Just a quick post today. Today is the second Monday in January which means: 1) classes resume here at MSU and 2) it’s the first day of the Great lakes Trade EXPO in Grand Rapids, which is sponsored by the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association and Michigan Turf Foundation. I’m on tap for two presentations this afternoon.
The first one is a bit of post-mortem on the Imprelis issue that dominated some of our lives back in the summer. My talk, "Imprelis: What went wrong?’ looks back over the development of the Imprelis debacle. The final verdict on how the EPA allowed the registration on an herbicide with such devastating non-target effects probably won’t be fully known until the dust settles on the legal process. Bottom line: the testing that was done was not adequate and either DuPont or the EPA (or both) dropped the ball.
My second talk, thankfully, is a little more upbeat. In "Little Big Men" I discuss the use of miniature and dwarf conifers for landscaping. I even get to talk about one of my new interests: railway gardening. I haven’t taken the plunge yet – not enough time or nearly enough money – but I think I may have found a hobby for retirement. For those that have access to the Oregon Association of Nurseries Digger magazine, Elizabeth Peterson wrote a very nice feature on railway gardens in their September issue.
Courtesy: Elizabeth Peterson
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Hope your talks went well. The picture you posted of the railway garden is amazing. What a neat way to combine a couple of passions. (I had pictured gardens along the “real” railroads, probably not a good idea!)
SandyG: I don’t know about the U.S. but in Europe we actually still do have gardens along “real” railroads: Schrebergarten (allotment gardens). These are closely connected with the period of industrialisation and urbanisation in the 19th cent. and initially were “gardens of the poor”.
One major source for these gardens was land owned by railway companies, unsuitable for profitable uses and so these parcels of land were often allotted to railway workers.
Jeff, i hope you do take the plunge and get into garden railroading. As a lifelong modeller,I can assure that it’s nothing but fun. I belong to a small club. Some members have a back yard full of trains, and a bit of garden. Others have a marvelous garden, with a train gliding thru. You can indulge your interests anywhere along that spectrum. Of course, the bottom line is that a garden railroad makes children of all ages smile. Its very rewarding.
Here’s a PDF of the referenced article:
http://www.oan.org/associations/4440/files/digger/Digger_Sept_2011_p23-32.pdf
(We’re doing a workshop on the topic in January and came across it while researching for the brochure)