Anti-lawn-pesticide film shows in Chicago tomorrow

Looks like an interesting afternoon tomorrow, just as this warm weather is sending a lot of people to the home center to buy the biggest possible bag of weed-and-feed.

“A Chemical Reaction: The Story of a True Green Revolution” will be shown at Columbia College’s Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan Ave., from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 20. It's presented by the Safer Pest Control Project, SafeLawns.org, Chickity Doo Doo and Grant Park Conservancy. Suggested donation is $10. Columbia College students will be admitted free with ID.

The documentary -- or polemic, depending on your point of view -- chronicles how residents of Hudson, Quebec, persuaded their local officials to ban lawn and garden pesticides there, based on health risks. Their actions were upheld 9-0 by the Canadian Supreme Court in 2001. Since then, the provinces of Alberta, Quebec and Ontario and dozens of Canadian cities enacted bans or strong restrictions on on lawn pesticides and British Columbia and Nova Scotia are considering them.

The notion that it isn't worth even a possible risk to the health of children by spreading poisons on lawns has spread south. Connecticut banned lawn pesticides around school day-care centers in 2006.

The film will be followed by panel discussion with the documentary's spokesman, Paul Tukey, founder of SafeLawns.org; Rachel Rosenberg, executive director of the Safer Pest Control Project, which campaigns against the use of lawn pesticides; my friend Mike Nowak, WCPT Radio host and local green/gardening expert; and Steve Neumann, co-owner of Clean Air Lawn Care Chicago, a company that does natural lawn care.

Note that there is no representative of the conventional lawn care industry on the panel. It will be interesting to see if any show up to see the film.

There are about 70,000 landscaping service companies in the country, with annual revenues of about $50 billion, according to Marketresearch.com. Some are tree care companies or are more diversified, but for the majority the bread and butter is conventional lawn care: A standard package of mowing, chemical weed control and synthetic fertilizers.

Then there are the chemical companies that provide the products to both professionals and homeowners who have been trained for decades by advertising to assume that regular application of blue chemical crystals is what every lawn needs. These businesses are terrified at the threat to their livelihoods from the prospect of pesticide bans.

I've started to see signs of change, though. Some companies are just trying to find new ways to market themselves differently without changing their basic practices. They still firmly believe that everybody loves their lawns and that the only way to have a healthy, attractive lawn is their way.

But some others are really thinking about it. I've seen articles in the trade journals explaining how a lawn can be maintained without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Some businesses are earnestly trying to figure out how to make a living by doing lawn care differently.

So far, there's not a lot of financial pressure for them to do anything differently. Research shows that about half of Americans don't do anything to their lawns anyhow, except mow. The other half is mostly still doing what the ads have taught them to do, or are unconcernedly hiring lawn care services. Only a small minority of people with lawns are aware of the pesticide issue.

But that minority is growing -- driven not by an altruistic concern about the health of the world environment, but by people's personal concerns about their own safety. Polls show the concern increasing. And the lawn care industry is well aware of it. Canadian companies are still fighting the pesticide bans and U.S. companies are armed against such efforts here.

Businesses always fight fiercely against any change in their practices and against any government regulation. They fought the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. But once those laws passed, guess what? They learned to deal.

The most interesting reaction I've seen to the current nationwide tour of "A Chemical Reaction" came from Ellen Wells, editor at large of Ball Publishing's garden center trade magazine, "Green Profit." In her e-mail newsletter, "Buzz," she listed the film's play dates around the country and suggested that local garden centers plan to be well-stocked with organic lawn care products on those weekends.

That's the smart side of the landscape industry talking. There's change happening, a big, deep change in values about our relationship with the outdoors. The companies that cash in on that change will be the ones that get ahead of it, rather than spending their energies deflecting or kicking and screaming.

The Safer Pest Control Project, incidentally, doesn't just protest and call for bans. They provide information for homeowners on how to maintain lawns without pesticides (see their Web site at www.spcpweb.org or call 773-878-7378.) And more interestingly, they hold natural turf management training for landscape businesses, to help them understand how it can be done and move them along toward adapting. (There's a session coming up March 29 and 30 in Milwaukee.)

