale species such as the humpback have steadily increased.

I feel it is important to reflect on some of our triumphs even as we recommit ourselves to engaging in the critical work of saving the Earth for future generations, and we still have a long way to go.   

This generation faces some of the greatest environmental challenges yet—climate change, melting ice caps, and mass extinction, as well as threats to our growing human population, drought, hunger, homelessness, war, and now the global pandemic. How do we sustain ourselves as we engage in this arduous task of restoring our world?

Let me ask you something: do you care about nature, about birds, animals, and all that is wild?

Are you frightened about your future, and the future of your children and grandchildren?

Are you frustrated about seeing legal protections for human health and environmental integrity eroded, undermined, and repealed?

Are you angry about the inertia of our leaders in the face of devastating climate change and of threats to life on Earth?

How do we then sustain our sanity and equilibrium in the face of such daunting threats?

How do we live a decent life in midst of such grief and terror?

Species Extinction and Human Population Growth

How do we connect with our own hearts and remain available to our world and engage in winning hearts and minds to the cause of global environmental stewardship?

The fact is that we have all that we need to tackle these challenges—scientific knowledge, technology, and money—and we have nature’s tremendous power for regeneration, healing, and growth.

What we are lacking as a society is the will to undertake this work, the understanding of why this is so critically important, the ability to communicate our vision, and the tolerance to work with individuals with widely divergent points of view and interests.   

Gus Spaeth, Scientist, Environmental Lawyer, and United States advisor on Climate Change said,

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”      

The practice of mindfulness meditation—following our breath and connecting with our own basic state of being can provide us with a space in which we can restore and recharge. In many ways, I think this provides the missing element.

Those of us who cared about the earth in the 60s and 70s are now in our 60s and 70s. The torch is passed to the younger generation, but you are not alone. Right now, across the world, Earth Day is being celebrated in 193 countries.

And the whales, the eagles, the forests, and the oceans are continuing to do what they do because someone cared.

Earth Aspiration: May all beings everywhere be happy and free from suffering. May the words, thoughts, and actions of my own life contribute to that happiness, well-being, and freedom of all living things.   

By: Jim Tolstrup

The growth of cities in the American West has increased water consumption from the Colorado River and pushed this critical natural resource beyond its limits. Yet we could reduce some of this demand within the communities that we design and build by switching to a style of landscaping that is more appropriate for our region, thereby conserving water while restoring some of our state’s unique biodiversity.      

Here in Colorado, where we typically get 12–15 inches of precipitation per year, the average person uses 150 gallons of water per day. Sixty percent of residential water usage goes to support landscaping. This amounts to approximately 90 gallons of water per person per day used to keep exotic landscapes on life support.  

When we look at wild landscapes in the fall, the changing colors reveal patterns that may be imperceptible at other times of the year. These patterns in the landscape provide subtle clues to the ways that plants are arranged in nature, based on available soil moisture.

In planning restoration projects, ecologists look at the aspect (the direction the site faces and the amount of sunlight it receives) as well as the degree of slopes, variations in soil moisture, and other conditions of the site. This same information is also valuable when planning sustainable landscaping projects utilizing native plants with minimal watering or maintenance costs. The grounds that surround buildings receive different amounts of stormwater, sunlight, exposure to wind, and other influences than undeveloped open spaces. To create a low-water use garden, it is necessary to evaluate the site in these terms and put the right plant in the right place for our purposes.

In 2007–2008, McWhinney (the developer of Centerra, a master-planned community in Loveland, Colorado), High Plains Environmental Center (HPEC), Ark Ecological Services, and BHA Landscape Design created a document called the Centerra Stormwater Pond and Natural Areas Design Guidelines. The guidelines won a Land Stewardship Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2009. Although this document is primarily about the design and construction of native open space, it has influenced our thinking on all aspects of landscape design.

In front of our visitor center at HPEC is a bioswale. It is a low channel that receives the stormwater runoff from our parking lot. The channel has a series of pools that are excavated to different depths. Each shallow pool contains plants with varying degrees of moisture requirements. The channel banks have plants that require increasingly less moisture up to the top of the bank, which receives virtually no moisture except our natural precipitation. This type of swale can also improve water quality by removing nutrients from fertilizer, pet waste, and other sources that may have been picked up in the water along the way.  

The concept of passive rainwater harvesting has been implemented to a large extent in other regions of the country. In Colorado, our complicated water laws do not allow for the evaporative loss of rainwater trapped in ponds of any size unless the landowner has water rights to offset it. However, it is possible to create high and low spots that allow rainwater to flow through the landscape slow enough to provide irrigation to the plants before flowing on.

When we work with nature in this way, placing plants in the appropriate zone in the landscape, and literally “go with the flow”, we can create beautiful, sustainable landscapes, reduce costs, conserve resources, and preserve the natural beauty of Colorado.    

