EcoVersity Urban Gardening Series

On saturday, June 26, from 9 A.M. until noon, Ecoversity is offering a class from It's popular urban gardening series: Tree Selection and Care for Trees in the Northern New Mexico Environment.

The class, now in it's second year, is being taught by professional arborist, Dr. Robert Berry. Cost is $15 and location for the tree class is at the Ecoversity campus at 2639 Agua Fria in Santa Fe. Space is limited, so sign up today by calling Ecoversity at 424-9797 or by emailing info@ecoversity.org.

If you are a tree-hugger and want to learn more about trees, you won't want to miss this opportunity. Dr. Berry will be discussing the care and selection of a variety of trees, including shade and fruit trees, as well as large shrubs. Reserve your place now.

EcoVersity is coordinating a series of gardening classes with outstanding local instructors to provide affordable hands-on learning opportunities specific to our climate. It is our intent to help empower you with guiding principals in urban organic gardening so that you can be successful in your efforts and efficient with both the environmental and financial resources available to you. Join us and endow yourself with skills of self-reliance and enjoy community cooperation as you learn to work with the Earth to create an abundance of beauty, food and wildlife habitat.

Pre-Registration is required as space is limited!

Register online, or contact EcoVersity at 505.424.9797, or email info@ecoversity.org.

Excerpts from "Soils and Men", the 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

"The earth is the mother of us all- plants, animals, and men. The phosphorus and calcium of the earth build our skeletons and nervous systems. Everything else our bodies need except air and sun comes from the earth.

"Nature treats the earth kindly. Man treats her harshly. He overplows the cropland, overgrazes the pastureland, and overcuts the timberland. He destroys millions of acres completely. He pours fertility year after year into the cities, which in turn pour what they do not use down the sewers into the rivers and the ocean. The flood problem in so far as it is man-made is chiefly the result of overplowing, overgrazing, and overcutting of timber.

"This terribly destructive process is excusable in a young civilization. It is not excusable in the United States in the year 1938.

"We know what can be done and we are beginning to do it. As individuals we are beginning to do the necessary things. As a nation, we are beginning to do them. The public is waking up, and just in time. In another 30 years it might have been too late.

"The social lesson of soil waste is that no man has the right to destroy soil even if he does own it in fee simple. The soil requires a duty of man which we have been slow to recognize.

"Within a comparatively short time, water and wind have flayed the skin off the unprotected earth, causing widespread distruction, and we have been forced to realize that this is the result of decades of neglect. The effort to relieve economic depression for farmers has also forced attention on the soil.

"In agriculture all roads lead back to the soil, from which farmers make their livelihood."

(Excerpts from "Soils and Men", the 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Thanks to Tooleystrees.com)