Autumn dogwood as stained glassI'm teaching a graduate course in restoration ecology this term, and brought the students to my natural area to give them some first-hand experience with state of the art restoration techniques and land management strategies in a natural area that is subject to considerable pressure from white-tailed deer and from invasive plants. Many of the students are landscape architecture candidates, so they need some exposure to native ecosystems, not just design classes.
The day was absolutely perfect--temperatures in the mid 70s, low humidity, and billowy white clouds sailing across an azure sky.
The native grasslands are at their peak right now, especially where they contain goldenrod and white snakeroot. The meadows are just gorgeous!
Back at the nature center, white wood aster was blooming in the shade of a specimen tree alongside a white picket fence.
2 comments:
Bravo for turning future landscapers onto natural landscapes. It seems that it should be a requirement, but I imagine it's not.
Jain,
Though I don't enjoy teaching much, one of the reasons I continue to do so is because the landscape architecture students tell me that my class (plus one other field ecology class they are required [yeah!] to take) is the only exposure to native plants that they get during their course of study. That's one reason that we get such goofy and unsustainable designed landscapes--and a proliferation of non-native invasives.
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