World View

Sometimes people speak of Colorado as if it suddenly sprang into existence in the mid nineteenth century. However, people have been living here for over ten thousand years. North America, often called Turtle Island by many of the original inhabitants, has been radically altered. 43,000 Square miles are covered by impervious surfaces (roads and rooftops.) 40 million acres are covered by turfgrass. Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, says that 98 percent of the lower 48 states has been altered for human use. 

Driving across the prairie it can sometimes be hard to find wildflowers amidst the croplands and introduced grass species. Occasionally we find areas that are relatively undisturbed, or left alone long enough to begin to recover. These are windows into Turtle Island. Indian Reservations are such places, both in terms of people and plants, where we can touch the original land and see the world through the lens of the original inhabitants. In 1977, I set out to discover these places and people. I lived with a Lakota Medicine Man and his family for the summer and developed deep and lasting relationships with the people. I am part of their family and they are part of mine.    

 

 

Little is really known about indigenous uses of plants (although much has been written.) If a native person shows you a medicinal plant he or she may well admonish, “Don’t tell anyone.”  It’s not that they are greedy or selfish, in fact quite the opposite; in native cultures people will often endure hunger and thirst, and shed their life’s blood for the benefit of the others. The protection of this information is rather because native people know how our materialistic culture works, that everything is for sale, and everything is subject to exploitation. 

The relationship to plants in Native-American culture is very different than Euro-American culture. When a traditional person is looking for a plant they may sit down by the first one they find and offer tobacco. They might pray or talk to the plant. Then one begins to notice that these little plants are all around. Relating to plants this way is a matter of acknowledgement and respect that comes from a perspective of humility, gratitude, and relationship – the foundation of healing in traditional native culture. 

Not acknowledging plants as relatives reduces them to “things” to be used rather than beings that contain their own wisdom and power.  For this reason, simply having the ability to identify plants is not enough. In native cultures it’s not the plants alone that can heal people but the qualities of the person administering them and the sacred context of ceremony.

Due to the awareness of the predominant culture’s propensity for exploitation native people have been protective of this knowledge.  Therefore many scholars have traveled to Indian reservations and concluded that the knowledge and uses of plants have been lost. However, the knowledge is there, like Turtle Island, waiting to be discovered by those who can see, as the Lakota say, with the Cante Ista, “the eyes of the heart.”   

The knowledge of plant uses among Native Americans came from experimentation and insight and has been transmitted from person to person in a long oral history. Euro-Americans have benefited from the knowledge of plants accumulated by Native Americans as in the case of Joe Pye, an Indian who used the plant named after him (Joe Pye Weed) to cure a typhoid outbreak, in colonial Massachusetts.   

John Neihardt’s hauntingly poetic Black Elk Speaks, about the life of an Oglala Holy Man, provides an example of the knowledge of plants through spiritual insight. In a vision, Black Elk saw a particular plant being used to cure illness. Later he and his friend, One Side, sit on a hill, watching hawks circle a spot nearby and he says, “I believe that yonder grows the plant from my vision.” They ride over to the spot and, “There right on the side of the bank the herb was growing, and I knew it, although I had never seen one like it before except in my vision.”

The People 

The territories of Indian Tribes were constantly shifting and most native people in the State were migratory. The Utes are thought to have been in the region as far back as 10,000 years ago. There was a thriving Pueblo culture in the southwest corner of the State which began to die out around 1000 A.D. when the climate became too dry for farming. The Arapaho and Cheyenne moved up and down the front range in what is now Colorado and Wyoming. The Pawnee ranged from Eastern Colorado into Nebraska and Kansas. Northeastern Colorado was included in the territory of the Lakota when the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, in 1851.   

The 2010 Census Bureau shows there are 104,464 people who identify as American Indian alone or in combination with other races living in Colorado. With Denver’s central location between the desert tribes of the Southwest and the plains tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, the metropolitan area has become a hub for Indian Country. These descendants of the Cheyenne, Lakota, Kiowa, Navaho, and at least 200 tribal nations are an integral part of the City’s social and economic life. Despite their diversity, they are a tight-knit group, sharing the same strong commitment to family and cultural survival.   

 

The Plants

I use the Lakota names because of my personal connection with the people and because the Lakota uses of plants have been well documented. Between 1902 and 1954 Father Eugene Buechel, a Jesuit living with the Sicangu Lakota on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, collected over 24,000 words including the names of plants and their uses. These were published in the first Lakota-English dictionary. Other writings include Lame Deer Seekers of Visions by John Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, published in 1972. 

In the Lakota language plants are named for where they are found, how they are used, or for their distinguishing characteristics.  

