An active local conservationist will teach tips and tricks for making a person’s yard elegant and energy-efficient Saturday at the Athens Public Library.
John Knouse, a leader in local sustainability efforts, will give a presentation titled “Landscaping for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability” at 2 p.m. He will teach participants how improvements can be made to outdoor spaces like planting native vegetation, creating windbreaks and earth sheltering.
Knouse has gained his expertise in all things environmental through his work with the Athens Conservancy, a nonprofit land trust that has purchased and helped others purchase and preserve thousands of acres of land in the area. The conservancy also promotes outdoor recreation and ecotourism.
Knouse said the most beautiful outdoor structures are those that can be built with the free, benign tools that are provided through nature.
“I regard elegance as not really having much to do with … conspicuous consumption,” he said. “To me, true elegance is the best match of input to appropriate output, which means using resources very efficiently.”
Though many of the energy-conserving tactics Knouse will teach would be difficult for college students living in dorms or rental spaces to utilize, he said he hopes they could take the information home with them or use it when they have their own homes.
Knouse said he hopes participants will leave his presentation with “a better understanding that we can work more with the natural world to achieve needs and at the same time by doing so we can actually conserve resources for the future.”
Todd Bastin, the adult program coordinator for the Athens Public Library, said he decided to host this program because he often sees people check out library books and other materials on sustainable topics like those that will be discussed in Knouse’s presentation.
Bastin said the program will introduce people to a way to improve their own environmental impact in a way they might not have heard about before. He said he recently learned of the negative impact that local pesticide and fertilizer use is having on the Hocking River and thinks Knouse’s knowledge of native plant species will help people to improve their yards without harming the natural world.
“Having a landscaping program that’s ecologically minded like this means that people can have beautiful things growing in their yard which don’t require chemical usage,” Bastin said. “Things that aren’t made for this environment that can compete and contend well, that way we have less runoff harming our water system.”
