Facts and Statistics for Gardeners

 

Facts, Research, Surveys, Trivia, Information

Quotes  ...  Links  ... References

 

Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

From the Spirit of Gardening Website

 

 

 

Quotes

 

 

 

 

"It is difficult to place a monetary value on the many vital services that trees provide.
However, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection calculates that a single
tree that lives for fifty years will contribute service worth nearly $200,000 (in 1994 dollars)
to the community during its lifetime. This includes providing oxygen ($31,250), recycling
water and regulating humidity ($37,000), controlling air pollution ($62,500), producing
protein ($2,500), providing shelter for wildlife ($31,250), and controlling land
erosion and fertilizing the soil ($31,250)."
Sacred Trees

 

 

 

 

"Home would not be home to me without a lawn, and if there are,
as I've recently read, twenty-five million home lawns in the United States,
at least fifty million other Americans must agree with me."
-  Katharine S. White, Onward and Upward in the Garden, 1979

 

 

 

 

 

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"Trees can reduce utility bills (air conditioning in summer, heating in winter) when planted properly:
Heating: Using trees as windbreaks allows savings of 10% - 20%.
Cooling: Shading windows and walls can lower AC costs by 25% - 50%."
The Benefits of Planting Trees

 

 

 

A research project in Australia, entitled "The Congruent Garden: an
Investigation into the Role of the Domestic Garden in Satisfying
Fundamental Human Needs," interviewed  gardeners on the values of
gardening in their everyday lives.  The researcher, Mike Steven,
established that gardens have the potential to satisfy nine basic human
needs (subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation,
leisure, creation, identity, freedom) across four  existential states
(being, having, doing and interacting.)
-   Mike Steven, Lecturer in Landscape Studies,
    University of Westen Sydney, Australia

 

 

 

 

The amount of money spent by Americans on lawn care annually: $6 billion.
-  Warren Schultz, The Chemical Free Lawn

 

 

 

 

 

"A well maintained landscape with mature trees can increase property values up to
25 percent.  Trees can cool houses in the summer. A city lot with 30 percent plant cover
provides the equivalent cooling necessary to air condition two moderately sized
houses 12 hours a day in the summer."
The Value of Trees Around Your Home.

 

 

 

 

"Thousands and thousands of acres in the United States are being sprayed
annually with nearly 50 million pounds of Roundup, a broad-spectrum
herbicide designed to kill any plant it hits, unless  the plant has been
genetically altered to tolerate the chemical.  Roundup has accounted
for half of Monsanto's corporate profits in recent years."
Organic Gardening, July-August 1999, p. 8

 

 

 

 

An agricultural adage says the tiny animals that live below the
surface of a healthy pasture weigh more than the cows grazing
above it.   In a catalogue selling composting equipment I read
that two handfuls of healthy soil contain more living organisms
than there are people on the earth.  What these beings are and
what they can be doing is difficult to even begin to comprehend,
but it helps to realize that even thought they are many,
they work as one.
-   Carol Williams, Bringing a Garden to Life, 1998

 

 

 

 

 

Basic Facts About Agriculture in the United States

          1900         1930         1960         1990
Total Population     76,000,000     122,775,000     180,000,000     246,081,000
Farm Population     29,400,000       30,455,000       15,600,000         4,591,000
Farmers Percent of Labor Force     38%     21%      8.3%     2.6%
Number of Farms     5,740,000     6,295,000      3,711,000         2,143,000
Irrigated Farm Acres       14,633,000      33,800,000       46,386,000   
Average Acerage of U.S. Farm     147     157      303     461
         

USDA.   History of American Agriculture, 1776-2000

 

 

 

 

Perhaps not since the fall of Babylon have so many city dwellers wanted to "return"
to the country without ever having been there in the first place.
-   Richard W. Langer

 

 

 

 

 

Farming is among the top ten most dangerous occupations.  More than 1000
individuals lose their lives each year due to farm accidents.  In 1995, there were
130,000 agricultural workers injured, and approximately half
of these injuries were permanent.
-  Stanley Wise, The Wise Farmer

 

 

 

 

 

