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- Newsgroups: rec.gardens
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!csg.uwaterloo.ca!bobw
- From: bobw@csg.uwaterloo.ca (Bob Wildfong)
- Subject: Ethics in gardening (was Re: Domestication of poison ivy)
- Message-ID: <BxtI6u.JFD@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca>
- Sender: news@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca
- Organization: Computer Systems Group, University of Waterloo
- References: <19856.2af4f60f@ul.ie> <BxMIuM.Moq@news.cso.uiuc.edu> <1992Nov13.152842.5843@infonode.ingr.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:37:42 GMT
- Lines: 46
-
- In article <1992Nov13.152842.5843@infonode.ingr.com> jimreed@b23b.b23b.ingr.com writes:
- >Is it ethical for people to kill native plants if they find them
- >unattractive? Is it ethical to kill harmful plants that have sprung
- >up volunteer?
-
- Gardening has always been considered an inherently "good" activity. Old
- garden journals (circa 1900) are full of such rhetoric as "If you have two
- loaves of bread, sell one, buy some flower seeds and plant a garden to feed
- your soul". Gardening has even been used as a rehabilitative tool in prisons
- in the belief that once a hardened criminal learns to care and nurture a tiny,
- vulnerable, living thing, he will naturally turn from his previous ways.
-
- The turn of the century was an idealistic era. Still, I think they were on
- the right track in some respects.
-
- IMHO, it's only relatively recently that certain aspects and practices of
- gardening have come into question. The issues of chemical vs organic, native
- vs introduced species, heirloom vs hybrid vs genetically engineered, etc are
- new to most gardeners. There have always been debates about how to till,
- or how to seed, but we've never had to make decisions which might affect the
- futures of entire species, ecosystems and habitats.
-
- Do we, as a society, even know what we want? In other areas of ethics, such
- as those dealing with crime, poverty, industrial pollution, there is at least
- a general consensus as to what is "right", even if no one knows how to achieve
- the "right" results.
-
- I don't know for sure that there is such a consensus concerning native plants.
- Does the average person care if their imported groundcover kills off some
- native species (they're just weeds, aren't they?)
-
-
- What do you all think? Is there a consensus that native plants should be
- cherished, even if it means changing current gardening/landscaping habits?
- Or is beauty the prime goal (it always has been)? Maybe we should just
- globalise the use of the very best landscaping plants. Then everyone could
- enjoy the best that the world has to offer.
-
-
- Bob Wildfong bobw@csg.uwaterloo.ca
- Waterloo, Ontario bobw@csg.waterloo.edu
- AgCan zone 5a, USDA zone 4 (on a windy hilltop)
-
- Success in gardening is finding the right
- balance between tolerance and defiance.
-
-