Andrew "The Arborist" Conboy

All right, welcome to the crime page. But bid it doesn't podcast today,
I've got Andrew Conboy on a phone on the recording on having a nice
conversation. We're gonna launch right into here, and I want to talk.
You're based out of Philly, right, Andrew, Yeah, Philly area suburbs
and around yep. Because I that was what kind of you know, got
me stoked. I figured it was like the first video I saw that you
had done was about planting a street tree in Philly, like on a street
that looks like, you know, the neighborhood. I used to spend a
lot of time in back in Chicago, just like concrete asphalt everywhere, and
get in the city to fund it. And then since then, I've just
I mean, you your I love your videos. Man, you gotta do.
You got like a TikTok tour. I've just seen the Instagram. I
kind of ignore TikTok, but I learned a lot from watching your ship.
You get the TikTok, you get the tic tac. Yeah, I'm on
ticktack too, just uploading the same stuff. And yeah, just I guess
reaching different slightly different audience. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think it's
I think the tic TACs mostly for the younger crowd. But that's good.
It's for the kids, you know. I try to I try to put
stuff up there too, but I I like, there's just been a shit
ton of new new I hate the word nature because it's just the real world,
but there's just been a whole bunch of new content being put out to
just basically get human beings, especially at least in the United States, more
more interested in native plants and native ecology and kind of waking people up to
the idea that there's this whole other world outside of our depressing and oftentimes myopic,
anthropocentric reality that we've created. And that's why I love what you do,
because I mean, that's why I wanted to interview, because you know,
it's I've been paying more attention lately to, you know, the relationship
between plants and people and bringing plants to say, and nothing gives me more
hope, which I normally don't have than watching Yeah, it's it's a fucking
you know, it's really I don't know, man, the world lately,
or the human world at least, has been you know, our civilization has
been making severe missteps and there's a void of leadership at the top. But
nothing gives me hope like watching you know, people like you and watching the
stuff they do, like bridging the gap between humans and plants and also and
just humans and the rest of the living world itself. So how did you
get started in the day, Well, yeah, thank you. I I
you know, the feeling is mutually. I've been following your journey for a
couple of years now and it's you know, the great work that you do
bring in botany to people and just your travels and you know, you recently
got to purchased that piece of land in South Texas right here. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, we've we've one hundred and forty five acres. Yep,
that's terrific. Yeah. I love seeing stuff like that, And like
you said, there's just more nature or like more content out there now.
And it's cool with with following people of all different from all across the world
and just the country, seeing what they're doing. And yeah, it definitely
definitely gives me a hope to see more of that stuff. So it's good.
Yeah. I guess I got started in it, really, I guess,
you know, four or five years ago. I was in I was
actually in graduate school. I was studying at the time. I was studying
evolutionary biology and molecular biology and really had no interest in plants. But you
know, during when I was in grad school, I quickly realized that that
I was pursuing a PhD was not the right path for me. I didn't
like being in the lab all day, you know, started wanting to get
outdoors more, and so I you know, started my friends told me about
I naturalists, and I started kind of playing paying closer attention to the plants
around me. And also at the same time I was I began volunteering with
like local ecological restoration environmental groups, and it's just kind of connected to me.
After a while, learning about these native plants and all of the environmental
issues that I grew up caring about, like restoring native plants and and you
know, doing ecological restoration work was you know, kind of clicks for me.
That's because this is how we can you know, fight all these issues
I care about, like climate change and the biodiversity crisis and pollution can be
fought a lot a lot of a lot of those issues you can fight with
just simply restoring ecosystem around where we where we live, and where we work.
So that's kind of what got me, took me down this path.
And you know, four or five years later, I'm I'm you know,
making videos about this stuff and trying to help people along their journey as well,
just just trying to get them to pay a little more, a little
more attention, or just you know, add a native plant instead of a
non native plant of their landscape and trying to make make a difference. I
guess in my my neck of the woods. So you got you gotta you
got like a would it be fair to say you got like a dopamine shot
from interacting with these things, interacting with this side of the living world.
I mean, that's that's what it was. That's kind of what it does
for me and other people. I think it's likely, you know, because
so much of the world, so much in a world that that this civilization
has created, is just feels so bad, and then this stuff just feels
so good. It really it's you know, it plugs into a receptor and
that's what is so fulfilling about it. Yeah, totally, that's a good
way to put it. You know. Once you it's like opening up a
whole, like I felt like I was a whole new world, Like you
view the whole. You know, you're surrounding the places you live in a
completely different way once you start understanding you know, the plants that are supposed
to be there, the animal insects, and you know it's mostly good,
you know, when you're learning about this stuff. But then you know there's
a downside too, when you start learning about some of the invasive plants and
you start seeing them everywhere and realizing just how much we've screwed up some of
our natural areas. But right, it's great, Yeah, and it's totally
totally needed. I think. What's cool too write Well, first off,
there's that there's that older leeble Elder Leopold quote called it's something like I'm gonna
fuck it up at the paraphrase like having an ecological education is like living alone
in a world of wounds, which is a little dark, I think,
but it's true too. I mean, you just you realize, you know
how much has been you know, destroyed and lost, but also I mean
to keep it, you know, to be fair, A lot of that's
happened recently. And when I say recently, I mean like last few hundred
years. So it's it's unfuckable in a lot of ways to like you can
unfuck the world. And that's why I that's why, you know, one
of the reasons I wanted to have you on was to talk about the work
you're doing to unfunck the world in your local area. And it's it's something
that anybody can do. I mean, people can do this just by planting
a native plant garden, you know, and supporting a bunch of life.
And it's in some ways, it's like waking up. It really is.
It's you wake up to this whole other world that was there right underneath your
nose the whole time. All these living organisms, these ecologies, these fragile
relationships, these specifist relationships like insects that only use a certain plant or animals
that only feed, you know whatever. It's like waking up and seeing like
this was here the whole time. Wow, you know, I didn't realize
it. Now I'm paying attention to it everywhere. It's so it's so amazing.
Yeah, there's there's so much to learn. I mean, you know,
started out, like my my passion started, I guess with with trees,
is what spoke to me at first when I was doing this, And
you know, soon and soon after, you know, your passion for trees
leads into an interest in herbaceous plants, and then that leads into an interest
in the insects that use them or the pollinators that visit them. So you
start kind of piecing it together and just realizing how beautifully complex and connected it
is, and it's like, yeah, it really is like waking up.
So when you so, you you started off with trees, What was it
about trees specifically? Because I was, I mean, that's kind of what
got me into it a long time ago. I mean, I want,
I was growing all these trees. I had nowhere to plant them, but
I just liked growing shit from seed and watching it grow and kind of forming
a relationship with these things too, watching them throughout their whole life cycle until
they got too big to be in a pod anymore than they go find a
place to plant them. What was it for you that got you sniffing on
trees at first? Yeah, actually it was pretty similar, you know,
I guess mainly because here in southeast PA, most of our most most of
Pennsylvania, it would have been a woodland, I guess historically, so trees
just are are abundant here, and you know, there's lots of woods and
stuff. But yeah, it was pretty similar. I started growing a few
trees and nursery pops in grad school and in undergrad when I was I was
an environmental science major, I started a garden club to grow some vegetables that
we would donate to food shelter up the street in Germantown in Philly. And
I had never grown anything at that at that point, I had never grown
food or really anything, so that was an interesting experience. But one day,
like a tool of poplar seedlings seeded into our garden and instead of pulling
it out out of the ground, I put it in a nursery pot.
And that was my senior year. I took it to grad school for two
years and grew it in a nursery pot, and by then I had maybe
five or six of them, and just like you said, you know,
kind of find a place to plant them. And that's kind of how my
my nonprofits started as well, just kind of throwing trees and finding spots to
plant them. But yeah, I think I mean around here, it's just
uh, you know, trees are the dominant, you know, the most
the keystone species of our a lot of our ecosystems up here. So were
you always into natives or were you just into anything at first and then kind
of came around to the fact that natives are what made sense that there was,
you know, an ecological context or how did you how did you get
into the native the native side of things. Yeah, it was. It
was pretty close to the beginning because I was volunteering with like Philadelphia Parks and
rec and a couple other local environmental conservancies that were doing these ecological restoration projects
and they were only planting native species, and I learned there the importance of
natives, and so, you know, for I guess it was it was
just pretty you know, straight up way that I was interested in the natives
plants, but you know, I do I did. I first grew throw
a couple non native species like medicaicoia and you know, similar stuff that not
not invasive, but stuff that I don't really like to grow anymore, like
the tick to all the natives. But still, I mean, mediceicoia' is
a such a cool tree. Yeah, yeah, that was that was I
was really stalked on that species like fifteen years ago, like I grew a
few hundred of them, you know, and I didn't I get I used
to not pay attention to whether it's not that was native or not. I
was like, oh, it doesn't matter, you know. And the people
I saw at that time, you know, whining about natives were the people
that would be like, you know, they kind of like more stiff,
very vanilla people who'd be also yelling at me about other things. So I
was like, ah, fuck it, you know, I was just kind
of ignorant. I didn't know, and I dismissed it. And then eventually
one of the more illegal plant thing I started doing. I started realizing,
wow, that you know, I live in a I was living in California
at the time, in the Bay Area, and I was like, you
know, very specific climate, summer, dry climate, and we started realizing
this, natives are what makes sense, there would have already been through millions
of years of this evolutionary filter to coax out these traits, these you know,
these these traits in their genome that enable them to tolerate long dry seasons,
et cetera. And then it just finally I stopped being a jackass about
it, and it hit me over the head. Yeah, natives, what
makes sense, you know, in every plant's natives somewhere. And that's I
think that's another thing I want to ask you about too, because whenever I
go to the East Coast, I noticed, like, especially the botanic gardens
there, they've got this old school style of botanic garden, but maybe not
necessarily old school in a in a good way. And I've seen it it's
starting to like kind of fade away, which is cool, but it's you
know that like they've got that like kind of trying to mimic that English garden
like specimen trees with the lawn around it and very unnatural, you know,
very like Victorian and and it kind of goes with that whole you know,
especially that time period of like oh, you know, ecology doesn't matter,
context doesn't matter, it's just whether some human being finds it superficially attractive.
