Gardening: A garden for all climates : Nature News Annotated

via Garden Rant

excerpts:

According to Aker, the uncertain weather wrought by climate change may narrow rather than broaden the range of plants that can be grown in any one place.

“The plants that we put in our gardens 20 years from now are going to have to be able to withstand a lot more extremes of temperature and drought.” Apart from changing temperatures and moisture patterns, climate change also expands the ranges for many pests and pathogens. “I would say that perhaps the most significant things affecting horticulture are the new pests and diseases,” says Taylor.

The message is to take control by not being too controlling

The new look in the climate-adapted garden is rambunctious, diverse and more like wild spaces.

Phenologists, who study seasonal phenomena,

Kayri Havens, a conservation biologist at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Illinois, helps run Project Budburst. She says that in its pilot year, about two-thirds of their 1,800 observations of blooming times were from children under 12. Havens hopes that the data will be used to predict where plants may need to migrate so that their blooming coincides with their pollinators’ cycles.