Phase Archives - Art of Landscaping

December 23, 2021

Plans to phase out the use of peat in the amateur horticulture sector

Ideas to ban the use of peat in horticulture in England and Wales by the stop of this Parliament were established out by the Government right now (Saturday 18 December) in an exertion to protect treasured peatland habitats and meet up with web zero targets.

Peatlands are the UK’s premier carbon store and are routinely dug up in the United kingdom for horticultural functions, such as for increasing media. Bagged retail rising media accounts for 70{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} of the peat offered in the Uk. When this extraction usually takes area, the carbon stored inside the lavatory is unveiled as carbon dioxide, contributing to local weather change.

Peat extraction also degrades the state of the broader peatland landscape, damaging habitats for unusual species of flora and fauna, and negatively impacting peat’s capacity to avert flooding and filter h2o.

In a consultation released nowadays, the Government has established out measures to section out the sale of peat and peat-made up of products and solutions in the beginner sector by the stop of this Parliament. Organisations with an interest in peatland security, horticultural organizations and associations, and these who import and export peat items, are currently being requested for their sights on new steps to conclusion the use of peat products in horticulture.

The 12-week session is also searching for sights on:

Introducing level-of-sale actions for bagged developing media, this sort of as a place-of-sale charge for the invest in of any growing media bag containing peat and necessary labelling and position-of-sale substance made up of depth of the environmental causes for eschewing goods made up of peat.
Mandatory reporting of the quantity of peat offered for all sellers of peat and peat that contains items.
Possible exemptions, including for scientific reasons and a highest total of peat permitted in selected goods, which will want to be strictly defined and enforced to reduce exploitation.

Sustainable choices to peat which are of equivalent good quality to peat-based items are currently out there. These are normally created up of peat-absolutely free supplies derived from much more sustainable resources, for instance wood fibre and bark, green compost, wool, coir and other elements.

Ecosystem Minister Rebecca Pow mentioned:

Our peatlands are an unbelievably beneficial pure useful resource. They engage in a vital function in locking up carbon, deliver habitats for wildlife and help with flood mitigation.

The beginner gardening sector has created enormous strides in decreasing peat use and there are now extra sustainable and fantastic excellent peat-free choices accessible than at any other time, so I am assured now is the right time to make the change permanent.

Today’s consultation immediately contributes in direction of the Government’s web zero carbon emissions focus on. The security of our peatlands will also help us deliver on commitments in the 25 Year Surroundings Program although also preserving these landscapes for long term generations.

Tony Juniper, Chair of Organic England, mentioned:

Our peatlands exemplify the multiple rewards society can reap from healthy normal techniques. Healthful peatlands are among our most valuable habitats, featuring a dwelling to some our scarcest vegetation and animals. They comprise varied landscapes way too, found not only in our distant uplands but also in lowland places, this kind of as fens.

Peatlands are also among our most lovely landscapes, which includes in the National Parks and Parts of Superb Purely natural Splendor, that we hope even extra men and women will appreciate through the yrs forward. By restoring peatlands, we can protect and increase all of these valuable advantages.

We are proud to be equipped to supply the following round of funding for the Discovery Grants, which will unlock boundaries faced for smaller sized, up and coming tasks and will make a major distinction to guarding these cherished habitats. This will add to constructing a wider Character Restoration Community across the whole country.

Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths claimed:

The defense of our peatlands is an important element of our Net Zero ideas. They are a valued and treasured aspect of our landscape, and play a critical role in capturing carbon. With many possibilities to peat offered for beginner gardeners, it is a fantastic time to glimpse at generating the change from applying peat in our gardens and to launch this consultation.
We are currently supporting projects to restore and guard our peatlands in Wales by means of our five calendar year National Peatland Motion Programme (NPAP), which I introduced in November of final 12 months. In the very first calendar year by yourself of the NPAP, we have invested in excess of £1.5m in money funding ensuring more than 650ha of peatlands are on a restoration pathway.