Like that's the only spot for plants in landscaping, right, everything else we
bulldoze, and then we put a shopping center there, and then we fill
the shopping center around the margins with like a fucking crpe myrtle or can you
guys, the crpe myrtles survive there, please, I hope not do that.
Unfortunately they do, god brutal. They're doing better and better, I
guess as we can. That sucks. They don't do too well in California
because they're not adapted to that long drisingency. You see a lot of dead
crape myrtles. But but you know that that's kind of like the context that
humans have always had, uh you know in the recent history, uh in
the us of of of plants? Is it is? It is it esthetically
pleasing. There's no contexts for ecology. That's why I love again what you're
doing, like you're changing this, you and Native Habitat Project and other people.
I mean, was there a point where you were I mean you were
always kind of focused on natives in ecology or was there a point when you
were just really amped on a certain aspect about a tree, like how it
looked or something or what? Yeah, I mean like with my nonprofit,
we like in the first maybe we've been going now for four years or so,
and the first the first year we did plant, like maybe the first
spring that we were doing work, we planted like a couple Japanese del Khovas
and a couple like don redwoods or something, and you know in a in
a public park and delkova Is are super abundant and planted up here all the
time at street trees. What is it an elms family? Are they like
an elm relative? Yeah? Yeah, elm family and they h you know,
they're not invasive, they don't spread, but still like absolutely don't serve,
don't don't serve our insects or anything. So, you know, shortly
after that, like I had a couple of close friends that were like,
you know, you should really be sticking the natives, like here's why.
And you know, I started reading more. I read Doug Tallumy's books.
I know you had him on here a little while ago, and uh it
just kind of yeah, I was like, I don't really see a reason
why we should, you know. And since then, we've we've done probably
ninety nine percent, like Pennsylvania native stuff. There is occasionally one tree that
someone will donates to me, like, uh, we recently planned like a
Texas buckeye, which which is some subspecies of I think it was Eschylis glabra,
some some subspecies of Eschylis Gbra. Yeah, for our our kuda.
So we we we like plant one of those in like, uh in like
a park or something. But you know, our restoration projects were sticking to
what should what should be growing there and yeah, one hundred PA natives stuff.
That's great, man, that's so cool. So do you see,
Like, so tell me you still living in Philly or where are you.
I'm in the suburbs of of Philly, I really like my my girlfriend lives
in South Philly and uh some I'm down there a lot, and it's honestly,
like it's pretty tough for me just living like I need I need to
be outside a lot, moving around and in green space preferably. Yeah,
and there's just there's just not a lot of that. So I try to
find things to, you know, to do when I'm there, like,
uh, you know, we planted the street tree and I have the whole
the whole pit like secked out with some some native vapacious plants under there.
So I'm in there like pulling out these like micro weeds and stuff just to
keep busy. But uh, yeah, it's it's the city. I don't
know, I mean, it certainly has it, it's upside. Like with
public transportation, I love taking you know, being able to go anywhere with
the bus or a subway, and there's a million different food options around that
are in walking distance. But yeah, I struggled some times in the city.
So I do work in the city and do work all around the surrounding
counties and stuff, but right now I live in in the suburbs. Yeah
yeah, yeah, Well that's I mean, that's definitely going to get you
more space and more greenery, that's what. That's the kind of the bridge
I've been trying to make recently, just for myself, is because I've always
loved cities. You know, I've you meet people who are like, I
hate cities. Yeah, all right, what have you never actually lived in
a good city? You just know American cities, but you know, Philly,
New York. I mean I've never actually been to Philly, but I've
heard about it, you know. But places with public transportation density, like
that's the way we should be living. That's good. But at the same
time, historically American cities have always been lacking greenery and certainly lacking native plants.
Like you go to Chicago, the parks there all this, you know,
Frederick law Homesteads aisle, the lawn, the green read, the specimen
tree, the fucking winding. That's great, that's a nice spot to read
a book. But that doesn't connect us with the rest of the living world.
So, you know, I would always find myself and I like the
places that were dense, the thickets, that kind of shit. So I
would find myself, you know, like as a kid, like walking train
tracks. I mean, I used to paint graffiti and look for trouble to
get into and explore abandoned buildings and shit, and so that was always put
me out there anyway, But I noticed it like along the train tracks and
these power line easements and the vacant lots. That's where you always saw like
true like wild even though half the species were probably invasive. What do you
think the future could be in terms of having a city that's got the best
aspects of the city, but then also figures out a way to mingle that
with, you know, the rest of the living biosphere, like the world
that we're a part of, storing habitat, like we're storing a fucking like
you know, like a fucking dense, nice Philly block with like you know,
like walkable streets and businesses all next to each other and apartments above and
then the next block is like you know, the archetype Pennsylvania woodland, Like
yeah, do you see that kind of shit coming back anywhere? Do you
see native habitat installations going on in Philly for instance, or what do you
what do you think about that? What do you got to say? It's
definitely getting better. I think like we're trending in the right direction for sure,
but we still have a good way to go. I mean, like
the city just launched what's called the Philly Tree Plan, and mainly it's too
try to increase the canopy coverage of the entire city to thirty percent by forget
what year. So the main goal is canopy coverage, but just there's a
lot of movement lately and more funding too for just adding more green space to
the city, more street trees, more vacant lot trans formations into public parks
or gardens, and a lot of that is is native plant restoration, which
is great. I mean, it's it's becoming more common for sure. And
there's groups like the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. They're the group that I got that
street tree through and they they plant probably two to three thousand trees along the
streets in Philadelphia every year and they trans yeah, they transform, Like they
have a list of vacant lots that they've transformed, and it's just incredible the
work that they're doing. And it's yeah, we're definitely going in the right
direction. Some spots of the city, there are streets that are that are
tight like stent and you know, cars can't really get down there, and
they're full of trees and it's it's beautiful. And then there's other parts of
the city like kind of where my girl friend lives, that's where trees are,
you know, kind of hard to find and it's just mostly concrete and
park you know places the park and don't forget the parking, right, Yeah,
that's the it's not their car thing is. Really we're gonna have to
let that go at some point as a civilization, you know. And I
love I love road trips, I love long distance, you know, but
like I was just in Mexico City and I'm just like, it's such a
fucking great place to be. It's like you can fucking walk everywhere, you
can take take the subway, they got to go metro bus system, and
people still drive like everywhere. It's why, like you're I can walk faster
than you're gonna get there in a car and it's only three miles. It's
two miles away, you know. Yeah, it's so much space wasted for
parking. Man, it's and I hate driving in a city, man,
I hate. I'd so much rather take the subway or take the bus,
get a chance to meet somebody new. If I want to be left alone,
I can be left alone and just look anybody in the I ignore people
whatever, you know, Yeah, totally, I'm the same way. I
mean, the public transit is great, yeah, I mean the the driving,
I think it's like in the suburbs where I'm that it's like even worse
because as you know, like with with sprawl, you've got these these big
developments with you know, spaced out housing and you just got to drive everywhere.
Hate driving like so often, but you know it's like, yeah,
you're stuck. There's no other option there, you know. Yeah, yeah,
but uh but I guess that's what you know, that's what's cool to
see, Like it'd be cool to see somebody actually foment the plan for restoring
native habitat, because this ship really does. I mean, we don't need
You don't need a research paper, though there's certainly numbers of them to tell
you that being around living things, especially living things that have an ecological context
and have already formed these tight relationships with each other, you don't need a
research paper to tell you that that feels good and it's humanizing. I mean,
yeah, I was gonna say, do you get a lot of messages
where people are like, man, you open my eyes to this stuff.
