The ground in this picture was covered completely with wild oat, rip-gut and other noxious annuals. It is now primarily purple needle grass. Although the lack of spring rain led to a poor showing this year, the area generally has been increasing in wildflower diversity and population. The pictured yellow yarrow was a surprise first this year. 

Herbaceous Oak Woodland

This picture is from an area that was inaccessible without a lot of machete work. This section possessed old and tired oaks, feeble and unproductive hazelnut, and walls of poison oak, 10 to 40 feet tall. No herbaceous plants grew there. Today the small section (2'x2') shown in the picture includes Ribes (the pink current flower), Snowberries, blackberries, wild cucumber, slim Solomon seal (the white lily) and sword fern.

Weed seed and dominant natives are ever present and threatening on the fertile coastal landscapes. Like any garden, man's involvement is required to achieve and maintain a diverse and productive result. 

Today the oaks are relieved of the load of suffocating fire fuel and are renewed and thriving; the hazelnuts trees have grown tall and produce buckets of nuts. The formula for succeeding is; imagination, lots of thoughtful work and committed capital, and good botanists.

Fortunately, we avoided the counter productive involvement from the pseudo eco-scientists who exist to promote Sustainable Development policies. The most profound lesson that I have learned is that central planning (Sustainable Development) masquerading as environmentalism is as ineffective at producing ecological improvement as state collectivism is at 'managing' human action.



Danthonia meadow with herbs and grasses

In 1986 this section was pasture grass that had been heavily grazed for decades, and farmed prior to that. The area also possessed a small amount of common rush, poison oak and bramble. Today it is a Danthonia meadow with bromus, elyemus, hair grass, meadow barley, several bent grass varieties, various sedges, uncommon hedge nettle, sun cups, blue eyed grass, butter cups, brown headed rush and more. There were none of these species before we began the seedbank management program and it took a number of years before anything appeared. Continued vigorous disturbance has increased the diversity. There is no 'best practice' o­nly trial and error leading to an expanding personal and local base of knowledge.The experience at Liberty Garden has demonstrated that success in land management requires people. People pursuing their own interest by creating something of value for others generally do a better job of achieving goals like ecological improvement than do those motivated by the receipt of tax or foundation grant money or those working as serfs or slaves. The thrust of the Liberty Garden experience is the application of this kind of common sense.

The practical way for society to achieve progress is to understand that moral financing is a prerequisite for the achievement of lasting improvement. Liberty Garden stands in stark contrast with government financed land management projects in terms of its moral premise and its result. Liberty Garden demonstrates the wisdom of the observation that it pays to be principled because it is practical and satisfying to be moral. American government's spending o­n the acquisition and management of and the confiscatory regulatory administration over land needs to come to a stop.