The Governing administration has also these days awarded funding of in excess of £4 million to enable groups produce new initiatives in search of to restore peatland methods to a purely natural and nutritious condition at a landscape scale. The funding will be sent by All-natural England and will assist unlock obstacles to peatland restoration, enabling jobs that would wrestle to acquire funding to be in a situation to utilize for foreseeable future rounds of peat restoration funding. Grants have been awarded to 10 assignments from throughout the nation together with in the Fens, Dorset, Somerset and Yorkshire.

Some of these projects are:

Doing the job closely with landowners across 3 Inside Drainage Boards, the Countrywide Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) aims to use the funding to unlock boundaries to restoration and create proposals for a even more Nature for Local weather Peatland Grant for 500-1,500 ha of agriculturally-managed lowland fen peatland in just a full region of 11,220 hectares in Cambridgeshire.
The Broads Authority in Norfolk is doing the job on the Broads Peatland Partnership to acquire a total new method to peat management and carbon storage in The Broads rewetting degraded peat, adopting paludiculture* and delivering further ecosystem gains.
The Moors for the Future Partnership aims to create restoration plans for 63 specific web-sites across the Dim Peak, Southern Pennines, West Pennines and South West Peak Staffordshire Moorlands, covering 37,614 ha of upland catchment habitat. The perform will involve addressing understanding gaps in the peat resource and substantial stakeholder engagement to lead to restoration undertaking scheduling and progress.

With only 13{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} of peatland in a near-normal point out in England, Federal government announced the England Peat Motion Strategy before this 12 months, location out plans to restore, sustainably control and shield peatlands. This will empower the restoration of at minimum 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025, supported by the Mother nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme. The Federal government has also invested £2.7 million in the Excellent North Bog, a significant-scale peatland restoration initiative across our sweeping expanse of blanket lavatory in the north of England.

Today’s announcement is portion of the Government’s commitments to tackle the twin danger of biodiversity and climate transform. The Environment Act will produce the most ambitious environmental programme of any nation on earth and drive ahead action to protect character and enhance biodiversity, together with by way of a concentrate on for species abundance for 2030, aiming to halt the drop of nature.

Further more details

The session closes on 18th March and can be observed on line at this backlink
Paludiculture is the practice of farming on damp land, such as rewetted bogs and fens. It delivers many gains such as local weather alter mitigation as a result of averting Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions and provision of neat humid air

November 30, 2021

Gardeners say California’s subsidy to phase out gas-powered tools won’t cut it

Though Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill banning the sale of most new gas powered tools by 2024, gardeners and landscapers say a $30 million state subsidy isn’t nearly enough to help small operators make the switch to electric.

The state agency responsible for administering the subsidy estimates it has only enough to give each self-employed gardener a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} coupon for one tool, far from the truckload of leaf blowers, lawn mowers, small chainsaws, brushcutters and trimmers most haul around.

In fact, local governments have learned they need to offer more. In Southern California, a regional air quality district that has been running a similar incentive program since 2017 saw few takers until it increased rebates to 75{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} per tool. The district paired that with an outreach program and encouraged landscapers to test electric equipment.

The California Air Resources Board is still figuring out who will qualify for the rebate but Assemblymember Marc Berman, one of the authors of the bill, said he’s open to adding more funding if needed.

“Let’s not make the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said the Menlo Park Democrat.

A chainsaw and gas on the ground during fire mitigation work at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021. Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping company owns around 50 gas powered tools that could be impacted by a state ban on new small gas motors.

Environmentalists hailed the first-in-the-nation law for advancing California’s clean energy goals, noting the state estimates that smog-forming pollution from small gas-powered engines will surpass emissions from passenger cars this year. But electrifying the landscaping industry creates financial and physical burdens for the estimated 60,000 one-person and often unlicensed landscaping operations, an industry with an average income under $40,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There’s an argument for subsidizing the transition. An electric leaf blower and batteries cost nearly twice as much as a comparable gas version. California estimates that a full transition of nearly 3 million tools used by landscaping professionals will cost $1.29 billion.

Bryan, a landscaper who asked to be identified by his first name only because he fears losing business, uses a mix of electric and gas equipment. The electric ones fall short.

“I have 10 to 15 houses a day, right now, but with electric (tools), I may do seven or five houses a day,” he said. That’s a loss of $1,000 a week.