Here's some data from the press release sent out by Greenmark Public Relations, which represents SPCP:

"According to experts, 78 million U.S. households use home and garden pesticides, spreading 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides on lawns annually. Americans spend $700 million each year on pesticides for green, weed-free lawns – using three times as much on lawns per acre than on agricultural crops."

I'm not sure whether I will be able to get to the screening; I have a press of other things to do tomorrow. But I'm sure you'll hear all about it from Mike on his "Mike Nowak Show" from 8 to 10 a.m. Sunday on WCPT-820 AM.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Victory gardens performance, some other events

LaManda Joy, who blogs at theyarden.com, has asked me to mention a multimedia performance with music she has put together about Chicago victory gardens in World War II. She and friends will be putting it on Sunday, March 28, at 2 p.m. at the Chicago Dank-Haus, 4740 N. Western Ave. Tickets are $7 and for sale at www.theyarden.com. Proceeds will be donated to Hyperlocavore, a yard-sharing community. I, unfortunately, will be out of town that day, but I look forward to reports.

Some other events that have wafted into my consciousness:

There's a tool-sharpening workshop Saturday by members of the Wicker Park Garden Club, to be held in a private home. For $15, learn to sharpen all your tools--hoes, pruners, the works. There are two session, 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m., but space is limited for both. So RSVP to WPGarden@aol.com.

Grand Street Gardens is having two seed-starting workshops, one for kids ($10) and one for aduklts ($15), on March 27. See here for info.

My friend Julie Siegel will speak on "Being Present in Your Garden" at the Chicago Botanic Garden on March 23. It's $37, or $29 if you're a member. see chicagobotanic.org to register.

No burn in evidence

I took a swing by Lindberg Park in Oak Park today and saw no evidence of a prescribed burn. Phoo. I bet it had something to do with all the trailers for a movie shot that were arrayed in the vicinity of a house nearby. I suppose they decided they didn't want smoke wafting through their shots. I have not actually had the energy to inquire if they plan to reschedule.

Prescribed burn planned in my home town

Pizzo & Associates Ltd. employees burn prairie plants last fall at the company's headquarters in LaSalle County. The fire is carefully controlled.

This is interesting. Oak Park, where I live, is going to try a prescribed burn to control weeds in a local park tomorrow, according to the local paper, the Wednesday Journal.

Prescribed burns aren't yet common in established urban areas. But they are a standard practice in natural areas restoration; they mimic the lightning-set fires that the native prairie ecosystems evolved to depend upon. A fire would kill off shallow-rooted weedy plants and consume the dried stalks and leaves of previous years' growth, but it wouldn't harm the deep root systems or tough seeds of the native plants. And the burning would release nutrients from the ashes to the plants' roots. The result, especially just before spring rains: a burst of healthy growth.

I've seen prescribed burns; last fall I watched one close-up at the headquarters of Pizzo & Associates Ltd., an ecological restoration firm based way out west in LaSalle County, where they use about 40 acres around their headquarters building to grow dozens of species of prairie plants to collect the seeds.

The techniques for controlling the fire are well developed now and the deftness and craftsmanship at work were remarkable to see. The Pizzo folks carefully watched the wind as they moved the fire along a few feet at a time, squirting the dried vegetation with gasoline and setting it alight with blowtorches. Any errant wisp of flame was quickly stopped with a spray of water from a tank on wheels.

The plants flamed up only for only a minute or two. Within minutes -- while the smoke still rose -- I placed my hand against the ashes and felt the ground merely warm.

That burn was done in fall; most are done in spring. It only takes a couple of weeks after a spring burn for the land to be covered with green sprouts from the crowns of established plants and newly sprouting seeds.

Pizzo just had an exhibit at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show in which they explained the whole process of ecological restoration, including regular burning to keep a restored landscape healthy. According to them, a landscape of native plants requires much less maintenance than, for instance, a lawn that needs to be mowed.

But it does require some work, especially since it exists in a world packed with introduced species that, left unchecked, could out-compete the native plants. Those weeds are controlled mainly by burns.

When the prairie restoration got started around here in the 1970s and 1980s, prescribed burns in forest preserves and other natural areas were a major freakout for many people. They are much more common and less scary now. They've been done in Jackson Park and other Chicago parks where natural areas are being restored or re-created.

