Symbiosis — DIY Steps
Change can happen at lightning speed when innovation is coupled with imitation. Here are the steps I took feel free to imitate them.
I became familiar with the six principles of Holistic Regenerative agriculture through the Savory Institute, Roam Ranch and was recently featured in the film Kiss the Ground. I wanted to make a difference and regenerate depleted land, too. However, a bison ranch is not in my future. It occurred to me that changing how we landscape Houston could make an ecological impact. Lawndale Art Center offered me the opportunity to install an environmental sculpture in the garden. They had just re-landscaped the sculpture garden with a traditional garden, so I did not expect them to accept my proposal. However, Lawndale is committed to artists that explore aesthetic, critical and social issues of our times. Symbiosis is a catalyst to invite the public to change Houstons’s environmental impact. Applying these principles to Houston’s greater urban landscape will significantly impact climate and extreme weather conditions. Houstonians—or anyone—can do this. Climate change is a DIY project.
Below I describe these principles as I applied them to Symbiosis.
See how others across the world have used the same principles I used below.
6 PRINCIPLES of HOLISTIC REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE AND SYMBIOSIS
Installing this site-specific installation, I incorporated the same principles used to regenerate depleted soils worldwide.
Holistic management — BALANCE —Symbiotic
I keep in mind that the garden is a microsystem that must contribute to and function in the greater ecosystem of the western hemisphere’s continents and waters. In Symbiosis, I balance the needs of the; art institution, urban wildlife, donors, exhibiting artists, the surrounding community, and volunteers.
Holistic management — balancing the needs to run the art center, the neighboring community and urban wildlife/landscape.
Integrating livestock to build soil microbes — GroundWORK
Living soil does not come from synthetic inputs. Instead, it comes from decaying matter that completes the circle of life. Mimicking this process in an urban environment is a crucial step. Without it, there is no life. In the natural world, grazing livestock such as bison, cows, sheep, goats, or chickens provides the decaying matter through their waste, stomping it in the ground and eating and damaging vegetation.
In Symbiosis, I mimic this process by installing a native leaf compost with animal waste components. It is full of beneficial microbes, free of dangerous synthetic chemicals, toxic dyes, and sewage. The heat from composting kills the pathogens. It is safe for children and pets. Because this step is critical, I turned it into a community performance art event. — GroundWORK
Intergrading animal — GroundWORK
Native moldy leaf compost was installed during the GroundWORK event on behalf of RoXoR gin a sponsor of Lawndale’s spring 2021 fundraiser event.
Eliminating tillage — CarbonSINK
While we work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is more critical to sink the Carbon in the atmosphere back into the soil. Carbon is stabile in the roots and microorganisms of plants in the ground. When soil is disturbed, Carbon is exposed to oxygen and transformed into carbon dioxide, which warms the planet. Conversely, organisms can establish communities that feed off the soil's organic matter when the earth is undisturbed. As soil organic matter improves, so does the soil’s internal structure.
A healthy soil biome is vital for suppressing plant diseases and cycling nutrients among plants, eliminating the need for synthetic inputs whose production increases our carbon footprint.
In Symbiosis, I am building a CarbonSINK by not turning the soil over before planting, keeping the soil structure intact as much as possible, and implementing “Chop and Drop” composting when plants go dormant. Symbiosis builds soil biology and increases soil structure, increasing the soil's ability to absorb Carbon and water, reducing runoff, soil erosion, flooding, and preventing pollution from entering nearby bayous.
Eliminating tillage — CarbonSINK
After a freeze in 2022, the red salvia above ground suffered. I carefully chopped all the dead materials and dropped them in the garden. I always leave the roots in the ground and 6” - 10” of stems for solitary native bees to nest in.
Maximizing crop/plant biodiversity, — ReCover
We do not know what we have lost until we recover it.
With this thought, I researched native plants and what roles they have played in the Houston area ecosystem. Identified in the Coastal Prairie are more than 1,000 plus plant species. I have not relied on hybrids/variants of species or plants considered beneficial. Instead, I selected 36 species known as indigenous to the area. Native plants have supported over 4,000 native bees, 1,107 bird species, 750 species of butterflies, 200 skippers, and 11,000 months, and 4,000 wasps.
