Honors

Pediatrics organization gets national honor

The Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics has been named Best Small Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics for 2013. This was announced on March 16 at the Annual Leadership Forum held in Chicago. President Sheila Idzerda, M.D., Vice President Pepper Henyon, M.D., Secretary-Treasurer Tanya Jagodzinski, M.D., and executive director Molly Taylor were present to accept the award.

Names and faces

Brad Stephenson completed two days of TRANE Advantage training and one day of TruComfort Variable Speed training for TRANE heating and cooling systems.

Montana Legal Services Association announces that MLSA attorneys Bob LaRoche and Amy Hall are recipients of the Montana Justice Foundation Champions of Justice Awards.

LaRoche and Hall are among 35 legal professionals chosen this year for their significant contributions to justice in Montana.

LaRoche started with MLSA in 1969, worked briefly for legal aid in Idaho, then came back to MLSA in Billings. Specializing in public benefits, he has dedicated his career to advocating for those who cannot advocate for themselves, assuring fairness in the justice system for the most vulnerable in our society.

Hall began with MLSA in 2002 after 12 years with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. Known as a passionate advocate, Hall previously practiced family law and now specializes in housing issues, providing access to the courts for countless Montanans who cannot afford private legal representation.

MLSA congratulates LaRoche and Hall, as well as all of the honorees.

Announcements

Volume One Bible has new owner

Manna Basket Ministries, a local Christian charitable organization, has purchased the former Volume One Bible Store. The store has been renamed Harmony Road and is operated by Manna Basket Ministries.

Harmony Road is located at 434 N. Last Chance Gulch and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. All proceeds from sales go to fund the work that Manna Basket Ministries does, such as helping missionaries, churches, pastors and orphanages both locally and around the world.

Bibles, books and gifts as well as work from local artists can be found at Harmony Road. Imported items will be available from the various missions that Manna Basket Ministries supports in Bethlehem, Kenya, Costa Rica and other places.

For more information call Bonnie at 443-3648 or 461-5133.

New lawn, landscape company opens doors

The Grounds Guys of Helena and Bozeman, a lawn and landscape company owned by Joshua and Jasmine Talley, has opened its doors and is ready to serve the people of Helena.

The Grounds Guys of Helena and Bozeman offers a variety of lawn care and landscaping services. They provide professional skills and knowledge of lawn care services.

To learn more about The Grounds Guys of Helena and Bozeman, call 315-4217 or visit Helena.groundsguys.com.

Applications open for Leadership Montana

Leadership Montana is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing together business, government, education, nonprofit, health care and other leaders from around the state for a program of leadership development, networking and education on the issues facing Montana today.

The class begins in September and meets once monthly over the following eight months in various locations around the state. This year’s class will begin with the orientation and retreat in Big Sky, then travel to north-central Montana, Missoula, Helena, Sidney and Butte, before culminating in the graduation celebration in Billings in April 2015.

The class of 2015 will be the 11th Leadership Montana class and will join an alumni organization of over 400 graduates from 50 different Montana communities. More information is available online at www.leadershipmontana.org or by calling Montana office at 896-5877.

Nonprofit Communication Grant

An orientation meeting about the 2014 Excellence in Nonprofit Communications Grant Award, which is available to Helena-area nonprofits, will be held on Tuesday, March 25, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the large conference room of the Lewis Clark Library at 120 S. Last Chance Gulch. RSVP to 443-5860 or bpratt@bigskyinstitute.org.

Las Cruces has a major case of spring fever. Trees and flowers are budding everywhere. Even our mesquite trees, which hold tight until the last risk of a freeze is over, are finally letting go and are showing signs of green.

Now is a perfect time to highlight some of the easiest and most rewarding ways to “green” up our homes through landscaping. Landscaping adds beauty, color and life to our homes. With just a little forethought and planning, your home’s landscaping can also help you save energy, water and money.

