Diversity Ideas, Tips & Guides

What is this maggot-looking insect on the bottom of this strawberry leaf?

We’re always excited to learn about trendy gardening styles and techniques, and recently, one piqued my interest. With a name like “chaos gardening,” how can you not be instantly curious?

Before embarking on your bug hotel construction journey, scout out the ideal location. Bugs love warmth and sunlight, so choose a spot that receives plenty of sunshine throughout the day. Additionally, ensure the area is sheltered from strong winds and predators. A south-facing wall or a sunny corner of your garden would be perfect. Remember, a bug hotel is essentially a sanctuary for insects, so providing a hospitable environment is crucial.

In his article Weaving Vignettes Together, horticulturalist Dan Johnson gives us a look into his home garden in Denver, where he uses repeated plant groupings and consistent hardscaping to unify the design of a wide diversity of plants. Dan considers himself a collector, and if he finds a new and interesting species that will thrive in his garden, then he will find the perfect place for it. When I visited his home garden, he showed me some of his favorite natives endemic to the Western United States. Having lived in both Tucson and Denver, Dan is familiar with a wide range of species that thrive throughout both the Southwest and Mountain West, including:

Many children in my programs at the South Carolina Botanical Garden know an enormous amount about non-native honeybees. However, they are astonished to discover the vast diversity of native bees and their immense importance and efficiency as pollinators. In the United States, there are over 4000 native bee species. They range in size from the tiniest fairy bees (Perdita spp.) (found out west) to the giant carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.). Here are some suggestions to increase children’s (and your) knowledge about our local native bees.

Nigeria boasts a wide variety of native Nigerian flowers that are synonyms to the country’s diverse ecosystems. These blooms are also vital for bees, butterflies, and birds, which play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance.

Being the third largest state of the United States in size, it has diverse climate, this is why this list includes drought tolerant, sun loving, cold hardy, tropical, and temperate trees for the “Golden State.”

Begonias are popular flowering plants known for their beauty and diversity, but beyond this, they also carry symbolic meanings!

When and How to Water Bromeliads

North Carolina’s diverse climate makes it great for growing many types of fruit trees, ranging from apples to pears. If you want to try growing more varieties, keep reading to know your options!

The following is excerpted from Taras Grescoe’s The Lost Supper, and has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Starfish plants resemble both, the twinkling wonders in the sky, and the fishes that have often sparked the interest of divers in the sea!

Coming in different patterns and colors, Coreopsis flowers also signiy the deeper aspects of life. Let’s have a look at them in detail!

If you’re driving along the highway in Florida sometime soon, you may find the roadside dotted with the blooms of thousands of flowers. But they aren’t just eye candy. These flowers are intended to create pollinator habitat corridors.

I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. I’m not an expert on foreign policy. It’s hard to watch what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank with any equanimity; over 1300 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 315 children and and 166 women.

The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.

Header image: Three sisters (winter squash, maize and climbing beans) summer garden at the University of Guelph. (Hannah Tait Neufeld), Author provided

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.

Header image: Mission specialist Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Stephen M. Cullen, University of Warwick

I don’t generally watch Gardeners’ World these days, but two weeks ago they broadcast a special edition (episode 20 in this year’s series) as part of the BBC’s Big British Asian Summer, exploring South Asian influences on British gardens. Monty Don ‘hosted’ the show from the stunning gardens of Europe’s first traditional Hindu temple, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in London. The stonework for the temple itself was all carved in India, then brought to London to be assembled. Flowers, particularly the sacred lotus, are represented throughout the decorative motifs. Mountains of flowers are used in the temple’s religious ceremonies, and I was intrigued to learn that – in India – there are businesses based around recycling temple flowers into products such as incense sticks, soaps, and eco-packaging, to reduce their environmental impact. At the London temple, the gardens are a fusion of a European parterre-style design, with Indian motifs, colourful flowers, and a delightful lack of symmetry.

Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.

Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 was hurtling along on its mission to deposit two white guys on the Moon. By the time the Apollo program was wound down, 12 people had walked on the Moon, and 24 had been in orbit around the Moon. (Only 6 got to drive a lunar rover.) They were all white guys. Since then, no one has been further than a Low Earth Orbit.

One of my great joys this summer was discovering the Lady Astronaut series of novels, written by Mary Robinette Kowal.

It’s time for Gardeners off World, the only publication aimed at would-be interplanetary gardeners – or as I like to call it, A Giant Leap for Growkind

Header image: Glenn, in the NASA mailroom, received letters from fans of all ages. John Glenn Archives, The Ohio State University, CC BY-ND

Welcome to Gardeners off World, my weekly round-up of the exciting world of interplanetary gardening!

On 10th June, thousands of scientists worldwide went on strike, putting their research activities on hold for a day to reflect and take action on systemic inequalities in science. #ShutDownStem was part of the wider Black Lives Matter protests, forcing us to take a long, hard look at how systemic racism affects people of colour.

Header image: India-Pakistan Borderlands at Night, NASA Earth Observatory, 2011.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma talks to Grace Crain, a researcher on the MELiSSA project developing circular life support systems. 

When it landed on the Moon, the Eagle lunar lander bore a plaque inscribed with the message “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” But Armstrong and Aldrin planted an American flag on the Moon. Initially it was thought that a United Nations flag would be better, because it wouldn’t imply that the US was claiming possession of the Moon – the United Nations Treaty on Outer Space prevents any territorial claims. So the flag-raising was strictly a symbolic activity, but Congress amended NASA’s appropriations bill to prevent astronauts from placing flags of other nations, or those of international associations, on the Moon during missions funded solely by the United States.

Last year, as the world was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, there was considerable interest in the stories of the 400,000 people behind-the-scenes that made that historic event possible. Unlike the Moonwalkers, they weren’t all white American men. It was around that time I first watched the Hidden Figures film, which explores the critical contributions that three Black women (Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) made at NASA as mathematicians, engineers and computer programmers.

When MTV launched on 1st August 1981, the first images broadcast were NASA footage of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. MTV replayed that repurposed clip every hour for the next five years. And since it launched the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the awards handed out have been in the shape of a Moonman.

Emma the Space Gardener is back with a round-up of recent space gardening news. Exciting stuff has been happening on the ISS, where green-fingered space gardener Mike Hopkins has been pricking out seedlings and harvesting crops from Veggie.

Continuing my research into which of NASA’s African American astronauts are space gardeners, I turned my attention to the second name on the (alphabetical) list: Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.

Header image: Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti aboard the International Space Station. NASA