You got me thinking about these things, you know, basically messages from people
who are just grateful for waking them up to this. Yeah, totally,
I do. And that's what that's probably, honestly my like, one of
my favorite parts of making content is just you know, getting those messages like,
hey, I was gonna plant this, uh I don't know Japanese maple,
but I saw your video about the importance of oak trees, so we
decided to plant this native oak and set or something like that. Yeah,
that stuff like makes makes my day because you know, I put in a
little bit of effort to make a video, but if I can if I
can change the minds of or just you know, make it, get them
to make a slightly better ecological decision for their landscape. It's hopefully they can
pass it onto their neighbors or whatever. It's a good feeling. Yeah,
so let's talk about oaks then, So what because you I noticed there's a
lot of oaks stuff on your on your page. What are what about?
What? How do you feel about oaks? And don't you know, tell
me to give me the full the full dope, like what the relationships?
Like what do you love about what they do for for the ecosystem, for
supporting other life, like what because a lot of people don't realize, Like
a lot of people who aren't keen to plants might be thinking, oh this,
you know that oak is nice, but they get too big and they
uplift the sidewalk and then they dropped they dropped the dirty litter everywhere. And
I mean that you know the things you hear something like granted this is generally
the boomer demographic, but you know, what do you think about the oaks?
Like and what species are native where you are? Yeah, we have
a lot of native oak and I think they're they're just my favorite because they
support the most amount of wildlife. But they're also just tremendous trees in general.
Like, uh, they're just the size and the shape that they get
at maturity. They're they're tough, they're strong wooded, and just you know,
even as street trees. Like I work for an urban forestry consulting group
and one of the municipalities that we work for, you know, we help
them choose which tree species they're gonna plant, you know, as street trees
and stuff, and we plant a lot of oaks. You know, swamp
white oak is a great one. It's native to our area. But it's
it's it's like you know, grows naturally in swampy areas or along stream.
That's quirks bicolor color, and it's it's closely related to Alba, which we
also plant. Sometimes that one gets a little larger at maturity, and but
they're both like super tolerant. You know, as long as there's enough soil
volume in a street, you know, if we have like an open pit
or a grass strip or something like that and there's enough space for a mature
trunk, we plant. We plant oaks. We like to plant a number
of oaks, even bur oak macrocarpa, and we also plant a number of
the oaks and the red oak groups, so the ones with the pointy leaves.
Around here, we have a number of those that are native northern red
oak, black oak, Circus pollutina, and pinoak pinoak. Historically that's quirkes
pollustrious. That one was planted most abundantly in my area in the suburbs as
the neighborhoods were being developed in the fifties and sixties, they just planted pinoaks
everywhere. And that's a lowland tree, like you know, slightly acidic lowland
soils where it's you know, it's good moisture. It can take flooded soils
for for a while. But it's also because it evolved in these in these
lowland conditions where root disturbances were frequent, I guess with flooding or debris coming
down the stream or something. It transplants really well, so you can,
you know, whereas other oaks are harder to dig out of a nursery field
and transplant, they might die from shock. Hin oak doesn't really care.
It just kind of regrows its roots really quick and it's a super fast growing
tree. But the problem is, like you know, they planted these developers
planted them everywhere. They planted them in high upland soils where the soil is
dry, and so now, I don't know, sixty or seventy years later,
a lot of a ton of huge mature pin oaks in our area are
dying back and getting disease because they're just not you know, they're not adapted
to these higher condition higher upland soils is dryer stuff. And we've had a
couple pretty extreme droughts that have really hit them hard. But yeah, pin
oak is one that is a good one too, but just oaks in general,
Like I said, I think I like them most because you know,
Doug Talamy's research has shown they support the most amount of Lepidoptera, which supports
the most amount of birds and you know, moves the energy through the through
the food web better than any other of our native trees. And of course
we try with urban forestry, a big thing is getting diversity of species within
within a block, within the city, and so we try not you know,
obviously we have to plant other species and stuff, but we whenever we
can there's enough space, we plant. We try to plant an oak or
a big maturing tree. So that was something else I wanted to touch on
too, because I when I was at least I remember from just planting stuff
in the Midwest, like I was planting a lot of don redwoods, which
are not native. They were native two million years ago, or at least
a species in the genus was, but they're not really invasive. But like
twelve years maybe maybe like twelve fifteen years ago, I had all these trees,
and so I was planting. I was such a dummy too. I
didn't realize I was growing these in a and I didn't realize, you know,
this doesn't make sense to be growing essentially a riparian tree in a spot
where it doesn't rain during the summer. It's like, fuck, what am
I gonna do? So I started moving them. I was flying to Chicago
a lot the see family, and so I started just bringing them on a
plane with me. I'd take like, you know, six trees in a
little in a bag and uh, smash them to take them out the pots,
smash them the soil ball together in the bag, take them to Chicago,
and then find places in Chicago to plant them. And uh. And
when I was planting the people would be like, oh, I like something
bigger, and I'm like, well, you don't really want to plant big
stuff because it's often it's getting ripped out of the ground with a tree spade.
It's gonna take I mean, this thing will catch up to it by
then anyway. You know, like you plant smaller stuff, it might take
a while, but it's going to be healthier because you know, tree roots
like to spread out. I mean, what what's your take on that you
like the plant smaller? You like that like suburban homeowner idea of like oh,
I'm going to get this big you know, sixteen hundred dollars tulip poplar
that weighs eight hundred pounds and that's you know, like they want the instant
landscape. They don't understand the process of like succession. Basically you're establishing a
fucking habitat where there was a lawn or whatever. It takes a minute.
I mean, do you like the plant smaller or what's your what's your ideals
like you know size, Yeah, totally, we like to plant smaller.
We plant five gallon costs or less in our especially less in our restoration project.
You know, we usually aim for the one or two gallon size because
we can get a lot more plant material for the same amount of money as
you know, a couple of bald and burlap trees or something. So we
plan a lot of smaller ones. Like you said, they they adapt to
the you know, they get acclimated much quicker. They get their roots out,
and they start growing putting on growth pretty quickly. So and also here
with you know, if we're doing like a riparian restoration project, we'll plant
like fifty plants or something we aim for. We like the smaller ones because
they oftentimes after the initial watering and as long as we don't have a significant
drought that summer, we really don't have to visit them to water. They
just kind of you know, since they're small plants, they get their roots
set out and they can usually get all the water they need. So we
see very little, a very little die back in those smaller, smaller size.
Yeah, you keep you keep mentioning this, and I should have asked
you sooner. But the work you're doing, and you mentioned your your work
and your nonprofit, like what what do you what are you doing when you're
planting stuff out? Like tell me, tell me about that tell me about
the project that you're working on. Is that all over Philly? Is it
in certain areas? Is it especially planting native stuff? What so? Yeah,
So, as I was, as I was learning about this stuff,
and I mentioned I volunteered with with groups in the Philly area, I wanted
to bring kind of that same effort back my hometown in the suburbs. So
that's where my nonprofit mainly does does the work in in in my town that
I grew up in, and in the surrounding few municipalities mostly so we work
with We worked with the municipality directly there. They're parks and rec crew or
or their you know, public works teams, and pretty much we built a
good relationship with them over the last few years and they've they've learned to trust
us and we and and we've learned what they like to see or what they
have to keep open to you know, keep on planted or whatever. And
pretty much we just we kind of just approached them at this point and say
like, hey, we were we were thinking of doing this type of work
at this park in this area, like are we good to go? And
they usually just kind of rubber stamp it and we're and we're good to go.
So we're we're volunteer based. We do all the same kinds of work
that that those restoration groups that I was on peering with do like we do.
So we host these maybe twenty or twenty five volunteer events each year,
and at these events, we offer a little bit of education. We talk
about the site, you know, what plants were planting and why we talk
about native plants and why why we're only planting native and what that means for
the wildlife there. And you know, if it's an invasive removal event,
we teach them how to identify the invasive species around and we show them how
they outcompete the natives there. We just provide a little bit of education there.
But then we also, you know, use use the volunteers. They
get to go out and plant these things or remove these invasives, and most
of the time they leave feeling super fulfilled. They learn a little bit and
they're they feel you know, a better connection, and they're more likely to
to come out to more events or you know, make that change remove those
invasive species on their property or plant oak or whatever. So that's that's mainly
how my non my nonprofit functions, at least at this point. What's the
name. What's the name of it. It's called Colonial Canopy Trees and it's
a we. The colonial part comes from the Colonial School District, which is
where I'm I'm at. Kind I wasn't about to elect you. Actually I
used to partying colonialism Colonial What does that mean? Yeah, so we're actually
in the middle of rebranding. We're getting rid of that colonial part. So
we were just coming up with a new name, and probably this summer won't
we'll have that. But yeah, it's I've gotten that comment before, Like,
isn't it kind of ironic that you're doing ecological restoration with colonial in your
name? And it certainly is. Well, you know, there was a
there was a donut shop I used to go to an Oakland called Colonial Donuts.
