"Sagehen: A Proving Ground"'s Boletim

Hopefully, there will soon be plenty of observations of these plants, so you don't need me to list them! But I suspect that the Juncus will lag. Here are the original species:

1. Sticky Cinquefoil (Drymocallis glandulosa)
2. Woodbeauty (Drymocallis lactea)
3. Woods' Rose (Rosa woodsii)
4. Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius)
5. Mountain Whitethorn (Ceanothus cordulatus)
6. Snowbrush Ceanothus (Ceanothus velutinus)
7. Mahala Mat (Ceanothus prostratus)
8. Sulfur Buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum)
9. Chamisso Arnica (Arnica chamissonis)
10. Rosy Pussytoes (Antennaria rosea)
11. Rubber Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa)
12. Slender Beardtongue (Penstemon gracilentus)
13. Wax Currant (Ribes cereum)
14. Mariposa Rush (Juncus dubius)
15. Goldenrod (Solidago elongata)

Brett Hall, of the Santa Cruz Arboretum and the California Native Plant Society is the project botanist who collected the seed in the Sagehen Basin, reared the young plants, then transplanted them into the study plots.

In 2011, the cutting-edge Nevada Museum of Art - Center for Art + Environment in Reno approached us, asking if we'd be willing to host a 50-year art project at Sagehen.

Helen and Newton Harrison are the preeminent environmental artists on the planet, having invented eco-art in the 1970's, altered political systems through their projects, and inspired ferociously talented new generations of artists to use their work to engage with culture and influence social policy.

We said, "Yes."

The artwork is displayed in books, multi-media, museum and gallery exhibits, and emerges from a common garden experiment designed to mitigate the transformation from snow to rain in the Sierras. The experiment replicates vegetation plots on an elevational gradient from the bottom to the top of the basin. The plots contain plantings of native, local Sagehen plants from various elevations, in search of a "resiliency ensemble" that can mitigate climate change that may be happening too fast for systems to adapt unaided.

Sagehen: A Proving Ground was a finalist in the 2014 Buckminster Fuller Institute's Fuller Challenge competition.

More info here.

Photo: Helen and Newton at Sagehen in 2015.