A Perspective on Multi-Use Landscape Management

"I sometimes think it's not enough to be concerned with just the restoration of a building.  I also try to think about what needs it will serve.  So I become an advocate for these existing buildings, and instead of just restoring them, I create a program for them that makes them more valuable than they've ever been to their community."

-- Theaster Gates, Jr., who has turned abandoned homes in his downtrodden Chicago neighborhood, Greater Grand Crossing, into an art library, a set of historical music listening rooms, and an African-American cinema museum ... and plans more such re-purposings.

Source: Walser, L. (2012, Spring).  Theaster Gates, Jr. is restoring his community, one house at a time. Preservation, p. 8.

Advance in endangered orchid cultivation shows the fungal benefits of native soils in undisturbed forests

"The team ... planted and tracked three U.S. orchid species -- all present in the East and endangered somewhere in the country -- in six study sites: three in younger forests, which were 50 to 70 years old,  and three in older forests, which were 120 to 150 years old .... Older forests, McCormick and her colleages found, had about five to 12 times more orchid-friendly fungi than younger forests, and the fungi in older forests were more diverse."

-- Carrie Madren for Scientific American on Melissa McCormick's Smithsonian Environmental Research Center team, whose work has helped to demonstrate that, even on a microscopic level, old-growth forests are a superior habitat for preserving native endangered species. 

Learn more about the experiment here.

Source: Madren, C. (2012, April).  Picky eaters club: Fungi that orchids need to grow are just as finicky as the exotic flowers themselves.  Scientific American, 306, p. 16.