Around our town, it is common to see yards that are mainly comprised of rocks or gravel with minimal or no plants. That type of landscaping is sometimes referred to as “xeroscaping” (presumably on the assumption it means “zeroscape”), but the correct term is “xeriscaping.” Xeriscaping refers to the conservation of water through creative landscaping using native, drought-resistant plants to create beautiful, low maintenance, natural-looking landscapes that enhance the home. Unfortunately, many homeowners have misunderstood the concept, and have covered their yards with gravel and plastic. This type of landscaping is not only unappealing, but it is self-defeating as far as water conservation is concerned, and it also can have very counter-productive effects on cooling bills in the summer.

Thoughtfully designed xeriscaping can beautify the home, enhance your enjoyment of outdoor living, conserve water and save money on heating and cooling bills. Here are some of the things you can do:

1. Design landscaping for shading and cooling. Heat from the sun is absorbed through windows, walls and rooves, making our homes difficult to cool in the summer. Well-placed trees and shrubs provide shade to help keep your home cool. Trees also release water vapor that cools the surrounding air temperatures. Because cool air settles near the ground, air temperatures directly under trees can be as much as 25 degrees cooler than air temperatures above nearby pavement. Trees planted to the west of the home are great for shading western-facing windows, doors and patios from the intense afternoon sun. Shrubs and ground cover shade the ground and pavement, reducing heat radiation and cooling the air around your home. A study in Arizona found that well-designed landscapes reduced air-conditioning costs in homes by as much as 25 percent.

2. Add trees or shrubs for blocking or deflecting wind. Properly selected, placed and maintained landscaping can provide excellent wind protection, or windbreaks, which can actually reduce heating and cooling costs, and make your outdoor living much more pleasant.

3. Use regionally appropriate, low water-use and native plants. Plants that are native to our area are typically very drought-tolerant, and are well adapted to our soil and climatic conditions, in turn requiring minimal fertilizer. Native plants are more resistant to pests and diseases than are other species.

4. Group plants according to their water needs. Plants with similar watering needs should be placed into specific “hydrozones” to reduce water use and protects the plants from either underwatering or overwatering. Areas of grass should be kept to a minimum, and should always be separated into different hydrozones because grass has higher water needs.

5. Maintain or upgrade automated timed irrigation systems. Homes with automatically timed irrigation systems use about 50 percent more water outdoors than those without. Your system can waste even more if it’s programmed incorrectly, or if you have a leak. Make sure to check for clogged, missing, or broker sprinkler heads or drippers. A leak about as small as the tip of a ballpoint pen can waste about 6,300 gallons of water per month. Replacing a standard clock timer with a WaterSense labeled irrigation controller can save an average home nearly 8,800 gallons of water annually.

If you want to get some great ideas for beautifying and greening up your home with landscaping, you will want to catch the Las Cruces Tour of Gardens on May 3 this year. If you do, you will see some great examples of fabulous gardens and landscaping, like the home of my neighbors, Steve and Mary Lacy, who inspired me to write about how landscaping can enhance a home’s beauty, enjoyment, comfort and sustainability. They have put all these principles to work and have achieved amazing results. If a picture is worth a thousand words, seeing these homes on the Tour of Gardens is worth much, much more. I’ll see you on the tour!

Renee Frank is a local Realtor with certifications in energy-efficient and environmentally responsible features of real estate. Her Home Green column appears the fourth Sunday of each month. She may be reached at renee@reneefrank.com. Read her blog at lascrucesrealestatereneefrankblog.com.

BY LINDLEY ESTES / THE FREE LANCE-STAR

To freshman Maggie Magliato, the University of Mary Washington’s Fredericksburg campus isn’t just a school, it’s a thriving ecosystem.

On a recent Sunday she spotted the first blue jay of spring on the way to brunch in Seacobeck Hall, “and I got so excited,” she said.

But the English ivy, which covers the ground and climbs trees and academic buildings on campus, doesn’t contribute aesthetically to the school’s collegiate character for her. Magliato, an environmental science major, knows the ivy is an invasive species that strangles the biodiversity of the campus’ ecosystem.

So Magliato, with the help of the campus’ Greenhouse community—of which she is a member—has begun a project to remove much of the ivy from UMW.

For five hours on a recent Sunday, the group tore ivy from the ground and trees near the UMW entrance on Sunken Road.

