Grow Your Awareness About Landscape Ethics

Rick Darke calls himself a landscape ethicist. His job is to help people design more sustainable landscapes.

There is a pressing need for people to understand that gardening and the landscape mean matching resources with consumption.

"Don’t separate design from values," Darke says.

Darke will be one of several speakers at this year’s New England Grows Conference at the Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston. The conference runs from Feb. 4-6.

The annual event offers plenty of lectures, but it’s also an opportunity to see trends in garden products and equipment, displayed in booths that dot the massive floor of the convention center. The conference, among the largest green industry events in the country, attracts hundreds of nursery and landscape professionals.

As plant curator at the Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., from 1986-97, Darke played a major role in developing Longwood’s indoor and outdoor displays, and was directly responsible for the identification and data management of the nearly 10,000 different plants within Longwood’s grounds and conservatory collections.

Through his work with international plant exploration, he traveled to Japan, South Africa, England, Germany, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and the Canary Islands in search of new plants for the garden.

Now, as a landscape consultant, he travels around the country helping people who deal with private and public landscapes as they address sustainability issues. Darke, however, prefers the word "livable" when applied to landscapes.

"Sustainability is too vague a term,'' he says.

Native plants alone are not the answer, he says. In his own garden in Pennsylvania, Darke grows indigenous as well as introduced plants. What’s important to him is to use plants that don’t put high demands on irrigation, that don’t need excess fertilizer, and that respect the site.

Thomas Mickey is a master gardener from Quincy, Mass., and a professor at Bridgewater State College. You may reach him at features@ledger.com.