It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three
quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million,
as Erwin (Terry Erwin, the Smithsonian Institute) estimates, then,
working as they have in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand
years of employment ahead of them.  Ghilean Prance, director of the
Botanical Gardens in Kew, estimates that a complete list of plants
in the Americas would occupy taxonomists for four centuries, again
working at historical rates.
-   Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, The Sixth Extinction, p. 122

 

 

 

 

 

An estimated 63 million people are feeding birds in their yards.  Research by
Metz Farms Wildlife Feeding Specialists of Grand Rapids, Michigan, also shows that
$2.3 billion is spent on birdseed each year.
- Report

 

 

 

 

Gardeners have to be a combined chemist, botanist and meteorologist 
to carry all such information in one's head and be able to send it forth 
when visitors pose embarrassing questions.   

-   Dr. E.J. Salisbury

 

 

 

 

Nearly 97% of the world's water is salty or otherwise undrinkable.
Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers.  Only 1% can be used
for all agricultural, residential, manufacturing, community and personal needs.
-   Drinking Water Week

 

 

 

An estimated 2.3 billion people worldwide face water shortages.
-   United Nations

 

 

 

 

Water - Quotes for Gardeners

 

 

 

Mark Henry, Ph.D., Clemson University economist, conducted two studies on how the
quality of landscaping effects the market values of single family homes in South Carolina.  
Dr. Henry concluded that improving the quality of the landscaping from average to
excellent  would raise your home's value by 10%.

 

 

 

Strange But True Facts Pertinent to Gardeners
-  Gardener's Paradise

 

 

 

 

Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales.  You may find eight
spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left
and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers.  The striking fact is that these
pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...  Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms.

The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis.  Many are the efforts
of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants
exhibit this remarkable pattern.
-   Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, p. 151

 

 

 

 

 

 

A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
Wishes are like seeds, few ever develop into something.
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her slave. 
When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.
Where are the fig blossoms?  Exceptions to every rule.
Only two percent of all insects are harmful.  Why are they all in my garden?
The joyful gardener is evidence of an incarnation.  
To dig is to discover. 
-   Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agriculture is the main human activity on Earth and the principle
influence on our planet's ecology.  Over half of the inhabitants
of our planet are farmers."
-   Mark Ritchie

 

 

 

 

Human beings are made up mostly of water, in roughly the same percentage
as water is to the surface of the earth.  Our tissues and membranes, our brains
and hearts, our sweat and tears--all reflect the same recipe for life, in which
efficient use is made of those ingredients available on the surface of the earth.
We are 23 percent carbon, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, with tiny amounts of roughly three dozen other elements.  But above
all we are oxygen (61 percent) and hydrogen (10 percent), fused together in the
unique molecular combination known as water, which makes up 71 percent
of the human body.
-  Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

 

 

 

 

 




 

Facts and Statistics

Links and References

 

 

Agriculatural Market Information Virtual Library

Electric Library.    For Current Information!!

Gardening, Home, Handiman, and Cooking Magazines.   Save from 20% to 60%.

Organic Gardening Statistics

Webmasters - Generate Income for Your Web Site

 

 

 

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More Quotes

for

Gardeners



Trees

 

Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul

Flowers

Weeds and Weeding

Simplicity and the Simple Life


Pulling Onions
Quips, Maxims and Observations by Michael P. Garofalo

The Essence of Gardening

Working in the Garden

Garden Digest Links

 

Haiku Poetry  -  Links and References

Cliches for Gardeners and Farmers


The History of Gardening Timeline
From Ancient Times to the 20th Century


Short Poems and Haiku by Michael P. Garofalo

Seeing and Vision

Beauty in the Garden


Seasons and Time

Zen Poetry

Comments about this Web Site

Jokes, Riddles and Humor

 

 

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,000 Quotes, Arranged by 105 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

 

 

The Spirit of Gardening


 

 

 

 



 

 

 

Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo

 


Ways to Communicate with Mike
Red Bluff, California

 

 

A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo

 

 

Facts, Version 4.7.

 

 

The Spirit of Gardening

Quotes for Gardeners

Haiku and Short Poems

The History of Gardening Timeline

Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong

Months

Zen Poetry

Fitness and Well Being

Green Way Research

Trees