Life With Ferris: Jane s Garden Monday, July 5, 2021 - by Ferris Robinson
Ferris Robinson
Beautyberry at Temple Park on Lookout
Jane s Garden features both natives and ornamentals
A pollinator garden at the Commons on Lookout
Mary Leland Hutchison and her husband Kelly
“In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty. Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.” - Doug Tallamy
Dr. Tallamy’s plan, the Homegrown National Park movement, is a simple grassroots action to restore biodiversity. He calls us all to take part, no matter how much land you have access to, whether it’s fields after fields or a front porch stoop. You can learn more at https://homegrownnationalpark.org/
Much of what we know of Alice Litster exists in what she wrote well over half a century ago. And that is enough to know that Alice Litster was a remarkable person and well ahead of her time.
For 35 years up to 1957, she was an inspector for the then department of health and visited most of the institutions covered on Tuesday by the Mother and Babies Homes commission.
In fastidious and fearless reports, she highlighted the overcrowding, poor facilities, criminal lack of medical training in antenatal care, and the scarily high rate of infant mortality in many of them.
Noting her perseverance, the commission says Litster was was one of very few to âtry valiantly to have conditions improvedâ among many hundreds who did not want to rock the boat.