Open Blog #2

I attended the service event at the Riverbanks Zoo last weekend and it was really great! When my alarm woke me up in the morning I was initially pretty bitter about being awake and considered not going to the event. But I realized I was being a brat so I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed some breakfast, and headed to the Zoo and I'm so glad I ended up going! It was so much fun. We started off with a presentation about the different types of plants that they have in the Botanical Garden and the reasoning behind their selection. I realized that there are so many plants that I know absolutely nothing about and there is a lot of thought that goes into deciding what gets planted in the Garden. The head gardener (I think his name was Andy?) was telling us how as younger gardeners become a part of the program, they already come in with ideas of how to make the Garden more sustainable.  So even though the Garden isn't totally organic and isn't designed as a permaculture Garden, there are many things that they do in order to be sustainable, and all of those small things that they do add up to make a big impact. Some of the examples of sustainable practices is that they draw their water for watering the plants straight from the river which is a very close local source. They also use compost created from animal dung from the zoo! And they are working to improve their sustainable measures as well. I learned a lot more about the Garden than I expected and I would love to go back and see what they have changed within the next couple years! Also it was fun to actually get dirty and get to plant :) Plus we got to help them pull up their winter vegetables and go to go home with some fresh veggies! I grabbed some kale and swiss chard.