Magliato used saws and clippers to remove the ivy by severing the vine from its roots and pulling it off trees, rolling up sections that cover the wooded floor like a carpet and sending it all to be composted by the school’s grounds department.

The Greenhouse is one of five current living–learning communities at UMW. The community is made up of 93 freshmen who live together in Randolph Hall. They take a first-year seminar course together and are required to complete a service project like Magliato’s.

With Magliato that Sunday morning were Greenhouse founder, sophomore Kathryn Erwin, and member Joe Dragone, a freshman.

Dragone’s Greenhouse project, which Magliato will in turn help him with, will be cleaning up the trash-choked stream that flows past Woodard Campus Center.

He will also be reinforcing the storm water system next to Woodard to ensure the runoff reaching the Chesapeake Bay is clean.

He, like Magliato, spent most of his time on the ivy project with a saw, cutting through ivy roots as thick as an arm from American Beech trees.

Those trees—which are native and have become a part of the campus as a place where students carve their initials—and native loblolly pines are among those Magliato wants to protect.

Erwin said getting ivy off the trees wasn’t such an arduous task after trying out different techniques.

Erwin established the Greenhouse community last year, when she began at UMW.

“It’s great to be able to work all year to develop skills and their passion for the environment,” she said.

Freshmen, she said, develop their own project ideas, and she doesn’t mind what they embark on as long as it has an impact on the area and they are passionate about it.

“This project, it’s all Maggie,” she said.

The dense ivy cover on that side of campus takes over space where native plants could grow. And even though the ivy is a ground cover, it also branches into vines that grow up trees and buildings.

The ivy’s dendrites can get into building cracks and widen, and take away valuable resources from trees.

“By helping the trees, we’re helping the birds, too,” Magliato said while uprooting ivy. “Right now I can hear a woodpecker, and that bird will benefit from this.”

Alan Griffith, professor of biology at UMW, said the problem with invasive species is two-pronged.

By displacing native plants, it decreases the population size of other species in an area.

But it also decreases species diversity. Since the ivy is so successful, fewer species of plants can take root.

He said that people earlier chose English ivy for landscaping because of its appearance and its successful growth rate. But other, native pants can work just as well in a garden.

He said people who go to a landscaper or garden center should ask an important question. “Say ‘I’m interested in planting native plants. What native plants meet my needs?’”

He also recommended finding plants that are good at sustaining soil and water conservation.

“We are a nation of immigrants,” he said. “We came here from other places and people brought plants with them. That’s fine, it’s natural to do that, but the problem arises when those plants decrease the native population.”

And ivy isn’t the only invasive species to propagate on the campus. Joni Wilson, campus director of landscape and grounds, said dealing with invasive species on campus is a daily chore.

While mitigating the ivy is one such task, she said it has been in the area so long that it has become important to preventing soil erosion and cannot be removed in some places, like behind Trinkle Hall, where it thrives.

She uses service projects like Magliato’s, the annual Good Neighbor Day and area organizations to keep the ivy in check.

Just as troublesome as that plant, though, is Ailanthus altissima, more commonly known as “tree of heaven,” which has moved in on campus in the last decade.

Wilson said the tree spreads more seeds than most and takes root easily in new areas.

“Pay attention to all of the tree lines in Caroline County,” she said. “It’s everywhere.”

Privet, a flowering bush, is another invasive species Wilson has a hard time controlling. Years ago, a landscaper planted a hedge of privet, and while that hedge is maintained, its offshoots are collected and composted.

In her landscaping, Wilson makes an effort to include only native plants.

One area she is particularly proud of is the landscaping around the Anderson Center and U.S. 1.

“All of that landscaping is native,” she said. “And it has the university’s first native perennial bed. It’s a real commitment to native, sustainable planting.”

Flox, baptisia and inkberry are among the flowering native plants included in the bed.

Magliato’s project is one of the ways Wilson can continue that commitment. But Magliato doesn’t see the project as simple mitigation. She said she’s learning from it, too.

“I’ve always been someone who loves the outdoors in nature,” she said. “It seemed natural to go into conservation. Doing things outdoors like this helps me get hands-on experience.”

Lindley Estes: 540/735-1976

lestes@freelancestar.com

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