HUGE NEWS!!! The Rethinking Lawns Project Of @chicagobotanic @ChicagoParks @UMFlint Just Received The

HUGE NEWS!!! The Rethinking Lawns project of @chicagobotanic @ChicagoParks @UMFlint just received the PACSP grant from @NSF & @PGAFamilyFdn to support our research into lawn enhancement & replacement with native plants. PIs:

@BeckSamBar @BeckyTonietto @lglyndal @chase_prairie (that's me!)

Turf lawns are omnipresent landscapes in urban settings. While they are more beneficial than impervious surfaces, our research project asks the question: what could our lawns become?

Coming from backgrounds in prairie restoration and urban native plants, we are proposing that incorporating short native plants into lawn greenspaces can produce concrete benefits for people and our more-than-human neighbors.

We are quantifying the benefits of our native plants in these settings, putting numbers to the theoretical benefits documented in the literature. We are measuring wildlife support, stormwater infiltration, cooling effect, and soil carbon storage.

To learn more, check out our website with official press releases and links and goodies!

Rethinking Lawns

NSF Grant Announced!

The National Science Foundation and Paul G. Allen Family Foundation have announced a $1.76 million grant to study the effects of converting

Today I saw a bunch of these fucked up deer, some opossums without the O, and some things called potoroos

still haven’t met a kookaburra yet, tho

It actually bums me out that astrology has persisted through the years as the standard BS divinatory practice that people really buy into, when it so easily could have been ornithomancy instead.

We could’ve had hipster girls trying to predict the minutiae of your life using an intricate chart that details how many herons or crows you’ve seen in the past year. Instead of asking what’s your sign on dating apps people would be like how many birds did you see on your way to work today. I cannot stop thinking about what could have been.

Late Summer field and forest edge flora:

Pawpaw, hawthorn, black gum, sassafras

Goldenrods, ironweed, white snakeroot, bottle gentian

the beautiys of illinois

majestic waterfalls of the north fork of the chicago river

the perilous scraggly peaks of rockford

city state of chicago, viewed from the placid waters of lake michigan

illinois beach state park sand dunes

the joyously colorful rolling hills of terre haute

shawnee national forest

lower wacker drive

the state’s great capital, springfield

the rambling eastern border along the mississippi river

paul bunyan statue

For all my people in the Persicaria / Smartweed / Knotweed fandom, a 14th century alternative word:

𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊-𝖘𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖙

source