When Marcus de la Fleur lived in an established area of Elmhurst in a very humble rented house on a standard-size lot, he used to burn his tiny side-yard patch of native plants, although it took some educating to get the village officials to permit it. (He's moved to the city now and is working on a new house.)

But Oak Park has never done a prescribed burn before. They're doing it not in a restored area, but in a patch of Lindberg Park (at Marion Street and LeMoyne Parkway) that is simply choked with weeds. The local fire department in charge. I might have to drop by and see how deft they are.




Skilled restoration workers can manage a fire with great precision. At Pizzo & Associates last fall, the fire was guided around a patch of plants from which valuable seeds had not yet been collected.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Surfacing after the Flower & Garden Show; wildflower talk tonight

I'm coming off a long week spent mainly at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show, which ended yesterday. I have enough fodder for about 20 blog posts, but haven't done any of them because I was so busy hanging around the show wearing about five different hats.

I helped organize a meeting of the Garden Writers Association, wrote a story for the Chicago Tribune, did a couple of shifts as a volunteer at the Ask a Master Gardener booth, spent some time at the booth of Chicagoland Gardening magazine (where I'm a senior editor), and on Friday, March 12, I spoke not once but twice.

In the afternoon I spoke on woodland wildflowers in the garden. Then in the evening I tried something new. They were having a mix-and-mingle event (the show was open until 8 p.m.), and as part of the entertainment I took a bunch of people trooping through the show gardens, using features of the exhibits to demonstrate basic concepts that I was explaining about edible gardening in small spaces.

There were things that didn't work out quite right--the worm bin wasn't where I expected it to be, so I didn't get to demonstrate worm composting. There were two piano players banging away, and I hadn't realized I would be explaining potagers at the same time that a chef was demonstrating a recipe at an adjacent exhibit, setting up a shouting contest in which I (the one without a microphone) got creamed.

But there were more than 30 hardy souls who followed me in a winding path all over the show floor, asked lots of good questions and seemed very charged up with enthusiasm to try vegetable gardening.

Tonight, I'm giving the wildflower talk again at 6:30 p.m. at the Proksa Park Garden Club in Berwyn; it's free at the Proksa Park Activity Center,
3001 S. Wisconsin Ave. My throat is still sore from all the shouting, but I'm hoping my voice holds out until I'm done showing off the spring beauty.

As for people who did get around to blogging from the show, check out One Seed Chicago and Chicago Garden. They are both secretly the same guy -- Mr. Brown Thumb, who was at the show almost as much as I was.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Close to the ground, it's already spring

It's that time of year. There was still snow on the ground today, though it was melting fast. More snows may come. It's down in the teens again tonight. But if you look close in the garden, especially near the ground, things are waking up.

I didn't notice this in my own garden. I noticed it today while while taking a preview tour of the Smart Home down at the Museum of Science and Industry, which has been all spruced up inside and is set for a trans-global assortment of vegetables outside this year.

Out in the vegetable garden, I saw snowdrops blooming through the straw-and-wood mulch. I saw buds swelling on chokeberry bushes in the native planting by the bioswale. In the pockets of vertical gardens, I saw hens-and-chicks and other succulents already putting on new growth.


I hear they are on crocus watch at the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park. Back in 2004 and 2005, when Piet Oudolf was designing those grand sweeps of perennials, he included only a few bulbs. But he didn't reckon with winter-weary Chicagoans' powerful craving for the first signs of spring. The next year, he and landscape architect Jacqueline van der Kloet superintended volunteers who interplanted planted bulbs by the thousands. Now we wait breathlessly each year for the first small blooms.

Another sign that the gardening year is nearly upon us: the Chicago Flower and Garden Show opens Saturday at Navy Pier. Here's a story I wrote about it for the Chicago Tribune. I've been knee-deep in planning a professional meeting at the show, and I'm preparing two talks to give at the show March 12.

But those and other things have kept me rushing around or tied to the computer so much that I haven't checked for snowdrops in my own front yard. I have dormant pruning yet to do, and seeds yet to sow. And I'm running out of winter. There are worse problems to have.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.