It was run by the sweet the Filipino family. You go in and
I got like a lotto machine. There's like a homeless guy asleep on one
of the table. It was like a really like my kind of homie place,
you know, like a good home feeling for me, Like I could
post up at a table and fucking write or draw and no one's gonna bother
me and I was always I was always waiting, and some fucking college kids
gonna go like colonial, and I was like Jesus Christ. I mean,
and I get it, I get it, but it's just these buzzwords pop
up and they you know, they Yeah, in the historical context, it's
got you know, total I get it. But uh but yeah, anyway,
it's it's just funny. But anyway, Yeah, so what was Colonial?
I mean, it was the Colonial County or Colonial what was it from?
Yeah, so the towns that we do work in are all part of
the Colonial School District three, the three main town So I originally wanted to
call it Community Canopy Trees, but the Arbor Day Foundation already has a program
with that same name. So yeah, we're we're gonna change the name and
a rebrand. Yeah. I think it's a good idea to rebrand. Yeah,
you know, you don't. Yeah, I get in that one.
Wanting the association. I get not wanting the association, man, it's you
know, yeah, but but anyway, well, okay, so so you
guys are basically planting native trees in uh in parks and like parks in neighborhood
areas. You do street trees in two or what. Uh No, not
really. We mainly stick to public lands, and you know, in the
first year or two, we we mainly focused on trees. But as as
I've learned more about woodland restoration in in my area, I've learned more about
the importance of native shrubs and uh, wild flowers and grasses, and historically
our woodlands would have been more open to allow for a lot of shrubs and
undergrowth too. So we've begun, we've begun to implement those types of plants
in our restoration projects too, not just not just trees. But we we
still are very tree focused because a lot of the parks are here are just
straight turf grass like I mean, there's a few trees here and there,
but you know, just big open fields of mode mode lawn and stuff.
So we put in like a pollinator garden and we start establishing these little groves
of native trees that over time, you know, as they get established,
we can go in and plant some shrubs in there and some some wild flowers
and grasses and stuff. Yeah, well, what's what's with them? Man?
Why are so many parks like it's you know, you think, like
you go to like parks Midwest, East Coast, I mean even a lot
of places, and it's like it's just lawn, Like where does that come
from? You think that fucking idea that like that's what a park should be.
That's so fucking boring to me, Like is that is that again?
Is that just like leftover like olm steadying ideology about what a park should be,
like this European ass design this idea or what because that's so boring?
Like, yeah, I think that's that certainly has a lot to do with
it, Like that's that old way of thinking. But I think a lot
I mean a lot of people around here. And I see this with my
work as an urban too, like people just don't really want trees, Like
a lot of people just don't like trees because then they have to worry about,
i don't know, raking up or sweeping up the leaves a couple of
times a year. You know, just leave the excuses like that. But
like this tree dropping fruit on my my clean you got to clean clean the
forest, rake and clean it, yeah, or you know it gets it
gets sticky sap or polling on my my Mercedes or you know, stuff like
that. So I don't know. Uh, I think I think it's just
yeah left you know, people people don't like. But you know, if
you go to a park and and you know, you see most people,
like on a hot summer day, are just speaking the shade under these big
trees. But I guess they don't they don't connect. Did I still this
is unrelated? But did I still put hot ornaments on Mercedes? Because I
remember when I was in high school, we used to love jack and those
like when you go rip them off, like a friend of mine had a
collection of like eleven and it felt good too, because you know, gona
Mercedes. You kind of got that coming to you, you know, prick.
But I don't know, I don't know. I'll pay attention next time.
I normally try to block that kind of shit out. But but yeah,
it's weird. I mean, there was a spot in uh on Montrose
in Chicago that I don't know when they did it, but they got it's
fucking awesome. They put like a prairie or who is behind it if it
was the city or what, But you know, Chicago, like when I
was growing up, they were stuck in that OLM studying shit too. They
still kind of are but they're snapping out of it. But they're planting more
like native dense thickets of like prairie native gardens in a park, which is
fucking awesome. But they put this in in Montrose in the lake and it's
so fucking nice, man. It's so you go there and it's so fulfilling
to lurk at and there's all kinds. There's a diversity of plants and a
diversity of flowers going off with you there in the right season, and a
diversity of birds hanging out. And there's also a cruising spot. But I'm
not trying to blow it up, you know, uh the magic catch,
but it's just it's just the fucking chill. You know. When they put
that native plan. There's fucking beavers now on Montrose Park in the lake,
which is fucking mind Like, that's so cool urban beavers, man. And
all this shit comes back. I mean people start, you know, it
starts clicking like wow, you plant this ship, they will come and it
feels good to be around these things, you know. That's what do you
see that happening where you are like putting pollinator gardens and parks and ship like
that or what yeah, it's slowly. I think we're slowly coming around.
In bigger cities, I think, uh, you know, like in Philly
certainly there's more native plant movement. I know there's a there's a park near
near my girlfriend that just got an award for its native native gardens that were
installed in the last few years. There's a great team of volunteers that do
it kind of work there, and it's just like, yeah, even in
the middle of you know, the the center of the city, like you
at these these bumblebees and like even butterflies and stuff. Oh, that's where
we need it the most. Man. You know, I think it's it's
criminal to deprive people of that shit. It really is. It's why like
Robert Moses and all these asshole developers in the sixties that we're doing all this
wrecking American cities to build freeways and evicting people. And you know it was
racist shit too, obviously, but you know, racist, classiest just fucking
wiping people off the map to put a freeway there. I mean that that
ship is criminal. And you're you're you're just you're you're suffocating people and you're
removing them from things that humans evolve with. It's not just like how you
pissed me off so much, people like, oh, you just want to
you want some nice, pretty flowers, right, It's not about that.
It's not just about aesthetic. This is who we are as a species.
This is what we evolved with. To deprive any human being of a chance
to have a relationship with these things is criminal. It's inhumane. Yeah,
yeah, totally. And you just look at like, I don't know.
I recently, since I started learning about this in the last few years,
I converted you know, each year, I each year I take more and
more of the lawn and just put into the native plant. I mean,
I converted the whole health strip out front of my house from law and that
was, you know, two or three years ago. And now it's just
there's like, I don't know, thirty or forty different native species in there
that it's just infinitely more interesting. It attracts all these insects, and I
don't know a lot of these insects, you know. I I nat a
lot of things and read about the insects that are coming. I keep a
list of insects that I see at my house and stuff. It's just a
great way to learn like you can bring that living Oh yeah, learning laboratory
right to your own house. Yeah, you turn your friend. I've learned
so much living where I do because I just moved here three years ago.
It's totally different and far removed from everything I was used to. And I
annihilated the shit on my lawn and now because there was a lawn that came
with the house. This is what they do when I build a house here.
You know, it's even though it's a fucking desert and there's like wild
payote gardens forty you know, minutes away. I mean, I live in
tom a leaf and thorn script. It's basically Mexico. And I've learned so
much just I mean, you know, if I get like, the mailman
probably has a heart attack coming to my house because you've got to walk through
this tunnel of brush. You know that I just hedge up. I mean
it's people really start to catch on, like, oh this feels good,
this is cool. I you know, I'm learning so much just by planning
this. So tell everybody. First off, there was a video you did
that was wintertime. It was filmed on the Hell Strip. First off,
tell everybody what the hell Strip is, and then let's talk about that video,
because to a lot of people, to the uninitiated, it probably just
looks like, oh, it's a bunch of brown sticks. You should clip
that and pinch it and remove all All those plants are dead. I mean
they're still alive down at the roots, but they're dead for the season.
The tops are dead, you know, get rid of that. So what's
what's the hell strip? And what was going on with that little portion of
your garden? Yes, the help strip is the space between the sidewalk and
the road. Usually it's just grass or turf grass and a mix of other
non native some clovers and stuff thrown in there. So yeah, it's the
last it's I mean, the soils here are usually relatively poor, they're usually
drier, they're exposed to a lot of heat usually, so I over the
last three or four years have been looking as I've been learning more about the
native wild flowers and grasses that grow here, looking for species that could do
well in these hotter, dry soils that might be subjected to some pollution from
the road or from road salts when it snows, if it ever snows again.
But so looking for these tough native plants, and slowly over time,
I've been just converting, taking that grass away and just throwing native plants in
there. And my per preference. You know a lot of people like planting.
You know, uh, here's a choreopsis, and three feet away we'll
plant uh, you know, this sun flower, and in between it will
just mulch everything. I like the the dense meadow type type of things,
so that's kind of what I aim for. I planted dent and I had
to mulch the first year, but now, like it's it's surprising how little
maintenance I need to do on the hell shirts because the native plants just fill
in just like a natural meadow. They you know, they grow together,
and I just got to keep the more aggressive ones in check a little bit.
