ChangeHampton, which promotes restorative, biodiverse, healthy, and sustainable landscaping practices as well as expansion of pollinator pathways on eastern Long Island, is offering a forum to further a conversation about “moving the needle,” as the climate crisis intensifies, on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Nature Conservancy, at 142 Route 114 in East Hampton.
“How to Move the Eco-Needle on Our Lands” will feature a panel of Edwina von Gal of the Perfect Earth Project, Mariah Whitmore of Whitmores Tree Nursery and Landscaping, Nilay Oza, who is an architect, Michael Schultz, a real estate executive, Kim Shaw, director of East Hampton Town’s Natural Resources Department, and Filippine de Haan, a landscaper. Biddle Duke will serve as moderator.
According to ChangeHampton, regenerative and restorative landscaping plays a key role in addressing the climate crisis, biodiversity collapse, the quality of air and water, and resilience, to which land clearing, development, chemicals used in lawn maintenance, and nonnative species contribute.
“We have conserved a great deal of land,” according to a preamble to the forum, “but have we restored habitat? Are we adequately protecting the aquifer, the bays, and ponds? What are we doing about the use of dangerous chemicals on lawns, bushes, and trees?”
“Communities elsewhere have ambitious municipal and grassroots programs regulating leaf blowers, limiting lawns, which are the largest water crop on the continent, promoting rain gardens and bioswales for toxic runoff and pollinator gardens and meadows to save valuable insects and birds, and instituting programs to educate and therefore reduce the use of land-care chemicals.”
These and other matters will be addressed.