Already, Bryan has told his kid he can’t afford books or a new laptop. The cost of a full conversion by purchasing all electric tools, he said, would require him to raise prices 30{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48}. He fears his residential clients will purchase their own tools and do it themselves, pushing him out of a job.

When the bill was signed, Berman and Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego called it a win for both the environment and human health. Electric tools have already been widely adopted by California homeowners, but only a fraction of commercial landscaping companies have made the switch, according to a 2018 survey by the air resources board.

Jorge Mijango of Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping uses a chainsaw to cut trees for fire mitigation at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021. The landscaping company owns around 50 gas powered tools that could be impacted by a state ban on new small gas motors.

At that time, 8 in 10 landscapers said they planned on buying gas-powered equipment with many prioritizing performance, run-time and cost. But operating a gas-powered leaf blower for one hour, for example, emits the same amount of pollution as driving a Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Denver, according to the air board.

The lawn equipment conversion will bring the rest of the state in line with cities such as Palo Alto, Los Altos and Menlo Park, which have already banned noisy leaf blowers. The law also directs the air resources board to come up with statewide regulations for other small motor equipment, such as golf carts, small generators and power washers.

But the landscaping industry, the main target of the ban, says the transition has already been costly.

Steven Wood purchased four batteries for his electric leaf blower after a number of communities in the Bay Area banned gas-powered leaf blowers. Woods, who owns a small landscaping business, immediately noticed the batteries don’t go far enough.

“I never spent $200 on something that lasted 45 minutes,” Wood said, “and it doesn’t last for six to eight houses a day.”

Once the batteries drain, Wood’s two employees resort to raking, which takes three times as long to complete a job.

Tests back him up.

Consumer Reports rated gas and electric tools, such as lawn mowers, leaf blowers and string trimmers, side by side. The nonprofit consumer organization found that battery-powered tools, with low maintenance and ease of use, were strong candidates for homeowners with less than an acre of land who could wait to recharge their batteries. But when it came to larger plots, more robust weeds to whack, or long hours of use, gas tools excelled.

“As an industry, we want this (battery-powered) equipment to be able to handle what we throw at it,” said Sandra Giarde, executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association. “But it’s not there yet.”

Ken Tamplen, owner of Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping holds a chainsaw at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021, in Orinda.

The air resources board said the technology is close enough. While electric tools may not have the same power, they offer other benefits, such as longer lifespan, better torque for some tools and savings on gas and maintenance, said air pollution specialist Christopher Dilbeck.

“We recognize that, yes, there will be substantial costs associated with what we are proposing,” said Dilbeck. “That is part of why this funding is available.”

The board, which will allocate the state’s $30 million subsidy, has yet to release how it will hand out incentives other than saying it will target small operators, including those without a business license. In one scenario, California could offer 12,000 small landscapers a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} discount on all their new tools, or every sole-proprietor could receive a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} discount on one tool.

“You are not going to be able to get the jobs done as fast,” said Ken Tamplen, owner of Ken’s Rototilling, a landscaping company in Contra Costa County. “You’re not going to be able to make as much money.”

This article is part of the California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequality and economic survival in California.

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

October 22, 2021

Williams College Museum of Art to Begin Design Phase for New Building / iBerkshires.com

image description — Lawrence Hall on Main Street, the current home of the Williams College Museum of Art. At right, Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Eyes,’ a granite, bronze and electric light sculpture commissioned for the museum’s 75th anniversary and installed in 2001 according to a marker on the museum grounds.

The site of the old Williams Inn will be WCMA’s new location.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art has been in the queue for a new building for years as the college has dramatically revamped its campus over the past two decades.

Now the nearly 100-year-old museum is finally getting its turn at a new facility.

The Board of Trustees vote at its last meeting to enter the design phase marks a significant step forward in relocating the museum from the 1846 Lawrence Hall. The trustees two years ago voted to site any new building at the now vacant lot where the old Williams Inn once stood.

“We have been doing really extensive building programming study and work for the last 22 months, since January of 2020, to come up with the space needs for the museum and the art at the college,” said Pamela Franks on Friday, the Class of 1956 director of the museum. “And now, with the completion of this programming exercise, the decision is to go forward to design.”

