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Pink water lilies (lotuses) blooming in a pond in Mai Po marshland – wetlands

Our wetlands are being threatened.

Have you ever been to a tulip festival? Have you ever looked over a sea of bright, bobbing heads in blocks of colors drenched in spring sunshine?

Tulips are one of the most popular flowers in America and other northern countries – where they are among the first flowers to hale the welcome signs of warmer weather coming. Ever since the Dutch made an art form out of tulip plantings, tulips have been popular wherever there are strong Dutch roots.

But do you know tulips actually come from the Middle East?

Have you ever been to a cherry blossom festival?

Have you ever wandered around an orchard in early spring when the trees were blossoming?

Just one bright pink and delicately fragrant tree on a property is enough to entice even the most industrious worker to stop and laze around under the veil of pink or white blooms. This is especially true when you know how fleeting it is.

Have you ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series? What does this have to do with American prairies? Please stay with me and you will see…

Have you ever been to Central Park in New York City? Golden Gate Park in San Francisco? America’s Capitol grounds? Detroit’s Belle Isle? The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC?

If you’ve been to any of these places, you’ve seen landscape architecture at its finest. All of these places were planned by Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who arguably fathered landscape architecture in this country. It is likely many of the most memorable green spaces you’ve been to were planned by him, one of his sons, or one of the many landscape architects influenced by him.