136 – Gaia’s Garden Chapter 9

Paul Wheaton and Jocelyn Campbell review chapter 9 of Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway. Paul first suggests doing an RV road trip. Chapter 9 talks about guilds and super guilds, and how do you pick the plants for your area. Observation, looking things up, and assembling a guild based on function. A guild is a human made assemblage that mimics a natural community. Toby describes the trickiness of creating a walnut guild because of its allelopathic nature. He writes about hackberry’s complimentary allelopathy to walnuts. Currants will grow under walnuts only when hackberries are present. Russian olive and gumi will do well in the guild as well, as well as mulberries, elderberries, black locust, and acacias. They share about Toby’s perspective on native plants. They talk about snowberry (buckbrush) and soponins. Jocelyn shares about poison oak and lemonade berry. Paul reads a laundry list of functions plants serves both for wildlife and human use. A super guild weaves many guilds together. Buffer trees to go inbetween incompatible species. Paul talks abut how much birds love and prefer mulberries.

Discussing the podcast.