From the Editor

As this issue went to layout, it was "treeplanting" time on my acreage. Last year, I had about 120 native Palouse shrubs that I didn't get put in the ground, so my friend Denny Dawes, who has his own native plant nursery, grew them another year in Stuewe and Sons Tall Pots. They turned into some big rascals that with any luck the deer won't be able to eat fast enough, but it presented me with a challenge on how best to plant them. Denny volunteered to bring his auger to dig holes for me. After about 30 holes, Denny quoted Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac: "'Rest,' cries the chief sawyer." Remember that? As Aldo cuts through the growth rings of a huge oak tree that had been killed by lightning, he reminisces about what history the oak had lived through. Well, that started me reminiscing about another section of that Leopold tome, the part about sharp shovels and the act of tree planting, which seemed fitting as Denny and I moved down the planting row. Aldo found great pleasure in parting soil and inserting trees, and described it as a way to circumvent the rules of creation. As for this present-day "clodhopper," when I look out over my trees, some now decades old, I can relate to that.

In looking at this issue of Native Plants Journal, I think it could be viewed as a "Leopold" issue. I'll bet that if he were still alive, Leopold would appreciate the tree-planting machine described by Steve Kloetzel. It may not be as intimate as Leopold's sharp shovel, but if you need to plant a lot of big plants in a short amount of time, this may be the way to do it. Leopold had a penchant for wildflowers, so the article by Mary Ridout and Bob Tripepi about germinating native phlox seeds would be intriguing to him, and I'm hopeful it will be to you as well. As a conservation educator, Leopold would appreciate the article by Robert Brzuszek and James Clark, who discuss how the general public perceives the natural world, and how that perception can be used to construct educational arboreta. The article by Bernadette Terrell and Anne Fennell about oshá, a plant of Midwestern prairies, would probably perk Leopold's interest, too. He had a soft spot for the great prairies and its diverse species. Okay, back in 1948 when Leopold wrote the Almanac, he probably didn't know much, if anything, about "green roofs," but I'll bet that he'd be happy to read Jol Hodgson's article about recycling nursery containers as a substrate for folks to use who are trying to spread the benefits of native plants (and recycling), even to rooftops on skyscrapers.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Native Plants Journal, which includes the annual Native Plant Materials Directory. We go through a lot of effort to update this directory each year; I trust you will find it useful. As always, tell your friends about Native Plants Journal and encourage them to subscribe.