How gardeners can fight global warming

- Reduce the use of gasoline-powered yard tools. Another important change you can make is to avoid using gasoline-powered tools such as lawn mowers, weed eaters and leaf blowers. Instead, use electric-powered or, better yet, human-powered tools such as push mowers, hand clippers and rakes. If this seems daunting, you might consider replacing some of your lawn with low maintenance shrubs, bushes or a native wildflower patch.

- Improve your energy efficiency. One of the best ways to reduce your contribution to global warming pollution is to use more energy-efficient products. In your backyard alone, there are a number of actions you can take, including replacing regular outdoor light bulbs with compact fluorescents, installing outdoor automatic light timers and purchasing solar-powered garden products. You can increase the availability of energy efficient garden products as well as native plants by encouraging local home and garden retailers to carry these items.

- Contact your elected officials. Gardeners can voice their concerns about global warming to their local, state and federal government representatives urging them to implement strong action plans to combat global warming.These actions can include: placing mandatory limits on global warming pollution, raising fuel economy standards for cars and SUVs, investing in clean and efficient energy technologies, requiring utilities to generate a share of their electricity from renewable energy sources, developing programs to reel in suburban sprawl and expanding recycling programs.

The more global warming pollution we allow to build up in the atmosphere, the greater the risk that we will disrupt the natural systems on which humans and wildlife rely.

Fortunately, solutions are readily at hand and gardeners can make a major contribution to implementing those solutions so that the beauty and utility of our gardens will endure for future generations.

According to Suzanne DeJohn with the National Gardening Association, who wrote the afterword for the report: "Individual gardeners may think they can't make a real difference. But imagine if all – or even half – the estimated 91 million gardeners nationwide took steps to reduce their energy consumption. Each of us can do our part in our own landscape."

The complete Gardeners Guide to Global Warming can be found at http://www.nwf.org/gardenersguide

Official state trees, flowers projected to shift out of state

- Connecticut Mountain laurel - Delaware American holly, peach blossom - DC Scarlet Oak - Georgia Live oak - Idaho Mock orange - Illinois White oak, purple violet - Indiana Tulip popular - Kansas Eastern cottonwood, sunflower - Kentucky Tulip poplar - Louisiana bald cypress - Maryland black-eyed Susan - Massachusetts Mayflower - Minnesota Pink and white ladyslipper - Mississippi Magnolia - Nebraska Eastern cottonwood, goldenrod - Nevada sagebrush - New Jersey violet - North Carolina flowering dogwood - Ohio buckeye - Oklahoma Eastern redbud - Oregon Oregon grape - Pennsylvania Eastern hemlock, mountain laurel - South Dakota Black Hills spruce - Tennessee Tulip popular - Texas Pecan - Utah Blue spruce - Virginia flowering dogwood - Washington Coast rhododendron - West Virginia Sugar maple - Wyoming Plains cottonwood

* Based on models run by Natural Resources Canada which project global average temperature increase of more than 6 degrees F by 2080s.

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