Artemisia ludoviciana (Prairie Sage) is called pȟeží hóta, “something gray in the grass.” This plant is used for purification. Artemisia tridentata (Big Sagebrush) is pȟeží ȟóta tȟáŋka, which means the same as above but bigger.

Asclepias pumila (Low Milkweed) is čhešlóšlo pȟežúta, which means diarrhea medicine.

Galium boreale (Northern Bedstraw), čhaŋȟlóǧaŋ ská waštémna, is traditionally worn under the belts of Lakota women as a sashay. The name means “good white herb” because of its wholesome hay-scented fragrance and white flowers.  

Before drugstores and super markets people had to find food, medicine, and everything they needed, in nature. Doing that required a tremendous amount of knowledge about plants and animals, the various ecological zones, where things grew, and phenology; the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and inter-annual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). Timing is critically important when harvesting plants for food and medicine. Plants such as milkweed can be beneficial at some times and may be toxic at others.    

There are also ceremonial reasons connected with harvesting plants. Green Ash, Fraxinus pennsylvanica, pse ȟ tíŋ čháŋ, are used for pipe stems because of their pithy core that can be burned out easily. It is said that trees are protected by the Thunder Beings (Wakinyan Oyate) and ash stems can only be cut in winter, before thunder. Stems cut in springtime, after thunder returns, will crack.    

Some particularly valuable and efficacious plants were (and are) gathered, dried, and stored. Others are simply gathered and utilized as needed and as available. People traveling through different types of terrain could find plants for various common ailments, as well as food, wherever they went and in any season.    

Many native plants that may be growing in our gardens have traditional uses. Liatris punctata has been used to help stimulate appetite. Its Lakota name, tatéte čhaŋnúŋǧa, means that it faces the four directions. Echinacea (particularly E. angustifolia) is used for toothaches. Its Lakota name, uŋglákčapi, indicates the dried flowers are something you can “comb your hair with.” The name for common sunflowers, wacha zizi, means a “very yellow flower.” These were boiled to make an oil to soften the skin.     

 

Where to see Indigenous Gardens in Colorado  

For many years the High Plains Environmental Center (HPEC) in Loveland has held a mini powwow for third grade classes in the Thompson School District. This living unit on native American studies has connected students with Native Americans (The Iron Family of Fort Collins) for a direct transmission of culture, music, dance, and environmental stewardship. The event led to the creation of the “Medicine Wheel Garden” that functions both as a dance grounds and outdoor gathering space, as well as an ethnobotanical exhibit showcasing plants used by tribes of the High Plains, labeled with Latin, common, and Lakota names.   

The garden at the Ute Museum in Montrose, CO spans approximately a ¼ acre, and was originally installed in the 1990s when native plants were hard to find. It has recently been renovated using plants grown at Chelsea Nursery and HPEC. The renovated garden is still “in its infancy” according to restoration group member, Mary Menz. 

Members of the Ute tribe have been involved with the garden and a group of elders participate on an advisory committee helping to create interpretive signs and document plant uses. Ethnobotanist Kelly Kindscher is also helping provide information about traditional plant uses.  A Ute Museum goal is to be a place where native youth learn about traditional uses of plants. It’s also a place where Ute people come to collect edible cattails and other plants.    

There is also a Ute garden at the nearby CSU Extension Office within the Mesa County Fairgrounds. It represents the lower elevations, while the Montrose site represents the middle elevations.

The Sacred Earth Garden, at Denver Botanic Gardens, York St, has a distinctly Four Corners feel to it. It features plants used for food, medicine, building materials, dyes, and ceremony by over 20 Native American Tribes from the Colorado Plateau (which includes parts of CO, AZ, NM, and UT.)  It also includes a dryland agriculture garden incorporating Native American heirloom crops and traditional cultivation methods. When the garden was redesigned in 2000-01 there was an official blessing by native elders.  

Understanding the relationship that Colorado’s indigenous people have with our native plants can help us to appreciate the original inhabitants of our State and inspire us to be good stewards of the lands that they hold sacred.    

 

Suburbitat- If we’re lucky we may see birds, such as Cedar Waxwings (photo) and Robins, flocking to our gardens. In our opinion there are few things more joyful than a tree filled with singing birds. These are species that are not attracted to feeders.  Fruit, softened by several deep freezes, from ornamentals such as crabapple, hawthorn, and hackberry attracts them. Human beings have altered 98 percent of the lower 48 states and many bird populations in Colorado (and elsewhere in the United States) have declined by more than 60% over just 40 years. The Audubon Society says that, on our currently trajectory,  389 species of North American birds are in danger of extinction due to habitat loss and climate change. In the 21st Century we need our landscaping to be more than just pretty, we can utilize landscaping as a life raft to save our dwindling wildlife and share the world that we design and build with them.