Somerville Garden Club

Healthy Soil Stewards: Soil, Gardeners, and Climate Change

How can we as gardeners use our soil and gardens to help slow climate change? Three members of Healthy Soil Stewards will give a PowerPoint description of their group and its work learning about the role of healthy soil in small urban gardens in promoting carbon sequestration, and conserving biodiversity and water resources. They will give examples from their own yards and talk about how their ideas apply locally. 

Healthy Soil Stewards is a group of 25 local women, two of whom are longtime SGC members, that is investigating soil to better understand how to promote its use as an ecological tool to mitigate climate change. Their work is supported through grants from New England Biolabs and the Somerville Garden Club. 

Claryce Evans got interested in the role of soil in addressing climate change through meetings of BioDiversity for a Livable Climate following a career teaching mathematics and math teachers at the Harvard Grad School of Education.

Helen Snively has been a gardener and composter forever, met Claryce at the HGSE, and later through Bio4Climate. The idea of sequestering carbon in gardens got her hooked.

Lise Raleigh has been at New England Biolabs since 1984, fascinated by bacterial genetics and ecology. Her garden began with daffodils and has evolved to provide habitat for insects and the birds that eat them. She met Claryce at a Bio4Climate meeting at Helen’s house.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. If you are interested in attending our virtual meeting, but have not received the meeting link via email, or are not a SGC member, you can email info@somervillegardenclub.org for the link.

Somerville’s Urban Forestry Plan – In October 2021, the City of Somerville released its Urban Forest Management Plan.  Dr. Vanessa Boukili, Senior Urban Forestry and Landscape Planner for the City of Somerville, will discuss the plan and its goals.  Somerville’s Urban Forestry Division manages and cares for the City’s more than twelve thousand public trees.  Dr. Boukili explained at the release of the plan that it “not only provides details about our current tree canopy but also presents a multifaceted approach for growing our tree canopy in a safe and equitable way.”

Vanessa Boukili is the City of Somerville’s Senior Urban Forestry and Landscape Planner. She holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut. Prior to joining the City’s staff Vanessa served as Research Director for Urban Forests at Earthwatch Institute, Boston. 

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. If you are interested in attending our virtual meeting, but have not received the meeting link via email, or are not a SGC member, you can email info@somervillegardenclub.org for the link.