Symbiosis is to recover and support as many of these species as possible for all four seasons. In addition to supporting wildlife, I sought out plants that helped control ground erosion and water absorption. — Plant it and they will come—
Maximizing Biodiversity — ReCover
Hyla cinerea , there are five true tree frogs in Texas. They climb grass and require a permanent water feature, a trough pond will do. I first saw tree frogs in the garden in September 2021 on a bushy Bluestem. I have since seen them on the Mealy blue sage. I have never seen a 2.5” tree frog in Houston before. I hope we can recover a few for every yard.
Plant material selections: Salvia Lyrata, Calyptocarpus vialis, Phyla nodiflora, Bouteloua gracilis, Carex peredentata, Tradescantia occidentalis, Calyophus brerland, Oenothera speciosa, Rudbeckia hirta, Ratibida columnifera, Monarda citriodora, Echinacea purpurea, Schizachyrium scoparium, Salvia coccinea, Gaillardia pulchella, Symphyotrichum patens, Salvia, Farinacea, Chasmanthium lati, Silphium gracile, Verbena xutha, Salvia azurea, Eryngium yuccifolium, Solidago sempervirens, Capsicum annuum, Callicarpa Americana, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus.
Grasses: Andropogon gerardii Vitman, Schizachyrium scoparium, Chasmanthium latifolium, Carex texensis
VINES: Lonicera sempervirens L, Gelsemium sempervirens, Wisteria frutescens, begonia capreolata, Passiflora incarnata
Keeping the soil covered — Skin = CarbonSINK + GroundWATER = GlobalCOOLING
—Skin, Like human skin the palnet’s skin provides many services necessary for good health.
The Earth’s skin is green. “The Earth is a living organism, composed of millions of species and billions of organisms—bacteria, algae, microscopic insects, earthworms, beetles, ants, mites, fungi and more—representing the greatest concentration of biomass anywhere on the planet. Microbes, which make up only one-half of one percent of the total soil mass, are the yeasts, algae, protozoa, bacteria, nematodes, and fungi that process organic matter into rich, dark, stable humus in the soil." There are more soil microorganisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the Earth! The living organisms in the soil receive their food and shelter from plants' biological processes and physical structure.
In Symbiosis protecting the surface of the work with green skin is an easy decision for me. The quality of the skin is intimately tied to cooling the planet through Carbon and groundwater.
Keeping the soil covered — Skin
—CarbonSINK
I installed the plant material in a manner that mimics how seeds drift in the wind and are carried by animals in their coats or deposited in their waste — resulting in multilayered vertical, horizontal, and diagonal jigsaw puzzles of leaf shapes. These shapes have evolved over thousands of years, woven together to maximize every ray of sunlight. The living material will grow into a three-dimensional solar panel from 6" to 6' tall, sequestering Carbon out of the air and storing it in the living soil. I did not leave the ground bare around each species as is popular in traditional urban landscapes.
CarbonSINK — utilizing a variety of plant shapes to maximize carbon capture.
— GroundWater
Living organisms need oxygen. When rain hits the unprotected ground, the micro spaces that allow air to penetrate the soil collapse and the living organisms die from lack of oxygen. I selected thirty-six species of plants to include various leaf sizes and shapes, stem heights, bloom sizes, and surface textures. As the plants mature, they become a multitiered water slide of twists and turns, slowing rainwater, trickling it to the ground. This allows the Earth to respond like a sponge soaking up the precipitation and channeling it through the root systems and air pockets as freshwater to the aquifer for future generations. Slowing rainwater can mitigate flooding that has become the norm in Houston.
— GlobalCOOLING: Soil soaked in water like a sponge and covered in plants that move, as a gentle breeze blows off the Gulf of Mexico, conditions and cools the air and the earth as it is warmed by the sun. In contrast moving cool rainwater across hot surfaces such as turf grass, artificial turf or concrete landscape, warms the water, picks up chemicals and dumps the urban solar-heated water full of toxic chemicals into the ocean.
GroundWater and GlobalCOOLING — multiple layers of plants slow rainwater, giving the ground time to soak it up, purify and store it in the aquifer.
Maintaining living roots year-round — FoodWEB — GlobalCOOLING
Living roots in the soil are vital for feeding the bacteria and fungi that provide food for the creatures further up the chain. Living roots keep mycorrhizal fungi alive and healthy. These symbionts are vital for nourishing plants and provide convenient fertilizer and water. Maintaining living roots in the ground feeds organisms, providing year-round carbonSINK and GlobalCOOLING.