But it's it's converted into a great space now and just you know,
from from early spring to late fall, I have something blooming out there.
And I live on a busy state road, so there's thousands of cars that
drive by every day, so I have a great opportunity to put some signage
out there. And I have some signs that say, like, you know,
this is certified wildlife habitat, this is you know, native plan supporting
wife over over lawn, that kind of stuff. And when people are sitting
there in traffic or whatever we're driving by, they can see it and maybe
it'll click in their head like that's nice. You know, I should try
that, right. You know, if the ambulance chasers are gonna make you
look at their billboards, you might as well make people look at the you
know, propaganda for the kill your Lawn movement. But that was the thing.
I mean, that's what that thing about planting shit, you know,
spacing it out and evenly like it kills me. That's more of that holdover
from that European gardening aesthetic, you know that like when we were when we
were filming kill your Lawn, we meet it only happened a few times.
We meet these native plant landscapers that were just they put shit like uniform polka
dots in a planting bed, like you know, everything's just like spaced way
too far apart and it's all uniform, and like, man, what the
fuck, Like that's not what nature looks like, that's not what habitat looks
like. Like why are you doing that? You know, kind of like
switch it up, throw it around, like clump shit together, like pay
attention to how shit grows. Like maybe you'll see a clump of a few
things, you know, all the same species growing next to each other,
but then there'll be one or two odd odd ones out in the middle of
that, like you know, it's do you see people starting to break away
from that kind of shit? I don't know. Maybe maybe a little bit,
but I definitely do see still the spaced out you know, even though
a lot of people now are switching to native plants, which I'd rather have
based out native plants than you know, the Japanese barberries yea mandinas and stuff.
You know, space spaced out. But yeah, I mean I think
like if you go to just a prairie or a meadow, like you look
in like a three square foot box, there can be like a crazy number
of species, like twenty thirty forty feet thrown in that thing. And you
know, it doesn't have to be completely one or the other, like based
out, organized or completely wild and meadow. Like you said, you can
plump things together if you want a more ordered look. You can keep the
taller stuff away from the past and stuff like that. So there's ways to
make it look quote unquote more orderly. But you know it's all I think
it looks a lot better when it's dense. Yeah, it just looks weird.
It's like, I don't want my front yard to look like the landscaping
in the bank. You know, it's like and also you lose the benefits.
I mean, the more ground you protect from the sun, the more
density, you know, the better. At least where I live. It's
you know, that ground heats up. I just think in terms of heat
and a v appo transparative effect, and you know, the plants acting like
a swamp cooler because you know the heat is coming. Man, it's only
going to get more from here on out. But yeah, and that's that's
another thing that is interesting to think about it. I hadn't thought it out,
the heat. But you know with soft landing, which which is like
the space under a tree here, like a lot of people, you know,
they may have a nice big oak tree in their front yard, but
they have just mode turf grass right up to the base of the tree.
Well, a lot of those lepidoptera that are feeding on the leaves and you
know when it comes time to pupate, they fall to the ground and they
can't really penetrate that soil sometimes because it's just you know, mode compacted turf
grass from being mode you know for decades or whatever, So they can't penetrate
that that ground very very well. So you know, if you install like
a native plant guard in underneath and you just plant it dense and cover the
ground, that loosens up the soil. It you know, builds up organic
matter over time, and you'll see a lot more insects as well, like
being able to pupate in the soil or just overwinter in the soil. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean for me, the thing to oh is and you
don't see it. It's so much among young people. You see it in
the older crowd. But but the resistance around like bugs of any kind,
like the just oh God. I mean you think it's hard being into plants,
you know, dealing with plant blindness, like studying body and being into
plant blindness or appreciating it of plants and having to deal with plant blindness and
people. Man, I can only imagine what it's got to be like being
into insects or being in entomologist and just dealing with I mean insect blindness.
I mean, God, it's just like, you know, oh, ticks,
miskiite, that's another thing you hear, What about the ticks? Like,
well, you get the tick. To get the ticks, you need
the mice or the deer. If you don't have those, you're not going
to get many ticks. And not only that, but you know, ticks
are a sign of ecological imbalance. If you've got a lot of ticks,
that means either the predators have been removed or wildfire has been suppressed. Something's
fucked up compared with how it's been for thousands of years. You know,
do you what do you? What do you do? I mean, do
you do a lot of that? Like when like this native? I mean,
it's just some of the comments. I swear to god, I got
to just stop reading comments. But the comments I read on certain pages,
like I like something, you know, and then read the comments below,
and it's just like these just shit for brains. And I can't fall people
for it, because again, we're all disconnected, we all grow up,
you know, ecologically impoverished. But just man, it's just it's like,
you know, it's what to me looks beautiful and alive and vibrant, and
other people are criticizing it and find something wrong with it. I was like,
damn, wow, man, I know, yeah, I haven't seen
like, you know, the more I've converted my my space here my front
and backyard, the hell strip, I haven't seen any any sorts of like
ticks or you know, even mosquitos. There's there's less mosquitos now, if
anything. And yeah, people are worried about snakes, like there's really no
harm harmful snakes in my area. Like I see a garter snake every once
in a while, and they're they're cool, and you know, they barely
like if they hear you coming, they just kind of, you know,
slither away or like they're not they're not out to get you or anything.
But people are just, yeah, just afraid of even bees, like I
you know, people think all these native flowers are are attracting bees and these
wasps and stuff that are coming to your garden, you're you're more likely to
get stung, I haven't. You know. I guess this is just anecdotal,
but I've never had any issues with any of the bees or wasps that
visit the flowers as pollinators. I think they're just more obviously more interested in
the in the flowers that they're working on. Yeah, they don't bother them.
Man, I get I get bummed out when I see honey bees.
That's the only bees that I get bummed out when I see, Yeah,
garden, like all the cool native ones and fucking stuff. I had a
little leaf cutter. It's stuff in you know, bringing leaves to wrapper larvae
and like nesting in my like the window, the board that's on the outside
of the window, that's like the border to the window. I was stoked.
I was like, holy shit, this is I gotta go get the
macro lens and figure out what species this is. But I think, yeah,
just man, just trying to get people to just snap out of this
fucking you know, they're there's taint. Yeah, they've been tainted. You
know, we grow up tainted, We grow up tainted and disconnected. And
getting them to see like, nah, this stuff's actually really cool and you're
a part of it. You know, whether you like it or not,
you're a part of it. You're not better than it, you are part
of it. Yeah. Do you get those grass carrying wasps down there at
all? No? Maybe I'm not familiar with them though. What are those
they're just you know, regular sized wasps, but they carry these uh they
carry like blades of grass and like small leaves and stuff. I don't know
what they use them for. Probably for similar thing as the leaf cutters,
but it's funny. You'll see you'll just see random leaf kind of flying through
the air like sideways, and it's just a little wasp carrying a leaf or
a blade of grass. Sometimes I see them here and they're they're super cool.
But yeah, the the grass or the leaf cutter ones there awesome too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's why it's it's really fun to watch
and just man, I learned so much. I see all kinds of wild
shit coming through now, you know. I was like, I was standing
on my roof the other day looking down at my yard and I'm like,
damn, it's a fucking thicket. It's awesome, you know, it's you
can hear it and I and then like you look around and it's just like
lawns and fucking you know. It's. Yeah, it's weird, but I
think there's hope, you know. I think I see a lot of people
coming around, so totally. Yeah. My neighbor across the street, an
older couple and they're the complete opposite, Like you know what you're describing they
you know, any bug is a pet that they got, Like the zapper
lamps out that attract the bug. It's like nineteen stuff. Man. I'm
like, am I doing a disservice here by like attracting all these insects to
my yard? And then maybe they see the light across the streets get that
to death. But yeah, hopefully, I don't know, hopefully like with
the younger generation, we kind of move away from that stuff. But yeah,
I think so. I think people are I mean I think especially with
young people, man, they know, they know shit is messed up.
They know, you know, things need to change. I mean they've basically
inherited a dying world where the middle class like you can't buy a house anymore,
you can't, you know, Like, I think they they are awake
to a lot of that. But uh, with with light pollution, you
had a video on light pollution. I want to ask you to talk about
that too, because it's a really interesting thing I think a lot of people
don't think about, especially in these East coast cities. Man. I mean,
you look up at the sky on a you know, at night and
it's just pink with with there's so many fucking lights on for just pointless reasons.
I mean, what is the effect that those that you've noticed that the
lights have on insects? Yeah, I mean with with insect that you can
look at like any street light around here and you'll just see like ten or
twenty things just buzzing around the light, and it's it's kind of sad.
