permaculture

[Karen Kellogg <garuda2@comcast.net>]

Toby---

I got one of the shrubs from the state in a wildlife buffer package 
years ago--one is now a lovely large shrub blocking my view of my 
neighbor's house---I've been thinking I should get rid of it; now your 
post gives me a decent argument for keeping it--- and It smells so 
heavenly when in bloom!!!

Thanks, Karen



On Tuesday, November 15, 2005, at 03:25 PM, Toby Hemenway wrote:

> Dave Jacke made the following amusing observation: if Russian olive is
> rampant in your area, what possible harm could there be in planting 
> one more
> of this soil-restoring, wildlife-feeding, edible (etc., etc.) plant? 
> The
> seed burden will be dwarfed by what is already there.
>
> I agree that goumi and E. x ebbingei are better choices for small-scale
> projects.
>
> Russian and autumn olive were distributed widely in the eastern US by
> highway departments in enormous roadside planting projects; they are 
> pretty
> well naturalized now. They tend not to move into intact ecosystems, 
> with the
> possibility of remnant prairie, which is endangered by just about 
> every tree
> and shrub species, native or not, since we don't burn prairie any 
> more. They
> do like pasture and other artificially maintained grassland or 
> disturbed
> ground, but that's an economic and land use choice, not an ecosystem
> preservation issue. Pasture (and unburned prairie) generally wants to 
> become
> forest if there's more than 20 inches of rain a year; the shrubs are 
> just
> doing their job.