Gardens and Natives: Colorado is Distinct from the East

I attended Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants conference in February. I came away very conscious of all the differences in gardening between our region and other places, especially the eastern U.S. If you want to grow Colorado natives, they recommended planting in a thick layer of crushed gravel (stone!), adding no fertilizer, washing off the potting soil to plant plants bare-rooted, and within a year, reducing water to once per week or once per month or not at all (that is, depending on rain and snow for water).  

 natural vegetation, Colorado grasslands

We imported our idea of landscape and garden mainly from settlers who came from Kansas or Iowa or Kentucky or Pennsylvania.

Our Changing World--Threats but Also Opportunities

The world is changing.

The second half of the 20th century was warmer than the first half. The 21st century is setting new heat records.

In the arctic, ice is retreating and polar bears are starving. Alaska has record high temperatures. Alaska and Siberia have melting permafrost and forest fires. Looking up the Sami of Norway and Sweden, the information is all about warm winters creating problems for their reindeer herds, ones their grandfathers cannot provide advice about, because they've never seen it so warm.

Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier in 2019;
It has lost more than 1,300 m. (1421 yards) of length and 200 m thickess since
the 1970s  link