I mean, like the research is showing that that these that these insects evolve
like obviously to orient themselves with the moonlight and that's how they kind of navigate
the night. But with all these lights around, they're they're confused. They
can get kind of stuck around your light, and if it's the wavelength that
attracts them, they'll just kind of fly around there or stick around the light
all night, and they can die from exhaustion or you know, just some
of those heat, the heat that those lands can give off sometimes can be
too much. Yeah, you know that kind of stuff. So so it's
you know, there's luckily, there's a pretty simple fix. I mean a
lot of people around here leave their lights on all night because they're afraid of
getting robbed or whatever. I don't know, but they leave their lights on,
you know, all night, and it's kind of it's not only wasteful,
but it's just it's doing a it's killing insects, and it's also like
preventing us from seeing the night sky. Like I saw something post yesterday that
said, like, you know, if every American just was able to see
the night sky or just took some time to appreciate, like, you know,
even just five minutes looking at the stars like kind of puts you in
your place a little bit, like you kind of remember like not to take
stuff so seriously. But you can't see any stars around here, like because
it's just you know, the shopping malls a mile and a half away is
putting out so much light that you can't see. You can't see anything except
for maybe a couple of brightest stars in the sky. But yeah, it's
so depressing. Man. I remember just growing up in Chicago not being able
to see the sky was just pink at night, you know, for whatever
reason. I don't know exactly why, you know, what wavelengths are hitting
the clouds and reflecting off or whatever, but or why the glow is like
that, but God, it was just yeah, it was sad. It's
like, you know, and then you go out to like Central Illinois,
I mean we'd go there or like where like upper Wisconsin or something. You'd
see you could actually see stars, and you're like, damn, this is
what I'm missing. But yeah, it's humbling, for sure. There are
wavelengths that don't attract bugs though, right, I mean there's like if they're
for you know, if people and I get understand why to be worried about
lurkers or robbers or whatever. I mean, there's wavelengths that could be switched
to that aren't going to fuck up insects. Correct. Yeah, So they
say that the warmer wavelengths of light, the yellows and the oranges and the
red are the best. They attract the you know, the far the fewest
amount of insects by far. It's really those those bright like white or blue
lights that attract a lot of of moths and other insects. But yeah,
I've switched, you know, I switched our lights to to the yellow bulbs
or the orange bowlbs during the summer because even even if when they're on,
I don't want that, like, you know that anything that gets stuck around
it or whatever. But it really works. I mean I haven't seen there's
really nothing that kind of goes to it. So they usually recommend yellow because
that gets you know, it's bright enough you still see. Like you use
a red light, it might look a little you have like a spooky haunt
that house feeling if it's if it's a red light maybe, So way you
could just buy like yellow, like like where could where can you find him?
Yeah, just that your every day I guess hardware store just yellow led
bulbs and there you know, their energy efficient and good for bugs too.
But yeah, your typical hardware store usually should have them. I'm looking online.
It says insects are particularly attracted to three primary colors green, blue,
and ultra viole, which fall between three hundred and sixty five nanometers and then
I think three hundred and forty two animeters especially is like the most which is
Yeah, that makes sense. It's ultraviolet is especially attractive to them. So
like anything above six fifteen nanometers is ideal. But but you could just like
look up yellow, yellow led light or what. Yeah, that's that's pretty
much what I did. And now I went to the local hardware store and
got it. They have plenty. You can also do, like, you
know, a better option, maybe just doing a emotion sensor light, like
you know, if someone starts walking on your property or something, that's when
the lights come on instead of leaving them all night. But you know that's
that's another option too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something so it's not
just blaring all the time. Yeah, because man, especially moths. Man,
moths are so fucking cool. There's so many I don't know, I
just there's so many planned where I am that are moth pollinated, and it's
it's really opened my eyes to them. And I mean, yeah, there's
like what like a hundred times more moth species than butterflies. They're a huge
part of the food chain. Yeah, totally. And you know a lot
of people, I guess, kind of just lump them in, at least
around here, they slump them into those like boring gray or brown looking moths.
They don't really take time to look at them. But there's some really
cool looking patterns on their wings and stuff like that. They're they're beautiful.
Oh yeah, that's how they that's how they hide. That's how they hide
during the daytime, you know, so they can you'll still just blend right
in with the bark of a tree so they don't get nabbed by a bird.
But uh, but yeah, so do you. I guess what you
had something too. I want to talk to you about this. The uh,
the fucking quote the the quote unquote wildflower mixes, you know with like
the corn flowers and stuff, because that's something. God, there was a
company that was selling these wildflire mixes. They actually hit us up on killer
Lawn. They're like, we love to do something with you, and I
was I looked at their website and I was like, no, man,
I'm sorry, I just I can't get with it. You guys are you're
selling these wildflower mixes and half the ship isn't native, some of them are
some of the species are actually you know, bona fide invasives. Do you
I mean, how do you fix that? I mean, is it worth
you feel like it's worth writing these companies just politely being like, yo,
this is not this is not this is well intentioned, but this is not
the way to go, do you. I mean I know what specifically,
like in Pennsylvania on the Turnpike, they had planted like native wildflower or not
native but they'd planted like a wildflower mix and half the stuff wasn't even native,
right, Yeah, Yeah, it's a it's a weird thing because you
know, you go to like lows or home depot and you look at wildflower
mixes, you you can't find one that is native, like just just with
native species. For Pa, it's all these, like you said, these
cornflowers and other other plants that aren't even native to the continent. And luckily,
I mean, we do have a couple of great sources of one hundred
percent native seed mixes around here. You have to get you have to order
online, but yeah, and some that even offer like local pico type seeds
to Pennsylvania, so that's super cool too. But yeah, I mean,
I don't know how the best I think education is is super important, like
just getting people to know that these these really shouldn't be called wildflowers because they're
not. They're not wild around here, they're not native here. I mean,
I don't know, like these these bigger, these bigger companies that sell
these mixes, I don't think they would they would listen. But I mean
maybe if we if we put enough pressure on them and you know, get
carriers to stop selling those mixes. Yeah, it's again, I think it's
just more just like you know, antiquated outlooks, archaic perspectives, like it's
the only purpose of plants is to either give us food or or cover or
something pretty to look at. There's nothing like, there's no greater context,
there's no connection to anything else, just this kind of ecological ignorance. But
it's like, maybe we can't keep living like that, like everything, like
the biosphere is dying, like that's what always it always frustrates me and people
like, oh, the planet's going to be fine. Planet's not going to
be fine if you're talking about the rock that the planets made, like the
lithosphere, Like, yeah, that'll be fine. I guess there's no comet
coming so far as we know, but like the biosphere is fucking the biosphere
is very clearly not fine. We can't continue living incongruently with the rest of
this stuff, like it's worth paying attention to and understanding, you know.
Yeah, yeah, And I see that with with my work as an urban
farster as well, Like when we're planting these these trees that are you know,
obviously are when we plant trees in an urban area. We want to
bring the benefits to the people that live there, you know, the shade,
the you know, the cooler temperatures, the lower energy costs, the
better health, the better mental health. Those all are people oriented, but
we you know, we oftentimes ignore or just really downplay the ecological benefits.
Like our wildlife needs help in any way that that they can get it.
And like most of the time people just want a tree for them, or
they want a showy flowering tree that doesn't support much wildlife. And so when
we go to plant and oaks, they're like, what why are you planting
this thing? Like it's you know, it's it doesn't have showy flowers,
it's you know, it's going to get too big. It's like all this
other stuff. They're kind of thinking about human you know, human centered mindset.
But the trees are so much and plants are so much more important.
It's so weird to me, especially like the showy flowers thing like that,
Like that's just so subjective. It doesn't mean anything. It's yeh, you
know, it's I don't know, I guess I just and also I think
just from a selfish perspective, it's like if you have a tree that's going
to bring birds and cool bugs around, and you come home and your yard
is going to be lit up with birds singing. They're like cool cicados or
something like. That's nice. Like that's selfishly, that's a good thing that
enriches my life to be around. Why, Like there's that aspect of it
too. It's just again, it's just getting people to see, getting people
to open their eyes. Our cities could be so much different, man,
I mean, there could be such nice places to live, you know,
enlivening places to live. We've just been doing it wrong for the last few
hundred years. So yeah, and now it's another thing with like you know,
people with the space or you know, they have space for a big
tree, but they choose the plant, you know, a Japanese maple or
a flowering dogwood and stuff. And I mean, I guess you have to
teach their own, but like we need to be helping. In my opinion,
we need to be planting for more than just human interest. Yeah,
it's yeah, it's just it's so myopic. It's so narrow centered, you
know, it's so narrow minded. Just you guys. Still people are still
doing the Japanese maple thing out there. Huh Yeah, it's it's kind of
crazy, like like every house pretty much corny, man, there's so many
cultivars of it now. But even I mean a good a good suggestion what
I tell people when they want to plant a Japanese maple, because it's actually
on the watch list in Pennsylvania for for invasive Like there's a park near me
uh in Philadelphia that that used to be a big nursery in the East Coast.
