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Trees in a forest grow in guilds, rather than in isolation. Oftentimes their branches end up encircling one another or even intertwined. Here in Florida, a common sight is a palm tree growing up into the branches of an oak. This beautiful duo in my neighborhood offer a nice visual metaphor for human interdependency also.

So did the palm tree nurse the baby oak seedling, or was the palm tree seedling nursed by the tall leafy oak? I imagine the latter, as the oak tree looks to be of a stately age, and palm trees don’t offer much shade. But it could have been a different scenario entirely. These trees sit on an empty, mostly grass lot which at one time was probably densely forested with a much wider variety of tree and shrub species.

While googling for an answer (I haven’t found one yet), I stumbled on this article, A Miami Emblem Is Sacrificed for Shade, about how the city of Miami realized it needed to start planting oak trees again. (Truly, there should be no sacrifice required; it should not be an either-or. The palm tree growing within the branches of the oak offers a memorable reminder.)

The article was published back in 2006 but it caught my eye because my city seems to be cutting down a lot of oak trees, as well as palmettos and other native scrub, from public lands, leaving little except wide expanses of buzzcut turf grass and palm trees. A lot of homeowners seem to be doing this as well. It makes for a rather desolate, not to mention hot and relentlessly sun-scoured, landscape.

Further Reading:

Botanical Nursing: From deserts to shorelines, nurse effects are receiving renewed attention: paper in BioScience journal. Fascinating overview of the various aspects of botanical nursing, and how the benefits tend to be mutual rather than one-sided. Key takeaway: “One plant’s reliance on another for its survival and growth has clear implications for conservation: Namely, saving a species dependent on nurse plants requires saving the nurse plants and endangerment of a nurse species endangers plants that depend on it.” Something for cities (and homeowners) to keep in mind as they remove seemingly “extraneous” or “undesirable” vegetation. Also: “Just as nurse plants are important to preservation, they can also be useful in restoration. … [W]ork on denuded ski runs in the Swiss Alps has focused on creating ‘safety islands’ — patches of diverse vegetation that provide numerous sites in which seedlings can safely establish.”

Actually, edible gardening has been on the upswing for years, and its growing popularity has been making the mainstream media for quite some time. It’s gotten extensive coverage by the New York Times among other major publications.

But this wonderful article by Ken Wells in the Wall Street Journal, “The New American Garden Is Edible,” particularly strikes my fancy because it introduces the general public to a specific kind of edible garden known as a “food forest,” which is a layered landscape of trees, shrubs, vines, and veggie plants. Mimicking the layered structure of a naturally occurring forest, a food forest of edible and/or native plants provides food for humans, as well as forage for pollinators and other beneficial species.

A food forest, once established, is much less labor-intensive and more resilient than a conventional vegetable garden where the veggies are cultivated in rows in bare soil. In a food forest, use of vertical space is maximized, and the plants shelter each other and share nutrients and other resources.

Edible gardening addresses multiple needs at once: One, it conserves water (according to some estimates, edible gardens use up to 66% less water than lawns — for more about that, see my “Further Reading” section at the end of this post). It also builds the soil, reduces erosion, builds drought-resilience, and boosts local food self-reliance. It brings neighbors together, and it gives families a productive and enjoyable activity to share.

Besides these benefits of edible gardening in general, food forests have the additional benefits of providing shade, habitat, and privacy. A food forest can even reduce your energy bill and make your home more comfortable, by mitigating temperature extremes.

Obtaining multiple yields in this manner is the hallmark of good design. The old saying is “killing two birds with one stone,” but I prefer to say “feeding two birds with one scone“! In permaculture design, we call it “stacking functions.” And the minute you start dedicating yourself to this approach (not just in your yard but in any other areas of your life), you will start saving lots of money, and have more time and energy for the things that really matter to you.

My photos for you today bring good news. The seeds I planted from a dragonfruit I ate the other day (thanks Ro for the yummy fruit!) have sprouted! And my papaya babies have taken off; look at the difference over just about three weeks. I’ve thinned out the plants over time (they seem to do better with thinning than with transplanting — the few I tried transplanting look a bit peaked). The papaya plants are starting to look like real trees! (Photo #3, at the bottom, is the “Before” pic of the papaya seedlings; the photo in the middle was just taken yesterday.)

Further Reading:
• “Edible Gardens vs. Lawns” article by Urban Plantations, describing the extremely important water-conservation angle of food gardens. Did you know that a food garden consumes as little as ONE-THIRD as much water, or less, as a lawn? (And of course you’re also obtaining a yield: fresh delicious food!) Urban Plantations, based in San Diego, is an organization whose website I strongly suggest you bookmark regardless of where you call home. As more and more of us nowadays find our regions affected by the alternating drought-and-flood cycle, and extreme weather in general, it behooves us to listen and learn from our desert-dwelling brothers and sisters who have always known such extremes.

