Melissa is happy to be helping the environment.

Gardeners tend to be collectors with nurturing and thrifty natures.  These temperaments usually lead to garages and sheds chock full of flower pots that are “too good to throw away.”  The staff of the IMA Greenhouse and volunteers from the Horticultural Society would like to help you clear out the excess inventory with our annual pot recycling day.  We are particularly seeking those types of pots and flats we use regularly, including clay pots in any size, 4.5” plastic pots and smaller nursery pots.

In recent years, these donated pots have saved the Greenhouse thousands of dollars in new container purchases, allowing us to put our limited funds to better use.  As petrochemical costs continue to rise, plastic pot prices have skyrocketed.  Add in the cost of freight and terra cotta pots have gone up considerably, as well.  We are helping prevent limited resources and energy from going to the production of new pots.  Reusing the containers also keeps pounds of plastic out of the waste stream.  It is estimated that a 1 gallon plastic pot might take 200 years to breakdown.

We also get warm fuzzy feelings from sharing! There are times when more materials than we are able to use and store have been donated.  After past recycling events, we have shared with other not-for- profit groups including the IUPUI Greenhouse, Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Marion County Master Gardeners and Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society.  Also many items have been returned to the growers to help them keep their costs down so we can provide better prices to our shoppers!

Carole up to her elbows in reclaimed pots.

On Saturday, October 1 from 10:00 – 1:00pm your pots can be dropped in the Greenhouse parking lot.  You will be greeted by friendly volunteers from the IMA Horticultural Society.  The volunteers will sort, stack and sanitize the incoming pots to ready for reuse.  These folks literally get up to their elbows in this work.  Stop by with your donations and visit awhile. The weather forecast is for a bright sunny day and I can guarantee that the volunteers will have a sunny disposition, too.  For more information, please call 317-920-2652.

Filed under: Greenhouse, Horticulture

Katherine Ball, intrepid resident of Indianapolis Island, wants you.  Come and learn from your fellow citizens—including those who are extra funny, such as Indy Fringe favorite Phil Van Hest— about new ways of thinking about water this Friday night, Sept. 16, at Big Car’s Service Center for Contemporary Culture and Community in Lafayette Square:

Katherine’s calling this free gathering Public Social University (PSU).  It’s a concept borrowed from friends in Portland, Oregon, from whence she hails.  PSU puts a unique twist on learning by combining it with other (often seemingly unrelated) subjects, encouraging non-experts to speak about their experiences, and adding a playful energy.

Learning from non-experts.  How refreshing is that?   This Friday, the poetry, history, reality, and politics of water will abound. Check the flyer above for the workshops being presented, or download your very own copy and please share it with others.

Bonus: come to PSU, and you will also see a watery art & design show: ten designers’ responses to the shapes and patterns of the White River watershed.

Want to reduce your carbon footprint while attending Public Social University?  Meet Katherine and other avid cyclists to bike over to the Service Center.  They’ll be convening at Freewheelin’ Community Bikes’ new workshop, 3355 N. Central Ave., at 5:30 pm.

See you Friday.  If you’re craving more aqueous-ness, don’t forget the FLOW project and its multitude of events…

Filed under: Art, Local, Public Programs

I have a real love/hate relationship with water…curious for someone whose body is about 60% water! Two years ago a groundhog family (unbeknownst to me) took up residence beneath my front porch. Their digging re-routed rainwater toward my home’s foundation causing extensive damage and ultimately necessitated a new foundation, a French drain, and the re-building of my porch…$$$!

Now I’m obsessed with keeping excess water away from my home, and coupled with a heightened awareness of environmental issues, I have fast-forwarded to rain barrels. Previously the only thing I knew about rain barrels was a song I was taught as a child:

I have since learned there is WAY more to rain barrels than I had previously thought! Water is such a basic need that it’s not surprising humans have been devising methods of collecting it since ancient times. The Valens aqueduct brought water from surrounding hillsides to the medieval city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) to be stored in reservoirs and giant underground cisterns like Yerebatan Sarayi, pictured here:

In the desert, ancient Egyptians dug a network of underground cisterns that collected rainwater. Over these cisterns, Egyptian armies built fortresses that were almost impervious to enemy invasion. Clearly, collecting and recycling water is not a new concept.  As scientists began to understand the need for good sanitation and indoor plumbing became more available, older methods of water collection lost their popularity. The collected water was too contaminated. Today, we are vitally aware of the need to be good stewards of this precious resource!

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Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Greenhouse, Musings

In recent years the IMA has made a commitment to the Indianapolis community to become more conscientious stewards of the environment in its pursuit of fulfilling the museum’s mission.  This has been a worthy challenge for an institution to take on within the confines of the museum itself, but we also have the unique position of having 152 acres of gardens and woodland that give us an advantage over many urban institutions when measuring our carbon footprint.   In an effort to evaluate that advantage, we turned to a software analysis tool created by the USDA Forest Service called i-Tree.

The intention of i-Tree is to allow communities and other users to assess their current urban forest cover, create awareness and educational opportunities, and guide application for better management of those trees.  It has frequently been applied on a city-wide scale, but can also analyze an entire state’s urban forest, or a small, local city park.  The results are based on field data collected from random plots, accounting for tree species, height, trunk diameter, and canopy characteristics.  The data is then entered into the Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) analysis model, which calculates the amount of air pollution removed, carbon sequestered and stored by the trees, and sustained economic benefits.

100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park

To elaborate on the terminology of carbon sequestration and storage, a brief review of plant photosynthesis may be helpful.  Photosynthesis is the process of converting light energy to chemical energy in the form of sugar (glucose).  Carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) molecules are broken down with energy from the sun into glucose (C6H12O6), a usable energy form, and oxygen (O2), which, lucky for us, is expelled into the environment as a waste product.

Simplified diagram of the photosynthetic process, from biomassauthority.com

Eventually, that glucose can be reorganized into different forms: sucrose, starch and cellulose.  Each of these sugars is made of a different 6-carbon compound, which are used as sources for plant energy, or stored as organic compounds to develop plant growth and the structural form of the plant (i.e. the inner wood of a tree).  Think of these terms when discussing carbon sequestration and storage, where you can associate sequestration with removing carbon from the air for the process of photosynthesis, and associate storage with the amount of carbon that has been accumulated in the size development of the tree.  This is important, because if the tree were to die, all that stored carbon would be released back into the air or soil as the tree decomposes.

The carbon cycle as it relates to the environment (found here).

Fallen trees litter the woodland floor of 100 Acres.

The results of measuring carbon sequestration and storage have more meaning when you can understand, in part, how they fit into the plant’s life cycle.  Now that you know some of the conditions and terminology, you’re ready to hear what we found about our own, IMA urban forest!

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Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Horticulture

I wasn’t able to attend the American Institute for Conservation’s (AIC) Annual Meeting last month in Milwaukee.  However, thanks to ArtBabble, today I’m able to watch one of the more potent discussions: The Plus/Minus Dilemma: The Way Forward in Environmental, which was co-sponsored by International Institute for Conservation (IIC).

This discussion, which was moderated by our Director & CEO, was recently summarized in an article in the Art Newspaper, Climate control: time to change the settings.

I also want to point out what a great job AIC and IIC have been doing with their blogs to let members know about conferences and current news.  Check out the AIC blog and read all of the recent posts about the Annual Meeting.  While there’s no substitute for actually going to a meeting, the amount of information the members of AIC are sharing through the blog is impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation, Current Events, Travel