I think it's shut down in the sixties, but they grew lots of
Japanese maples and stuff, and ever since they closed down, the Japanese maples
kind of took over. And the deer up here, which are super overpopulated,
they don't really eat the Japanese maple. So this whole woodland understory pretty
much here in this one section of the park is just like Japanese maple.
It sucks. Yeah, it's probably crawling with ticks too. Yeah, I
mean it's I don't know, it's like but but now, I mean what
I usually tell people instead of instead of a Japanese maple is there's a lot
of Eastern red bud cults of bars. Now that you know if they're if
they're planning the Japanese maple only because it's a small tree with with red leaves,
Like there's there's a couple of native trees that have colts of bars that
can do that, and at least we don't have to worry about, uh,
the maple potentially spreading or becoming an invasive. Yeah, and there's nothing
that the maple really benefits in the ecosystem there either. Huh yeah, no,
not really. I mean, Norway maple is is extremely It's probably the
worst invasive woody plant in my area. I think, maybe not woody plant,
but certainly tree because these I mean we John Bartram originally brought it to
Philadelphia in like the i think early seventeen hundreds because they were looking for a
tougher street tree alternative to the sugar maple, and so they started planning these
non native Norway maples everywhere. And you go to like an unmanaged woodland around
here, and it's like the only tree like regenerating is these these Norway maples.
So it's it's crazy. They can kind of persist in the in the
shady understory for decades and their leaves are so big they kind of like shade
everything else out and eventually they reached the light kind of you know, takeover.
So my nonprofit does a lot of Norway maple removal and luckily they're kind
of you know, in these dense woodlands there, they're no more than like
five or six inches in diameter, so you can just kind of shell them
and put a little herbicide on the stump and that'll take care of them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what what herbside? You guys use glyphyside or
tricle peer or something or what. Yeah, we usually use tricle peer,
a tricle peer based herbicide, and we just you know, painted on the
stump a little bit and it seems to seems to do the job for most
of most of the plants to deal with. And most people get it.
They don't freak out. They're like, you know because understandably so because roundup's
been used in agriculture, which is fucking insane to me. But you've got
this whole camp it's like just doesn't get it, like strictly anti herbicide,
no matter what I mean, And most people seem to get it. It's
especially you know, it's relatively harmless if you're just doing spot applications. Yeah,
totally, just a little stump is you know, and the stuff breaks
down quick relatively quickly, and you know it does the job. Yeah,
that's cool. Is there in the Filly area because I'm not really familiar,
I mean, are there is there many crumbs of native habitat left? I
know you had another video on spring ephemerals, which we get in Chicago too,
which is such a cool ecological niche to occupy. I mean, you
got like the six week period when temperatures have warmed up, but the trees,
the deciduous woodland trees haven't leafed out yet, so you've got six weeks
to do your thing and then that's it. Like that's it for the year.
I mean there's not many places like that. I know you said there
was only like one or two places left where you get that the spring of
femerals, right, Yeah, in my town directly, that's the only place
I know of it. It's so unfortunate, but it's it's a rocky ridge
top that was that at this park. I mean everything around it is flat
and historically was used for agriculture, but this kind of rocky outcropping they preserve.
They never cut the tree. I don't think it's it's not true old
growth, but it's it's probably second growth or close to it. I mean
the oaks and here are like one hundred and thirty one hundred and fifty around
there, so it really cool. And in the understory too, there's some
really cool plants, including the spring of semerals. So we do a lot
of work in there. But that's probably you know, one of the better
spots locally. But in general, like around around the Philly area or the
suburbs, there's unfortunately not too much like high quality habitat lest I mean in
my town for example, Like we're pretty much built built out, like every
piece of land is accounted for. There's you know, there's not much like
natural space left. I mean, there's a really good spots. There's a
great organization near me called Natural Lands and it's Natural Lands Trust, and they
do a lot of land preservation and uh easements and stuff and save these lands
from getting developed, and a lot of their properties are really high quality,
uh you know, ecological spaces. Like there's a place about a half hour
nor north of me that's like the place to go to for botanizing. It's
incredible. I mean, Philadelphia has such a rich history of horticulture, and
there's like a billion public gardens and arberita in the area, so there's all
sorts of invasive press pressures and non native plants historically around here. But this
place is like it's like there's barely any invasive and it's like the only place
I know, like everywhere I travel outside of Philly, I'm like, man,
this is this is nice. Like it's it's you know, less invasive
and more native stuff. It's it's unfortunate in my area. Yeah, well
it's those East coast cities. Man, that's where that's where the quote unquote
deathicult kind of landed first. You know, that was already so disconnected from
the rest of a living world, and so it's you know, they had
they had a few more hundred years then someplace like say, you know San
Francisco or wherever, Albuquerque, they had a few more one hundred years to
kind of you know, uh yeah, just destroy everything. But it's it's
you know, it's the process of bringing it back. That's why I'm stoked
to see. Like I was in New York, man, I saw I
saw people planting natives stuff that. I mean, there's just more people becoming
aware of what was here before and what makes sense. You know. It's
like it's it's you know, it's like the whole idea of just planting for
like showiness or or some like subjective and whimsical idea of beauty is just so
weird to me because that's what I grew up with, you know, in
the like in the eighties and nineties in Chicago, Like I saw people you
go to the botanic garden. The botanic garden used to be so fucking boring
to me, Like my mom would drag me, you know. My mom
was a public school teacher, and she'd be like, we're gonna go to
the go to the botanic garden for let's go. And I'd be like,
oh, that sounds so fucking boring, you know. And then I saw
like a really nice botanic garden that was based around like you know, plant
education and geog geography. Like I went like UC Berkeley Potanic Garden, and
that was I was like, man, I could go there three times a
week when I was living out there, like they're so much cool shit.
And I'd see something new every time. I learned so much. It was
so exciting. Yeah, it's I mean, yeah, the Philly area it
is called the garden capital of the country because there's just like you know,
within my within my area, like within a thirty or forty mile radius that
can get to like I don't know, forty or fifty different public gardens and
arborita. So there's there's a lot, but I feel like a lot of
them kind of fall into that category. I think they're they're certainly getting better,
like definitely becoming more native plant focused and stuff, but they yeah,
I think they're still very much like aesthetic you know, planting for esthetics and
that kind of stuff. But there have you ever been to Mount Cuba Center
in Delaware? No, but that sounds familiar. Is that a serpentine area?
I don't know if I don't think they have any serpanteine on there,
but yeah, but I've heard about before. Yeah, what is it.
Yeah, it's a great it's a great organization and place. It's a public
garden, but historically, the the owners of that place, like before it
was a public garden, the owners you know, gardened and planted with native
plants only like you know, during this time when everyone else was importing exotic
plants and using it as a status symbol and all that kind of stuff.
The people, I don't know the history very well, but I know that
they they stuck to native plants only. So so Mount Cuba today only you
know, for the most part, they have some remnants from like yeah,
non native parts, but like in the formal gardens, but like they use
native plants from the entire like eastern US pretty much. Yeah. And it's
it's an incredible place. I mean, they have, like I said,
it's it's the majority if it's native, and really a great place to learn.
And they have like you know, educational programs that they're focused on native
plants and restoration, and they have you know, like hundreds of acres of
just natural lands that they maintain in woodlands and all that stuff. So it's
a great place. But they also do you may have seen they do like
research on they do trials on common gardens plants, like they recently did one
on Amsonia. So they they planted all all the common Ansonia species in their
trial garden and over the course of three or four years they evaluate different things
and they come out with a report. But they did this with like hydranges
and stuff and kind of raided all the plants, and that stuff is useful
for people in the native plant community as well. Oh, like how they
did in cultivation, or how they did with pollinators or what all. Yeah,
all of it, like how the plant grows in full sun, part
shade or shade, Like what pollinators that attract, how many pollinators it attract,
pretty much anything anything you would need to know about a plan if you're
just considering it for for the landscape. So I you know, if they've
done a trial on it. They just did a great one on Carrick.
You know, native sedge species though there's like over one hundred native stedges in
Pennsylvania, so you know, trying to get those incorporated into the landscape more
and potentially looking at those native sedges as an alternative blawn that doesn't have to
be mode. Yeah. They do a lot of cool a lot of cool
research like that. Yeah, that's that's cool man. Yeah, because the
thing, like the thing with me is for natives is like it's not it's
not like some purest thing and I think, you know, people who aren't
familiar with it yet who aren't plant People don't get that, like it's there's
a practical reason for it, and it's just ecology. Like that's what we
mean when we say natives. It's ecological relationships. It's history of evolving in
a place. It's the history of evolving these relationships among all these different organisms.
It's the idea that no plant is just an isolated entity. That it's
just though it's you know, like when you're planting because it's attractive, that's
that's what you're doing, you're treating It's just an isolated entity. I'm just
going to take this one plant that evolved nine thousand miles away, like create
myrtle, because I like the flowers and there's no content like create myrtle.