• In-depth article by David the Good, on food forests and how to build one. Although the food forest described in this article is located in central Florida, a subtropical region, you can tailor the specifics to your region with a bit of research and trips to your local nursery. Other sources of information: your local permaculture guild or bioregionalist group; your own direct observations of naturally occurring clumps of shrubs and trees in your area. Even if you don’t feel ready to build a food forest, this article with illustrations and photos is a delight to read. And after reading it, you might feel more ready! David the Good has authored multiple books, and his website thesurvivalgardener.com is a gold mine of highly expert yet accessible information.

What a fantastic upcycle! Reusable straws (made of glass, bamboo, or stainless steel) are becoming more popular as we’ve come to realize that disposable plastic straws harm wildlife and our environment.

But my highly creative and very DEEP GREEN friend Roseanna takes the reusable straw to an even greener height, by upcycling one from a used pen! Added benefit of the pen: The pen-point is great for straining pulp, if you prefer to have a non-pulpy drink experience.

Great one, Ro! Thanks for sharing.

Recommended Resources:

– Strawless Ocean: “Plastic straws are really bad for the ocean. We use over 500 million every day in America, and most of those end up in our oceans, polluting the water and killing marine life. We want to encourage people to stop using plastic straws for good. If we don’t act now, by the year 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.”

– Surfrider Foundation: nonprofit dedicated to protecting beaches and oceans. “Straws suck” — and you can take action via their website to reduce the use of straws.

An umbrella group of neighborhood associations in my city has its regular monthly meeting this evening. On “tap” for tonight’s meeting, someone from the city utilities department will be fielding questions about a proposed new water treatment program that has become (un)popularly known as “toilet to tap.”

I’ve lived in many places, and in most or not all of those places, water from toilets goes to the same place as all other water; gets treated at a treatment plant and sent back out as “fresh water.” It’s been going on for a long time; it’s disgusting and needless; but I guess I had become resigned to it.

In Daytona Beach, Florida, where I live now, we apparently have never done this before but are maybe about to start. Here, it seems exceptionally senseless as we get 49 inches of rainfall per year (far more than in any place I’ve ever lived). We seem to waste a lot of water here. And so I came up with some questions for fellow residents of my city to ask themselves. Maybe some of these are relevant to your area also.

Here’s what I posted on some local citizens’ forums online:

It’ll be good to have the opportunity at tonight’s meeting to ask questions about this “toilet to tap” plan. It’s also a good opportunity to ask OURSELVES some questions about our water usage and priorities.

• Why do we keep buying bottled water, and why do we keep allowing corporations to plunder our aquifer and sell it back to us in plastic bottles?
• Why do we not have more respect for native/waterwise landscaping, why do we glorify manicured turf landscaping even on the beachside?
• Why do we (=as a city) keep clear-cutting trees and native scrub, leaving a moonscape that is basically a desert even with all the rain we get?
• Why aren’t more of us collecting rainwater, and why doesn’t the city promote rainwater harvesting, and harvest rainwater at its own facilities?
• Why are we planting so many high-maintenance, resource-intensive palm trees?)

And possibly, this “toilet to tap” threat could be an opportunity for introducing compost toilets! Compost toilets are super easy to use, and offer an alternative to crapping into fresh water. By the way, many cities across the nation have been doing “toilet to tap” for a long time. In our city we are fortunate not to have this yet, and, with some basic conservation measures like those I mentioned above, we could possibly avoid it.

In my post to fellow residents I didn’t mention voluntary austerity; radical conservation. But here on this blog, of course, it’s the main menu item. Household-level, voluntary, radical conservation. If a significant percentage of households were catching at least some rainwater, and phasing out water-hungry landscaping, it would go a long way toward making “toilet to tap” unnecessary anywhere. And then there is the holy grail of water conservation: widespread legalization and popularization of compost toilets. If we did that, we’d not only cut out a lot of our water woes, but, by turning “waste” into compost, vastly increase the health of our soils.

You, who choose to read this blog and believe in the power of household-level daily actions, are the heroes in the war on waste, pollution, land degradation, wildlife extinction, poverty, weather extremes, and climate change. Thank you for being here. Your footprint-reduction efforts matter! Keep going, and share your successes. (And if you want a handy, succinct yet highly readable guide to low-footprint living, get yourself a copy of my book DEEP GREEN!)

