A map of neighborhoods

implies my absence.

That isn’t real.

A watershed is every footstep

Rivers run in pipes below your feet

Streams flow under roads

Filled wetlands, an anachronism:

we still pulse,

emerge, sometimes surprise

Put your hand to the ground

hear me below

My small magic

was

little wetlands dotted everywhere

puddles and frogs and arrowhead

interconnected intimacies

I offer restoration

and ask you to learn

I’m delighted to share with you a bit of the genius of my mentor, Darrel Morrison, through a little website I created with Darrel.

There was a lengthy and quirky combination of life history moments that made me an environmentalist before I knew that was different than being an ecologist. Common sense had something to do with it. My mother wanting me to read A Sand County Almanac. My parents spending their weekends accelerating oldfield succession to forest, when none of us would have known those words. Starlit family walks. The visit to nearby woods for the first trilliums of spring. Lifted on dad’s shoulders to see robin eggs. Crying when the neighbor kids chopped off the young willow trees we’d planted, for no particular reason than destruction. Working at the recycling center with the 4-H club on Saturdays when I had thought I’d rather be lazy and read novels. Growing up and moving to northern California where trilliums don’t grow, but exotic eucalyptus dangerously accelerates fires. Letting Dan’s stronger sense of environment and observation skills influence me. Discovering kindred souls to be compelled by, like Lorrie Otto for just one. A mind opening to allow me to notice life-changing moments — those moments when your perspective and ideas shift like an earthquake.

Video: Visible and Invisible Mending: An Intersection of Art and Ecology, August 13, 2021, Wisconsin Wetlands Association “Coffee Break” talk

Video: Oak/Hickory Leafout, April 28 - June 18, 2021, southeastern Wisconsin / Ozaukee County

“Removing invasive wildlife and planting native species are important steps to prepare the Pebble Beach property for public use. Conservation efforts will allow native Wisconsin plants to flourish, maintaining the environmental integrity of the shoreline and hiking trails… Door County Land Trust hired Landscapes of Place to plan the environmental restoration of the 17 acres and 600 feet of shoreline.”

Read the article here.

March Mapleness. Or Maple Madness.

For their 50th Anniversary, University of Georgia – College of Environment and Design (my alma mater for landscape architecture) has published a book, Place+Meaning+Experience. It includes a short essay from me, titled Understanding Place through Art and Ecology. This is a brief homage to the renowned field course created and taught by my good friend Darrel Morrison, which I co-taught with him for four years.

Download a pdf of the book here.

Gleasonian v. Clementsian ecology is nicely summarized in wikipedia and excerpted here. This short and vivid essay connects not only Gleason and Clements, but Cowles, Curtis, Whittaker and Cronquist too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Gleason_(botanist)

“… However, in 1918, Gleason began to express significant doubts on the usefulness of some of Clements's widely employed vocabulary, especially the use of the organism metaphor to describe the growth of vegetation, and the treatment of the units of vegetation as including climaxes. … First, he argued that Clements's identification of particular kinds of vegetation assumed too much homogeneity, since areas of vegetation are actually similar to one another only to degrees. Second, he argued that Clements's associating particular vegetation types with particular areas underestimated the real diversity of vegetation…”

Read about our Crossroads at Big Creek Dwarf Lake Iris Translocation Project. Dwarf Lake Iris (Iris lacustris) is a federally threatened species that is known to occur in only 167 locations in suitable habitats near the northern shores of the Lake Michigan-Lake Huron system.

For national poetry month and Write On Door County, and for Earth Day (and also in the depths of pandemic uncertainty), a poem.

For Earth Day, we recommend a 7-minute film called When the Earth Moves.

Bay Shore Blufflands is found within one of the 42 named migratory bird stopovers of significance according to WDNR Migratory Bird Conservation Plan, 2019 (pages 44-55, excerpt here). We appreciate your help posting your bird sightings at e-bird’s Bay Shore Blufflands hotspot.

For the third year, we are hiring two ecological restoration interns for the summer season. Applications are due February 21st, with preference to teams of two applying together. Please spread the word. Thank you!

It was a glorious day June 24th for hard-working neighborhood volunteers, the Door County Land Trust and Bay Shore Property Owners Association to plant a demonstration garden at DCLT’s Bay Shore Blufflands Preserve lower trailhead. We planted 700 native herbaceous plants for a pollinator meadow and 40 native shrubs for a braided hedgerow, to demonstrate great options for homeowners in replacing the invasive exotic buckthorn and invasive exotic honeysuckle. We are watching it grow and happy for recent rain. Thank you especially to Denice and Ken for your support.

Nancy’s artwork will be on exhibit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum gallery in May and June, 2019.

Read the nice mention of this and a hike we’re leading, in SER MWGL Members in Action.

Landscapes of Place is collaborating with Alice Thompson & Associates on a Climate Action and Wetlands advocacy table at the Wisconsin Wetlands Association’s Science Conference, February 19-21 in Madison, WI. We Stand For Science.

See my guest blog post at A Wealth of Nature: Art and Ecology (thank you, Eddee Daniel).

“I ask questions like this: can the art also help explain the life outdoors? Can it illuminate ecological processes and biological interactions? Can it enable the educators of the Urban Ecology Center to give their students an alternate conduit for understanding the ecology of a place? Can the art be examples of sketching and illustration whose methods educators can learn and use to explain (draw) the structure of a plant or the wings of a bird? …”.

We are teaching a two-day workshop at The Clearing in Ellison Bay, WI. Landscapes of Place: Landscape Design with Art & Ecology –

This two-day workshop will introduce Jens Jensen’s approach to landscape design, with people in mind, and using an ecological framework drawn from The Clearing’s meadows and forests. We will spend part of the first day outdoors seeing the landscapes through Jens’ eyes. Using your own site, or a class project, you will draw - with music to inspire - a conceptual landscape plan. With a plant palette drawn from our meadow and forest models, you will develop details for a portion of your design. No drawing experience needed. Knowledge of Door County native flora is helpful but not necessary.

Nancy and Dan have engaged three land stewardship internships for the 2018 Land Stewardship season in Door County. Dan presented the "Stewardship Quickstart" idea to the Green Bay Conservation Partners Spring Roundtable. Year One has begun!

Bay Shore Blufflands had a blizzard April 14-15th 2018, 30" of snow. Cranes had arrived the previous week. A few days after the blizzard we spotted this crane in the wetland.