Vines are Fine, Just Fine
By Wesley Joseph • Jun 16th, 2008 • Category: Gardening
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While preparing the bed of soil that will be my urban garden in just a few weeks, pulling larger weeds and cutting back the intruding crawling vines, I saw that the vines which just last year were only on the fence behind my apartment building are now also covering the garage and retaining wall.
Why did this capture my attention? Well, it’s mostly concrete back there. The one fence sits between a sidwalk and a parking lot and barely has any soil available, but yet the climbing vines are back every year.
The garage and retaining walls don’t have any soil except that which is between the cracks, but the vines find a way just the same. Sure, mother nature is amazing in these feats. No matter how barren the conditions, plants can usually find a way to make it work.
But this caught me as interesting as a method of reducing the heat island effect. Sure, cities and individuals plant trees now more strategically as a method of providing shade and reducing overall heat. It’s especially important where there are large swaths of concrete- and asphault-covered areas, which essentially absorb sunlight and convert it to heat. Plants convert much of it into energy, provide shade, and slow chemicals moving in the soil while absorbing chemicals in the air.
But trees don’t grow between such small cracks (typically). The vines can do the same job, though, providing shade and absorbing chemicals (like the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide). While it often happens naturally it brings up a subject certainly many architects are looking at: using this on a massive scale to keep large buildings and cities cool. Certainly there are risks, such as the vines wearing away at mortar or blocking windows, attracting animals, like birds to basically perch on the side of a building. But here’s a commonsense, easy way to help improve our society’s envirohuman impact.
Rather than cut the vines down at the roots, which would probably keep them far away from my gardening area for the summer, I’ll keep allowing them to grow to the edge of the garden and trimming back their encroachments. Vines are fine, just fine, with me!
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Wesley Joseph is the primary editor for EHI. He comes from a strong political science background and is interested in the effect humans' actions have on the environment, how in turn the environment affects humans, and how environmental policy at large and personal actions can both change into positive envirohuman impacts.
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