I'm sure I would love to see create myrtle where it's native. It's probably
cool. It would make me hate it less, it would make me understand
what it evolved with and what other things it's got a relationship with. But
you know, I see it in the US and I'm like, what the
fuck is this doing here? There's other This doesn't do anything. This is
just you know, some fucking you know, knob thought this was pretty what
is this doesn't mean anything, you know, Yeah, I think people are
going to zoom out, Like they're starting to zoom out and get it.
And that's what I love. It's like the human mind, the human primates,
starting to zoom out and grasp the context of what's going on here on
planet Earth and it's not just about us, you know, Yeah, totally,
I think. So. I mean I see more and more stuff that
gives me hope. But you know, I think we're trending in the right
direction. Yeah. So you started So you started off studying, uh,
study molecular biology, and then you got into this. I mean, how
did you How did you make that? How did you make that transition?
Like what was the the dopamine wasn't in molecular biology. It was in plants
and planting things and being outside. And then where do you hope to go
with it? Yeah? So I was. Yeah, I went to graduate
school originally in the PhD program, and I had done some undergraduate research in
I was researching bacteria phages, which are these viruses that infect and kill bacteria
cells. Oh yeah, I know about them. They're pretty interesting. Oh
yeah, yeah, yeah, and potentially useful too. But so I ended
up. You know, I thought I wanted to go to grad school for
that. I thought that was my path. But I majored in environmental science
in undergrad but never for some reason, never developed an interest in plants really
until after after college. I was hired to lead a group of undergrads in
this in this research project on this this natural area, this this water space
in you know, Lowland area, and my my job was to at least
my project for that summer was to identify the plants growing in there. And
it really, like was the first time I sat down and tried to look
at these plants closely and figure out what they were. And I started reading
about them, and I was like, man, this is really cool,
Like plants are awesome. And and at that time I was already had already
been accepted and was going to the grad you know, programming in grad school.
So I mean, my time there was awesome. I I'm glad I
got to learn about the scientific process and how that works. And I have
respect for all the people in academia can tolerate all that, but it just
was not the not the past for me, I mean, which is super
isolating and ultra competitive. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I like dipping
my feet in academia sometimes and living vicariously through friends in it. But for
a long term I couldn't do it. I'd get kicked out anyway. Yeah,
and just too much, I think, too much time in the lab
as well. And anyway, the research I was doing, you probably would
would be interested in two of the labs we were studying evolution. I ended
up in a lab that was doing experimental evolution with yeast. So we would
evolve these streams of yeast cells in the lab for thousands of generations and you
know, four or five thousand generations and these different conditions or like you know,
growing them in in some weird sugar that they don't usually prefer to grow
on, and we would sequence their DNA along the way and figure out,
you know, which beneficial mutations arise and which ones arose more often than other
genes, and we found you know, you can find like which genes are
are selected for in that environment. And it was just a cool, cool
research that you know, really got me to appreciate, you know, evolutionary
biology. But yeah, ultimately it just wasn't you know, as I as
I developed my interest in in plants and was unhappy in grad school. I
left there with the Masters and just kind of switched over. At first,
I was working for my local utility company in their vegetation management team, looking
for dead and dying trees near near their power lines and stuff, mostly ash
trees because unfortunately the Emerald ash for has just decimated for every ash tree in
Pennsylvania at this point and beyond. And yeah, it just kind of went
from there. I just kept learning and I did a year at Morris Arboretum
in Philadelphia as the Urban Forestry Fellow there, and then after that, I
just been doing kind of what I'm doing now. That's great, that's so
cool. That's what's I mean. It's like, you know, you just
follow what feels good, follow what is fulfilling, and like fills the fucking
Yeah. I mean that's I used to work for the railroad. I just
got into this because this is what filled the whole, you know, this
is what filled the spiritual void. You know. It was like the fucking
lock. They're the key into the lock. And how did you did you
first, you know, start seeing the plants when you were working you know.
Yeah, I got into that. I got in I was in the
geology. First, I just really amazed by it because I got exposed to
mountains. I didn't I didn't up seeing any mountains, Like there's some mountains
in Chicago, and whenever we drive by a quarry, like when I was
with my mom, I be kind of amazed because it's all this silurian limestone.
I was like, Wow, all that shit's beneath us. Holy hell.
And then you know, knowing it was these tiny, single celled organisms
that built shells out of calcium carbonate. So I kinda but then seeing mountains,
I was like, whoa, this is wild. What the hell?
How the fuck did these form? What caused the uplift? Why are there
these squiggly lines in them that are all parallel to each other? And uh?
And then I got into plants, and then I just kind of hired
out on the railroad at the same time, just on a whim. And
then just yeah, I mean I saw a lot of I mean railroading in
California, like all over northern California and western Nevada and parts of southern Oregon
that really that really, you know, that really showed me a lot.
I mean, that was a good way to to travel, and and then
it just I just you know, I've started hyper focusing on all this stuff,
and then just it's just like anything, you know, like you learn
more, you get greater context, you get one question answered, and you
get ten more questions, and and just feeling so amazed by it and so
bored by everything else, like so bored and or annoyed by everything else.
And then finally just it finally just overtook me. And now it's like just
part of my my everyday life. It's everything, you know. But uh,
but it's you're right, you're writing. Ah, well, I know
you you're Are you still working on the book or you finish finished that up?
Yeah? I finished the first one, and then I kind of got
kind of got duped by a publisher at that doing a second one. Even
I was like, I don't you know, I I'm working on that.
That's do in November, and I'm just like, guys, I don't know,
I'll never I'll never do this again. You know. If I ever
do a book again, it's going to be in my own time. But
but yes, that was that's you know, that's the first one was just
a collection of photographs from all over the world because that's what I do now,
Like, I just I want to explore all these different ecosystems, the
same thing that I did, you know, in California when I was living
there, like trying to understand an ecosystem and every little bit matters. Now
I want to do that all over the planet. Like I want to go
study these things and learn about them and their arecologies and the things they evolve
and how the you know, how the everything from the geology to the pollinators
to all that shit shapes them, you know, through natural selection. I
think that stuff is so fascinating. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to your
your book. I mean, I I follow your travels on you know,
on through your videos and stuff, but it's going to be you know and
your stories on Instagram when like you share stuff about the evolution of these these
plants. Like that stuff is totally fascinating to me too. Yeah, it's
it's it's super cool ship And once people get a chance to see it and
it's put in the right context, if like put in the right context them,
you know, so that they get it and they can see it and
then they kind of they're like, wow, that's fucking you know, it's
great. That's what I you know, I love what you've done with native
plants, man, I mean just getting people to see like, oh,
there is a context for this, Like there's an actual there's a purpose for
this, and it's not just us and I think just philosophically, it's rewarding
the people on a much deeper level too, because they get to see like
we're we're a part of all this, you know, and it's kind of
up to us. It's sentient apes to to you know, learn about it
and understand it and like care for it. You know. Yeah, I
think one of your previous episodes, recent episodes of the podcast that you're talking
about the you know, like the spirituality of kind of doing this work.
Like you know, you you plant something and you watch it grow and you
watch the life that comes to it is attracted to it. It's like such
a great feeling and Yeah, unfortunately something that most people are acidy don't don't
get the experience. Yeah, and when they and then you see when they
do, and it's like how good it makes them feel? Like that's the
best ship. That is the ship that kind of gives me hope, you
know, and I used to. I used to kind of like, you
know, get like a queasy feeling whenever I would talk about that aspect of
like the spirituality. I don't get that anymore. It's it's you know,
it's a bona fide, real feeling. It's there. It's it's undeniable.
There's a connection to this stuff. There's no escaping that. And you know
that's again that's why it's so it's so important to be able for people to
be able to be around it, you know totally. Yeah, it's it's
a great feeling. Yeah. So anyway, man, well thanks a lot
for taking the time and uh, yeah, I know, is there anything
Is there anything you want to put out there into the ether or anything you
want to mention or where can people find you, et cetera. Yeah,
Well, thanks for having me on. First off, it was it was
great to chat with you. Like I said, I've been following your journey
for a while, so's it's cool to meet you virtually. Yeah, I
guess I'm on all all platforms with the same handle. It's at Andrew Underscore,
the Underscore Arbous, Andrew the Arbous And yeah, that's pretty much.
Thank you. Thanks again, yeah, man, and the nonprofit you're starting
to read the soon to be rebranded when what is it colonial? What colonial
canopy trees? And it's mostly just it's it's basically like native tree restoration in
public lands and parks in the failure area. Huh yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we're we're hoping to expand eventually, I guess, and I think
get more hopefully more funding, and I'd like to make it a source of
income for me as well and hopefully turned that into more of a career.
But we'll see how it goes. Yeah, we need it, man,
it's right, Thank you so much. Well anyway, all right, Andrew,
thanks so much, and uh yeah, man, stay in touch.
I'll talk to you soon, all right, take care, Okay, everybody
else go fick you somebody