Howdy from the staff at Chabot Space & Science Center in the Oakland Hills! Chabot works to encourage students to actively address climate issues within the Bay Area community. We’ll be dropping by ACE occasionally to share some interesting facts, zany stories, and conversations regarding climate change and how it all relates to you!

Hi! I’m Ben Burress, the Staff Astronomer and Experience Content Developer at Chabot… yes of the Lake Merritt Burresses… That is, my dad was a Naturalist at the Lake Merritt bird refuge in Oakland for 32 years, and my mom was a biology teacher. My “natural” upbringing seems to have rubbed off, for not only do I love hiking and exploring nature, but my backyard hobby reflects my love of the great outdoors….

I call it “Yard Lab.” It’s my home laboratory—and not like the little basement chemistry lab I had when I was a kid, where I made concoctions that I gave names to like ”almost-gunpowder,” “ bubbling barf,” and “jar of stuff that just doesn’t seem to undergo any sort of chemical reaction at all.”

No, my “adult” home laboratory is my backyard, where I put a number of green practices to the test. And having lived in the same house for 12 years now, I’ve been able to watch the results of my experiments season after season.

We started with a pretty plain backyard: just a few old fruit trees. A blank slate to work with. My wife and I both love gardening, and what gardening brings to the home, and so we loved our blank slate instantly – we were able to fill the yard with our own ideas.

Our tools have always been simple: organic composting, native non-invasive plants, drought- tolerance, and “crop” diversity. I’m talking NOT just about crops you can eat, but crops to feed your soul, too; think of it as psychological produce.

So what kind of experimentation goes on in Yard Lab? And why? The why is easy; I love to do it! Feels great to be green. So, here’s the what:

Experiment 1: Composting. All the vegetable kitchen scraps go into the little green bin under our sink and periodically get ported to the black Biostack composting bins outside. It’s stupid- easy—and I admit we do it the lazy way: just dump the kitchen scraps in there for a few months, and once in a blue moon turn the material over with a shovel. By the time spring has sprung, we have a good load of SOIL sitting in there. The worms living in the bins help a great deal—in fact they, and the microbes, really do most of the work. I just dump, turn, and reap.

Results: The well-amended soil in our backyard gives rise to seasonal explosions of healthy plants (and yeah, some weeds, too; but I’ve learned to accept them as part of the web of life in our yard).

Experiment 2: Diversity. Our backyard is a real cut-up of little biomes, alternating between raised vegetable beds and those native and drought-tolerant “soul crops” I mentioned earlier. Some traditional gardeners shake their heads at the profuse confusion of photosynthesizers and the mosaic of micro-worlds we’ve developed…. Like this!

Result: The native animal life LOVES OUR BACKYARD. In the spring and summer months (and even into fall), Yard Lab is literally buzzing with native bees hopping blossoms, hummingbirds sipping sap (okay, it’s nectar, but “sap” sounds better), jays going for berries—and, yes, squirrels hiding nuts in thickets…. The profusion of life sustained and encouraged by our little backyard oasis just does the soul a lot of good. Yard Lab gives back.

 Experiment 3: Rainwater Capture. The part of Yard Lab that looks most like a laboratory is our rainwater collection system. Right now I have three 50-gallon drums linked together and fed by one roof drain spout. The one (and only) thing I like about the flat roof on our house is the fact that this one drain spout funnels runoff from the entire roof—so a single storm of a quarter- inch total rainfall fills all 150 gallons to overflowing (which means I need more barrels –quick!).

Result: By the time I’ve about used up the barrels watering the plants that need it the most, another storm comes along to recharge the system (at least, that’s the ideal). Compared to our total water usage (which, by the way, is well below the household average in these parts), 150 gallons every two or three weeks is a small dent—but it’s a good practice in a world where water is too precious to waste.

So although Yard Lab is just one yard, with a limited impact on the world environment, it’s still what’s within my power to contribute. Practicing green at home is good practice for life. And I share it with others, and enjoy the buzzing, flittering, blossoming, and fruiting benefits of my labors in the comfort of my own backyard….

And for those of you into “world-making” or games, online or otherwise, that involve designing, building, and managing your own little world, experimenting with your own Yard Lab (a whole yard or just a corner of one) is kinda like that. And it’s absolutely real. Try it: real decomposers making real soil, real photosynthesizers making oxygen and food for a bio-community, real buzz, real chirp, real wing-flap….