What's the idea?

What's the idea?
Most people live and work in man-made environments in which the.other organisms (plants and animals) are controlled and selected. Plants are used to soften the impact of buildings and paved areas in the urban landscape. When you look around the suburbs or downtown do you get a sense of place? Is there anything that tells you you are in Atlanta, Columbus, Denver or Philadelphia? Or do you see the same turf-grass with beds of mulch and shade trees?

The landscape industry has grown so that virtually all residences and commercial sites use its products or services to some extent. Plants are often selected from a narrow range of exotic species which require intensive maintenance. Waste generation and nonpoint pollution from fertilizers and other chemicals are as much a problem of ornamental plantings as of crop production.

As cities and suburbs spread areas of natural vegetation disappear and plants and animals become dependent on our deliberate cultivation for their survival. Where will tomorrows kids learn their wild flowers and trees?

Can we:

develop styles of horticulture that give a strong sense of place?
meet environmental concerns for maintenance of biodiversity and balance of inputs and outputs?
engage the public and the landscape industry in exploring these ideas?
Magazine articles and books abound with recommendations to "go native" but the approaches recommended vary greatly and often rest on untested assumptions. It is not surprising that the response has been so limited. We propose to test a hypothesis that pleasing, stable and low-maintenance landscape systems can be developed using indigenous, prairie plant species; a range of approaches to establishment and maintenance will be directly compared and an information system will be established to make the results available.

Prairie areas were only a limited part of the original vegetation of Ohio; we selected prairie plants for this project because they seem to be a natural substitute for lawns, which are the predominant element in domestic and corporate landscapes; because they can be established more quickly in a wider range of situations than other equally desirable plant communities and because of their innate appeal.
The use of the Internet to stimulate and maintain interest in the project is also experimental. We believe that a Web server based on a real physical site will be a powerful impetus to practical approaches in other real-life gardens, rather than another facet of "virtual reality".

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