Lindsay Pangborn

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is thrilled to announce that its collaborative research paper, “Growing together: Strengthening the partnership and impact of a zoo and community‐led conservation organization,” has been published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence!  The study highlights the strengths, challenges, and growth opportunities of a decades-long partnership between the Zoo and the South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO), a community-driven conservation organization representing 30 Indigenous Maasai communities in Kenya, and provides a model that can be adopted by other international conservation organizations. Learn more here - https://lnkd.in/eGDSQ8fE

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Exciting news for Wisconsin's forests! The Wisconsin Council on Forestry has released its 2023-2024 Biennial Report, highlighting key insights into our state's forest resources, industry trends and recommendations for how we can protect and sustain Wisconsin forests for future generations. This report is a must-read for anyone passionate about forestry, conservation and the future of Wisconsin’s natural landscapes: https://lnkd.in/g_mjGrGc

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Horticulture is fortune telling. It is the ability to say, “if this happens, that will happen.” You become a good horticulturist by understanding patterns that play out over time. You understand patterns by studying theory and having your hands in the dirt for at least a few years. Someone told me, you have to kill 1000 plants to be a good horticulturist. But you have to figure out why they all died. Eventually, you can walk into a garden and “feel” what’s going on. You can small the soil, feel the moisture, and see the plant health clues. Some gardens “feel” dead, while others “feel” alive. Even if the leaves are fluoro green, there is something about the soil that tells you the ecosystem is on chemical life support. On the other hand, lots of leaves might be brown and crispy but the air is buzzing with energy. Summer has a different “feeling” to winter, and im not just talking about the temperature. There are different smells and sights. Different fungi pop up, different material being shed by plants. Different pests, different abiotic stressers. A good horticulturist can I take a lot of information consciously and subconsciously to make accurate or semi-accurate predictions on how patterns will unravel in the years after construction.

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“Organic nutrients are just salts that work slower.” That’s the take I hear most often, and it’s dead wrong. If that’s how you’re thinking about organics, you’re missing the entire point of the system. Organic inputs don’t just feed the plant, they reshape the environment it’s growing in. Let’s start with structure. Organic matter builds aggregation. Aggregation builds porosity. Porosity changes how water moves, how oxygen diffuses, how roots breathe. This isn’t abstract, it’s hydraulic architecture. It determines whether your plant is coasting through peak VPD or falling flat by 2pm. Then there’s the buffering. Good structure holds water in a way salt-grown media can’t replicate. Not saturation, stability. It stretches your margin for error and flattens out the extremes. Plants perform better not because the nutrients are different, but because the entire delivery system is. And then comes biology. Organic systems don’t just deposit nutrients, they invite collaboration. The plant negotiates its uptake through microbial intermediaries, with timing, form, and context that no feed chart can reproduce. So no, organics aren’t just slow salts. They’re complex, layered systems that require more skill, not less. They offer more feedback, both internal and external, more buffering, and, if you’re paying attention, greater complexity with outcomes that aren’t always achievable through salt-based inputs alone. Want to grow like you're programming a vending machine? Go for salts. Want to grow like you're building an ecosystem? Organic is the way. Salts are a tool. Organics are a system. One gives you control you can measure. The other invites you into a partnership where not all the decisions are yours to make. The choice is yours!

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