The California Master Gardener program is under the guidance of the University of California's Agriculture and Natural Resources division (www.ucanr.edu).  Throughout the training, emphasis is placed on teaching current best practices.  We learn about Integrated Pest Management (www.ipm.ucanr.edu), and which are the beneficials- “good bugs,” and which are the pests- “bad bugs”. Most especially, we are taught to always consider the impact of any synthetic pesticides we may be considering to use on the space of earth we are responsible for, whether it is flower pots on a patio or an orchard containing several hundred fruit trees.  Rachel Carson introduced many of these ecological concepts to the general population in her best selling book, Silent Spring, published in 1962.  I'd like to tell you more about this amazing woman. 

Rachel grew up on a large farm in Pennsylvania.  Her nature-loving mom taught Rachel to recognize the various bird songs, and names of trees, insects, and wildflowers.  Rachel often roamed their 65 acres of woods, fields, and orchards with her dog, Candy.  One day when exploring, she found a small fossilized seashell.  She wondered how something from the far-off ocean could have ended up in Pennsylvania.  Her mother explained about how the earth had changed over the ages, and that Pennsylvania used to be covered by ocean waters. This began Rachel's fascination with the ocean.   

Rachel loved to write stories, and frequently read her stories to her dog when they were playing outdoors.  She was only 10 years old when her first  published story appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine.  She soon realized that she had a talent for telling stories that others were interested in hearing.  During her junior year in college, Rachel took her first Biology course, and loved it!  She said that she had finally found something that she could write about!  She decided to major in Biology.  When she graduated, the Depression made it difficult for everyone to find work, especially a young woman in a field that had very few women.  Rachel got a job writing radio scripts on sea life.  Her first book, Under the Sea was published at the same time that Pearl Harbor was bombed. 

Rachel Carson worked as a biologist for 15 years, and was able to go places that very few women were allowed, performing jobs that very few women did. During this time, she wrote two more books about the web of life, the Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. 

Synthetic pesticides were developed during World War II to be sprayed on soldiers and their campsites in order to kill insects that carried and spread diseases.  After the war, these pesticides were routinely being used in city parks, schools, beaches, and farms.  In particular, DDT was great for getting rid of mosquitoes and flies, and other insects that damaged farmers' crops.  The multimillion-dollar industrial chemical industry assured the government and the public that this process was absolutely safe.  Rachel Carson spent four years, carefully researching and documenting her findings, about declining bird, fish, and insect populations where DDT was routinely being sprayed.  She asked,”But what about people? What about the harm it is doing to people?”  No one had ever tried to take a stand against these big businesses, or the federal agencies that approved the use of these chemicals.  Silent Spring first appeared in The New Yorker as advance excerpts, before being published in 1962 by Houghton-Mifflin.  Rachel said she came up with the title as she imagined all the birdsongs of spring would be silenced if DDT remained in use. 

The chemical industry spent a quarter of a million dollars to discredit Rachel's research and to malign her character, saying she was just a “bird and bunny lover”, a spinster who was “overwrought about genetics.”   

Silent Spring's message caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who launched federal and state investigations into Rachel's claims.  But Rachel had carefully done her research and documentation.  References and footnotes at the end of Silent Spring take up 54 pages!  She testified before several federal committees, and before the U.S. Congress, asking for new policies to protect the environment.  She spoke clearly, and in language that was understood by the general public.  Her speech helped to convince Congress to ban the use of DDT in our nation.  

Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, helped to spark the environmental movement that eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Sadly, Rachel died from breast cancer just a year and a half after the publication of her book.  In 1980, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  If Rachel Carson were alive today, I like to think that she would be surprised at the impact from her book.  Many credit Rachel with beginning the ecology movement.  I hope you and I can continue to reflect Rachel Carson's practice of considering carefully the interconnectedness of our actions, both in our gardens and in our world.