Monthly Meetings

General Meeting at St. Mark’s Presbyterian, Knox Room and via Zoom.

“Mulches”

Speaker: Sonya Norman, Public Programs Coordinator for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  She  runs the Adult Classes and Trips for the museum’s members, which cover natural and cultural history of the Southwest. In addition, she coordinates the museum’s invasive species, primarily buffelgrass, removal teams. Her true passion is greening and cooling cities through rainwater harvesting. Twenty years ago she began running tours with Brad Lancaster, then branched off to implement water-catchment features in her neighborhood, working with the City of Tucson on the first permitted neighborhood-scale curb cuts. She has developed a small neighborhood park, planted over 100 street-side trees and runs tours and workshops on the topic. Sonya is a native of Tucson and graduated from the U of A with a B.S. in Geosciences.

In this presentation, Sonya will discuss the pros and cons of rock vs organic mulch. Over the last two decades, crushed rock has emerged as the dominate ground cover for builders, house-flippers, roadside and even sometimes park landscaping. This contributes to the urban heat island, necessitates the increased reliance upon herbicide, increases weeds and makes that ground useless. Organic mulch, on the other hand comes with a plethora of benefits to the urban environment.