Phenology gardens track ties between weather, nature

By Mary Beth Breckenridge, Akron Beacon Journal
20 April 2012 How strange has this spring been? Denise Ellsworth can tell you exactly. Ellsworth is one of the coordinators of the Ohio Phenology Garden Network, a patchwork of gardens that helps scientists track the timing of natural occurrences. The gardens supply data on when plants bloom, allowing researchers to show how that timing is affected by weather. Looking at the data, it’s easy to see just how much farther ahead nature is this year than normal. Late last week, for example, plants were blooming in Akron, Ohio, that bloomed in mid-May a year ago. That sort of information can guide home gardeners as well as university researchers, said Ellsworth, who coordinates the garden network with Dan Herms, her colleague in the entomology department of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster Township. By paying attention to when things happen and in what order, gardeners can treat pests more effectively, provide a steady diet for wildlife and plan a garden where there’s always something in bloom, she said. […] The idea behind phenology is that some natural events always occur in the same sequence, year after year. But exactly when those events happen, or how fast the sequence unfolds, can vary greatly depending on the air temperature, Ellsworth said. Scientists have long known about that sequence and its relationship to weather, she said, but the phenology gardens have enabled them to track the sequence and to show it holds true across a state or region. The network started with about two dozen gardens and has since grown to 45. They’re in places such as parks and arboretums, school grounds and college campuses. Summit County has two, at Seiberling Nature Realm in Akron and Adell Durbin Park in Stow. […] Because of the unusually warm spring, the work of monitoring the gardens sneaked up weeks early this year. […]