Recommended Resources & Food for Thought:
• Rainwater catchment calculator: Incredible! Even my little 100-square-foot patio roof has the potential to collect 2,500 gallons of rainwater a year! When I’m in ruthless water-miser mode, that can easily meet my personal water consumption needs. And then there’s the roof of my 988-square-foot house, which has the capacity to collect almost 25,000 gallons of water a year! Holy cannoli. That’d be more than enough even for outdoor irrigation of fruits and veggies through the drought phases.
• Brad Lancaster Water Harvesting channel on YouTube: In addition to being a “fountain” of knowledge on water harvesting, Brad is incredibly enjoyable to watch and listen to. One of the most powerful things I learned from Brad’s talks is that “Most deserts are manmade.” For starters I recommend Rainwater Harvesting Basics (1) (a 9-minute video); and “Overview of Lancaster Homestead Water Harvesting Strategies (12 minutes). Or just dive into the delightful 52-minute “Dryland Harvesting Home Hacks Sun, Rain, Food, & Surroundings.”
• “Greening the Desert” 5-minute video with permaculturist Geoff Lawton – just incredible.
• Compost toilets, humanure — Joseph Jenkins “Loveable Loo Overview”: “The Loveable Loo is an eco-toilet that requires no water, plumbing, pipes, vents, drains, electricity, or urine separation. It’s a toilet that makes gardens. It’s designed to collect toilet material for composting in a separate location. This 11 minute video provides a brief overview on the toilet and the processes.”

Earlier this month I was invited to the inaugural event of Central Florida for Good, a new organization that’s promoting a higher level of corporate social responsibility through B Corporations and B Corp Certification. One catch phrase of the B Corp movement is “purpose-driven companies.”

The meeting was held at the downtown Orlando location of First Green Bank. This building recently earned LEED Platinum certification for features including being close to public transport; offering secured bicycle storage and showers; reducing its water consumption by 35% using low-flow fixtures; getting 77% of its energy needs met by solar panels and the rest purchased through renewable “green power”; having LED lighting and improved insulation; and recycling 80% of its construction waste.

My trip to Orlando for the CFFG gathering was an enjoyable, relatively low-footprint excursion. I took Greyhound, which charged $32 for the round trip. (Actually would have been just $13.50 each way except that Greyhound tacks on a $5 service fee, which I guess is for purchasing online.) The trip takes about an hour each way. To make a full day of it, I left home in the early morning and came back at midnight. (Like a Londoner in the old days taking a holiday excursion to Brighton!)

The downtown is dense for a U.S. city, and quite pleasant to walk around. Tall buildings generated air currents and provided shade from the blistering sun. I doubt this was a deliberate move by the city planners; those same tall buildings would probably make the streets miserable on a cold winter day. I’ve done my share of walking around Boston and Chicago in cold weather, and tall buildings can create a bitterly cold, windy micro-climate. But in Orlando on a hot day, the buildings were like a cool concrete forest. Also, that part of Orlando, and other parts of town I walked through, does have plenty of actual trees — very mature, leafy ones. Every urban area should have them! Not only do they mitigate heat in summer; they also take the edge off the cold and provide shelter from wind in winter.

I spotted a Publix supermarket with a reduced space footprint (it had multiple floors rather than just one big floor, and a compact parking garage instead of a sprawling parking lot). And I walked along a dense little street of bars and restaurants that had gotten together and made an eco-pledge to only give out straws on request. I also sat for awhile in a well-shaded park that appeared to have some sort of permeable artificial mulch (recycled tires, maybe?) as its ground cover.

There were lots of apparently-homeless people, same as in my own city and just about everywhere else I go. But there were many other people utilizing the parks and other public spaces also. Young people who looked like students; office workers in business suits; people in jogging attire. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement, a low-key tolerance of everyone sharing an urban space. The density of shops, office buildings, and public buildings virtually ensured steady foot traffic of the type that keeps parks and sidewalks in constant use. (At the park where I sat for a while, it probably helped that a security guard from the nearby public building stepped out on occasion and eyeballed the park. His manner was not unfriendly but his presence made a statement.)

Most of the parking seemed to be in parking garages, which were easy to locate thanks to ample signage on the streets. A lot of car owners I know complain about having to park in a garage, pay for parking, and so on, but really, in a dense area where there are a lot of different things to walk to, as opposed to just visiting one shop or going to a movie, it isn’t so bad. You park your car in the garage, make a day or an evening of it, and don’t get in your car again til it’s time to go home. Or you walk or cycle: Downtown Orlando has enough density that the Publix I mentioned probably has thousands of regular customers right in walking distance.

The walk from the Greyhound station to that part of downtown Orlando takes me about 45 minutes, and goes through some neighborhoods that appear very income-disadvantaged, and others that are obviously undergoing gentrification pressure. All in all it was a thought-provoking day of walking and absorbing sights. Orlando’s Mayor, Buddy Dyer, is known for being gung-ho about making his city green, and many other residents and businesses obviously share a certain degree of eco-consciousness.

I arrived back at the Daytona Beach bus station around midnight, and by the time I took the 20-minute walk back over the bridge to my beachside home, I had probably walked a total of 10 miles that day. A low-cost, educational and scenic day.

By the way, Orlando is one of 10 cities that are aiming for 100% renewable-energy use.