Shorter days give us a chance to come in from the garden and enjoy a good book. And we've got some lined up. 

Gardening in A Changing World: Plants, People and the Climate Crisis 
by Darryl Moore 

From the book: “An examination of the relationship between gardens and current environmental issues, and how ideas can be explored that create positive and holistic ways of engaging with the natural world.” 

Greenwood 
by Michael Christie

From the book: "It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests.

It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.

It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.

It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light."

Personal opinion: If you didn’t want to hug a Douglas Fir before reading this, you will want to afterwards. Readers will be able to relate to the changing climate and an epidemic that alter our ecosystem and humanity.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
by Robin Wall Kimmerer (available November 19)

From the book: “As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.””

When Ken Nentwig was growing up, he remembers his grandparents had a cistern in their house to store rainwater. An age-old practice has become a modern necessity as we learn how to adapt to changes in climate. 

Harvesting rainwater allows for the water to be kept on site and used as a resource, rather than letting it runoff into the storm system. “Rainwater harvesting is almost like a new industry and yet it’s an age-old method of capturing the rain and using it from cisterns,” Nentwig said.  It reduces the demand on municipal or well water - aquifers- when it is available, instead of using treated water which is brought in from far away, we are able to capture the water and put it back on site. As an example, he said “We don't have to use treated water for flushing toilets, we can use rainwater for that.”

A concept schematic for a private residence in Hornby Island, B.C. Ken Nentwig photo

 

As a retired landscape architect, with four decades of landscape related experience, and sixteen years as a college professor at Ridgetown College in Ontario, Nentwig has shifted his work into independent consulting and education. 

Based in Victoria, B.C., Nentwig specializes in conceptual design and feasibility to help people determine how a rainwater system will work on their property and what parts will be needed.

With longer and heavier bouts of rainfall, we continue to see excess stormwater runoff from roads and buildings, especially in urban areas where the dated infrastructure is unable to keep up with climate changes. That’s why we have flooding, Nentwig said. “As storms become heavier and less predictable and as droughts become longer and deeper, we’re finding that rain water harvesting is one of the tools we can use to help mitigate the extremes that we’re witnessing and solve some of the problems of old infrastructure that does not handle the new way things are happening around us.”

A downspout-to-pipe connection in a community garden at the University of Victoria. Ken Nentwig photo

 

Most municipalities have a treatment plant that brings in water from wells, lakes or the ocean. After treatment, the water is sent off to buildings, Nentwig explained. “If we don’t have to do that, we don’t have to spend all the energy and we don’t need to have that infrastructure if we can keep the water that lands there, on site and use it.”

The City of Victoria has a rebate program for those who practice sustainable rainwater management on their property through the use of rain gardens, green roofs, bioswales and other systems. When harvested in a sustainable way, rainwater becomes a resource and helps the man-made watersheds in urban landscapes mimic the function of natural systems, which allows water to be diffused back into the water table naturally.

 

This is an in-basement tank array at a private residence in Victoria, B.C. Ken Nentwig photo

 

“People are starting to realize that rain water is an alternate source that is now being dumped into the sewers,” Nentwig said. “So interrupt that and make use of it.”

Nentwig has developed and facilitated online courses in Rainwater Management and  Landscape Design Basics with Sketchup Pro through Gaia College since 2011. He is also the Lead Trainer for CANARM (Canadian Association for Rainwater Management), where he developed a Canadian-based certification course, and is involved in the training programs of  the U.S. based group,  ARCSA (American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association). 

 

Ken Nentwig is an educator and concept design specialist for rainwater harvesting systems. Ken Nentwig photo

 

The Rainwater Harvesting and Management course at Gaia College can be an important asset to many tradespeople and areas of work including landscape architects and garden designers,  engineers, educators and decision makers within government. The next semester begins January 10, 2022.
 

To learn even more about Ken, some of his illustrations and conceptual design projects can be found here: https://www.behance.net/KenNentwig 

By Brenlee Brothers

It isn't just us feeling the ill-health effects of environmental degradation. Climate change and biodiversity loss are among the human-caused factors contributing to the rise of infectious diseases among people, animals and plants. From a meta-study reported in the New York Times.

In this article, author and Gaia College instructor David Tracey explores how Living Green Infrastructure can help mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events on urban environments. Thanks to integrative nature-based solutions, municipal leaders and citizens alike can feel hopeful about combating the climate crisis. 

Living Green Infrastructure is now a study stream offered through our Diploma in Organic Land Care. 

Even long term climate crisis watchers would have found the news this summer particularly troubling. 

They had to close the Acropolis to prevent tourists from suffering heat stroke in Athens, a city which has also hired Europe's first Chief Heat Officer (CHO). Canada's worst fire season in history led officials from New York to Chicago to issue air quality warnings. In lower South America temperatures reached nearly 40 degrees Celsius during what was supposed to be their winter, a phenomenon climatologist Maximiliano Herrera called one of the "most extreme weather events the world has seen." Even our most reliable temperature regulator to date, the sea, is in peril with the BBC headlining, "Ocean heat record broken, with grim implications for the planet."

Grim yes, but hopeless, certainly not, if enough people commit to the solutions such as Living Green Infrastructure. This innovative approach to city-building takes a holistic, ecological approach to development using nature as a guide. While grey infrastructure channels excess storm water through a system of curbs and gutters and pipes to a treatment plant or large body of water, green infrastructure means adding areas of healthy plants and living soils to absorb stormwater in place. This can not only reduce construction and renewal costs of massive concrete networks, but also improve health and quality of life for human and non-human urban dwellers.

"Grim yes, but hopeless, certainly not, if enough people commit to the solutions such as Living Green Infrastructure."

Living Green Infrastructure (LGI) can go by various names, including Green Infrastructure (GI) and Low Impact Development (LID), but the principle of working with rather than against nature is the same. No matter what scale – from a rain barrel to water the garden around a single home to a conduit of wetlands linking a region, Living Green Infrastructure adds life while softening the harder edges of urban existence. 

Doing it right, naturally, all comes down to the details. As a holistic approach, it requires people with the vision and skills to collaborate with like-minded colleagues across boundaries. Designing the living city our planet needs doesn't mean you must master each part. Someone trained to help living soil ecosystems thrive amid crowded urban conditions may not have the time or resources to become an expert in how city trees grow differently than their forest counterparts. But gaining a fundamental knowledge in the value of the components and how they all fit together is crucial for anyone hoping to join the growing list of those working for a better planet. 

 

"This innovative approach to city-building takes a holistic, ecological approach to development using nature as a guide."

Urban designers, planners and engineers, as well as urban growers, educators and anyone else looking to improve our living conditions at home and planet-wide will find a rich source of study materials through Gaia College's course in Living Green Infrastructure. Besides providing a chance to develop the skills and language required to work with Living Green Infrastructure, it may also offer something rare for our challenging times: hope. 

Remember Athens? It too is looking at Living Green Infrastructure to tackle the climate emergency, including a plan to revive an ancient Roman underground viaduct to water parks and create more green and blue spaces. Another example of a nature-based solution, a good idea whose time seems to have come again. 

About the Author

David Tracey is a designer, writer and community ecologist. He is also an adjunct professor for UBC's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the author of six books including Vancouver Tree Book, a BC #1 Bestseller. He will facilitate the Living Green Infrastructure course for Gaia College from September, 2023.

Read more about David Tracey.

Learn more about our Living Green Infrastructure course, and our Diploma stream.