Green Tech Support Team

If you have a concern about plant needs, pests, siting or general plant health, we can help. We offer a site-visit service for any questions about how our plants are doing in their new location.

OUR GREEN TECH TEAM
Mary McClelland (horticulturist) and Terence McClelland (grower), have been making the rounds this year and helping our customers with their plants. Plants are often expected to grow in many harsh and hostile environments, and we would like to find out what you are dealing with so we can develop solutions. We provide Green Tech service at no charge. To make an appointment give us a call or fill out the online form for more information.

Watch for Mary and Terence's Monthly Green Tech Posts

Illinois Birds in Decline

Is this the swansong for Illinois’ songbirds?
Sep 11, 2007 @ 11:28 AM
By Clare Howard
GateHouse News Service

"America is dealing with new numbers showing the devastation of environmental degradation on common songbirds. One set of numbers comes from the National Audubon Society's recent report "Common Birds in Decline."

...Overall declines are 68 percent nationwide for 20 common birds. The list can be accessed at www.audubon.org...

...Illinois has changed over the 100 years of this survey, from 3 million acres in forest to 5.2 million now. Pasture, hay and grain fields went from 50 percent of the state to just 5 percent. The European starling is now the most common bird in Illinois cornfields, whereas it was totally absent 100 years ago...

...Dale Goodner, a naturalist with the Peoria Park District, said, "Birds are the canary in the coal mine." He said homeowners can do something to help bird populations by taking their yards out of turf and putting in perennials, trees, bushes and native grasses. Attracting insects will attract birds." Lawn has no habitat value. Lawn is a habitat desert"...

...John Mullen, naturalist at Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria Heights, said even small backyard conversions from turf to prairie plantings will attract birds. "If you build it, they will come," he said." Birds are our most cosmopolitan species. They travel great distances." He said declining bird populations say as much about human beings as they do about birds."

We have created an economic system not compatible with other species on the planet. Do we want to continue as we have and denude species other than ourselves? We have asked other species to adapt, but we are the single species with awareness of others and how they fare with the changes we have produced," he said. "Birds need less human impact on the world." MORE

Vatican Penance: Forgive Us Our Carbon Output

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published New York Times: September 17, 2007

"This summer the cardinals at the Vatican accepted an unusual donation from a Hungarian start-up called Klimafa: The company said it would plant trees to restore an ancient forest on a denuded stretch of land by the Tisza River to offset the Vatican’s carbon emissions.
The trees, on a 37-acre tract of land that will be renamed the Vatican climate forest, will in theory absorb as much carbon dioxide as the Vatican will produce in 2007: driving cars, heating offices, lighting St. Peter’s Basilica at night.
In so doing, the Vatican announced, it would become the world’s first carbon-neutral state...

...After the Vatican agreement was announced, Msgr. Melchor Sanchez de Toca Alameda, an official at the Council for Culture at the Vatican, told the Catholic News Service that buying credits was like doing penance. “One can emit less CO2 by not using heating and not driving a car, or one can do penance by intervening to offset emissions, in this case by planting trees,” he said." MORE

Loans could help replace trees

Northern Illinois communities could receive state funding to help replace trees destroyed by emerald ash borers.

Legislation signed Sunday by Gov. Rod Blagojevich created the Emerald Ash Borer Revolving Loan Program, which provides low-cost loans to municipalities for replanting trees on public land, according to information from the state. The land must be within the state’s emerald ash borer quarantine area, which includes Kane, DuPage and McHenry counties plus 15 other counties.

Trees on the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory property and in the Batavia Industrial Park on Fabyan Parkway have been found to have emerald ash borers.

The Illinois Finance Authority will administer the program and issue loans to eligible communities based on Illinois Department of Agriculture recommendations. The loans must be paid in 20 years.

The emerald ash borer is a small, metallic-green insect from Asia that first was discovered in the United States near Detroit in 2002. The first beetle detection in Illinois occurred in June 2006 in a rural Kane County subdivision west of St. Charles. Since then, infestations have been identified along Lake Michigan in north Cook County, near Peru in LaSalle County and in Glendale Heights in DuPage County.

The legislation, Senate Bill 1617, is effective immediately.

-NorthWest News Group