1 rich Libsyn https://www.libsyn.com 90 600 We sat down at the picnic table with John Hart Asher, host of Central Texas Gardener and Cofounder/Senior Environmental Designer at Blackland Collaborative to talk about pocket prairies. What’s a pocket prairie? It’s a very small prairie. What’s a prairie? It’s a community of native grasses and forbs wildflowers that have evolved along with microbes, plants, and animals over millennia. This &quot;disturbance-driven ecology&quot; historically relied on periodic fire and low-frequency, high-intensity grazing to function. John Hart sees the &quot;millions-year-old technology&quot; of the American prairie as a replicable system that we can borrow in our own yards to sequester carbon, manage stormwater runoff, and support the essential interconnections between life forms that make up the food-soil web. As Douglas Tallamy writes in his book Nature's Best Hope, &quot;If each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to native plant communities...[we] could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland.&quot;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; We discuss the role of wildfires and buffalo grazing in Texas before European settlement, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's research on prescribed burning, and how to prepare, install, and maintain a pocket prairie.&amp;nbsp; John Hart insists that we must rethink our approach to landscape design, gardening, land ownership, and even our concept of &quot;nature&quot; if we are to sustain life on earth. He describes prairie restoration as &quot;a trajectory, not an intervention&quot; -- a process, rather than a product -- which can help us reconnect with the web of life, reduce climate anxiety, and make our homes more beautiful to boot.&amp;nbsp; Mentioned in this episode:&amp;nbsp; Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy; the USDA Web Soil Survey; Black Owl Biochar; KR Bluestem. Please join our Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and more!&amp;nbsp; Hothouse http://hothousepodcast.com <iframe title="Libsyn Player" style="border: none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/23110097/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/" height="90" width="600" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe> https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/item/23110097