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One scientist's path from the lab to the land When I was a child, I wanted to be an explorer; not the romantic, swashbuckling kind who hews swaths of forest away or uses a bullet to get up close to a rare bird, but the kind who spends years in the field watching, learning, and documenting. Jane Goodall in the forest, a woman seeking to truly know and understand a species other than our own, in defiance of the conventional thought and misogyny that dominated her field. David A

A Berkeley Hills Resident, Chemist, and Habitat Gardener on the EMBER Ordinance This post grew out of an Amplify piece I wrote for Berkeleyside. You can read the published article here. The Berkeley Hills are beautiful because of their gardens. Wisteria climbing over a fence. A Japanese maple gone fiery in the fall. Decades-old camellias, heavy with blooms, that a family has tended for decades. This landscape is ours. It is personal. It carries memory. So when I say that I su

When you plant native, you’re not just filling a yard. You're restoring a web of life. California’s native plants have evolved over millennia in close relationship with the land’s insects, birds, and animals. By choosing to plant natives in your landscape, you invite that relationship back into your space, creating habitat, supporting biodiversity, and helping reverse local species decline. Native plants offer more than drought-tolerance and beauty. They’re ecological powerho

A native garden is a living work of art, its canvas stretching across the landscape and unfurling through time. While common ornamentals...