Tell Us Your Story
Ellen Ley

 

 

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As a child of the woods growing up in the city, I had romanticisms about wilderness areas that included American Indians and wild animals.

In the city, our wild areas were our backyards, easement ways, and river greenways.

In the city, I climbed a lot of trees and built forts long before the neighborhood covenants restricted that.  In the city, we were blessed with a great park system.  We could walk a block or bike a mile to any city park.  In the city, with the confluence of three rivers, we had access to boating, fishing, floating on logs, or just day-long explorations.  As children, we didn’t worry about EPA warnings about pollution levels, or contaminated water, or dangerous pathogens lurking every where.  We caught crayfish, fed the carp, fished for Channel Cats, watched birds of prey, or collected fossils, rocks, and shells, of many I still have today.

As a child of the woods (though much older now), I still live in the city.  I am a nature educator, and am comfortable with the fact that there are no true wilderness areas and there have not been for centuries; man has left his mark everywhere.

In the city, I am a nature gardener.  I prefer wildlife gardening in contrast to an open park-like lawn that repels most wildlife.  In our little piece of wild land there is cultured as well as moral aesthetics to the garden layout in an urban environment.

In this state I would like to see more tax rebates, grants, and subsidies available to property owners to learn and implement nature gardening and green building.  More green roof (vegetative roofs) and green walls just makes ecological sense in a country that has preserved only 8% sustainable land and where the other 92% unsustainable land is in grave danger.

Now if I can only find a contractor in my area to help me design and install a green roof on my home!  In this city, I feel like a pioneer leading the way in green roofing.  I guess that is why they call this the fourth frontier; recreating wilderness on urban rooftops to restore ecological processes and life to places where there is none.  This is definitely a new era of urban ecology and science.

-- Ellen Ley, Horticulturalist and Artist