The nursery network

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Improve your neighborhood, one scoop at a time.

While politicians dither, you can transform the world.

If you have a little extra space in your yard, plant some native plants.
Then, as they spread, make them available to neighbors for terrace or other improvement projects.

You can establish a native-plant nursery in the greenway or park behind your house--such as in this greenway just W of Westmorland Park.

Shade plants that are low-maintance, and spread

• Ostrich fern-native tall
• Celandine poppy-native medium height
• Sweet woodruff-non-native very low
• Foam flower-native low
• Wild ginger-native very low
• Snakeroot-native  tall

For good design, plant a group of three tall plants, surrounded by lower ones.

For example, ferns and sweet woodruff (white flower) make a dynamite combination!

Sun plants

• Day Lily (there are some dwarf varieties for sidewalk edges)
• Iris

Sun/shade list

An inexpensive way to obtain plants in spring is to search on Craigslist.  Put the search term "plants" into the box, under the "for sale, farm & garden" categories.   Sometimes there are free plant exchanges.  If you don't have a plant to exchange, you can contribute snacks instead.

Groundwater at Odana exceeds standards for salt



The Cogeneration plant on the west side of the UW campus is allowed to withdraw large amounts of water from Lake Mendota, based on a complicated swap agreement with DNR.

That agreement called for an infiltration field at the Odana Hills Golf Course, where up to 60 million gallons a year of stormwater are pumped into the soil.  Background.

One of the problems with this agreement is that the water being pumped into the soil is rather salty, due to overuse of road salt in the area. Several test wells in the area show levels of salt over the Enforcement Standard.  In other words, the groundwater is starting to become polluted with salt.