The museum has been housed in Lawrence Hall since its founding in the 1920s. The octagon hall on the south side of Main Street was the college’s original library and has been expanded numerous times over the past 180 years, the last in 1986.

The deficiencies in the museum’s infrastructure have been cataloged for some time — there are problems with climate control across the five different buildings that now make up the museum; a lack of classroom, office and studio space; difficulty in accessing the building for pedestrians and motorists; no space for further expansion; and little room for an art collection and faculty that has grown exponentially, particularly over the last two decades.

The collection has meanwhile grown to more than 15,000 items, including more than 1,000 from philanthropist Peter Norton and 340 objects of African art from Drs. Carolyn and Eli Newberger just in this century. The bulk of the collection is stored offsite.

Franks, who came to WCMA from Yale University Art Gallery in 2018, said the pandemic lengthened the amount of time that was spent on developing the programming study that will inform the design. The original 10-month study turned into 22 after the novel coronavirus pandemic struck in March 2020. The work was done in consultation with architecture firm Deborah Berke Partners of New York City.

“We ended up being able to delve even more deeply and it was a really rich and productive discussion of a very consultative project,” she said. “It’s a project with lots of conversations with students, faculty, community members and alumni, and, of course, museum staff.”

The museum also did some outreach with other regional museums, especially with the nearby Clark Art Institute and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The project will really benefit from having that additional time, Franks said.

“And it’s very abstract because it’s not about how the museum will look or what the spaces will look like, but it’s about functions and simply space needs,” she said. “You’re looking at classrooms, you’re looking at gallery spaces, you’re talking about back of house preparation spaces … every kind of function you can imagine.”

Space needs are a priority, and not just for classrooms and offices. There’s specialized furniture for exhibiting art and where does that furniture live when it’s not being used, and where is the art going to be exhibited.

And for instance, the single Rose Object Classroom can be used for displaying pieces of the collection for seminar studies.

“That is extremely popular classroom and it is used really pretty continuously,” she said. “As a college museum, the academic connections are really deep with the Art Department, and then really wide across every department on campus.”

The collection cuts a broad swat across history and culture, with links to every discipline on campus, Franks continued, “so being able to access the collection for teaching is a huge part of what we do …

“Every year there’s math classes, biology classes, chemistry classes, but also for the art classes, art history classes and literature classes … We have this kind of signature course every other year that is both an art course and an economics course, on acquiring art for the museum collection. Our program is very much tied to the educational mission of Williams College.”

The museum is also, of course, open to the public and Franks sees its global and historical range as very complementary to the Clark ‘s largely European focus and Mass MoCA’s contemporary works.

“Gallery space is essential to show the collection” to serve both an academic and public audience, Franks said. “But we also want the museum to be extremely accessible and welcoming for all.”

College President Maud Mandel, in a statement Monday, said the new museum will grow out of the college’s commitment to the arts that has defined it for more than a century.

“Each year, faculty, students, and museum staff incorporate our collections into dozens of courses, ranging from art history to anthropology, biology, environmental studies, and mathematics, while our curators mount exhibitions that engage campus and diverse public audiences,” she said. “The new museum’s educational and exhibition spaces will open up new possibilities for our work with campus and community. In the process, they’ll also create further opportunities for collaboration with the thriving arts community of the northern Berkshires. This is far more than a building. It’s the next step in Williams’ commitment to the vibrancy, relevance, and educational importance of the arts.”

Museum construction is still some ways off. The museum staff knows what it needs to function and now it will be up to finding a designer who can bring that vision to life. The cost is also unknown at this point, but the college spent more than $80 million on the new Sawyer Library seven years ago.

Franks anticipates more campus and town discussion as the plans for the building began to take shape. The building project will proceed on a timeline aligning with WCMA’s centennial year of 2026-27.

The old Williams Inn location had been considered one of two potential spots for a new museum. The other, at the intersection of Main and Southworth streets, was abandoned after pushback for residents in that neighborhood.

The inn was purchased by the college in 2014 and demolished last year after the opening of a new inn at the bottom of Spring Street.

Franks said she was excited to be part of this next stage for WCMA.

“I think we have a real an incredible opportunity to have a building that really works beautifully with not only the campus and the town but with also with the landscape,” she said.

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