UW Extension presentation prompts Oshkosh advisory board to seek resilient native landscaping, zoning updates and a revised ‘low-mow’ outreach

Jacob Klooza, a horticulture specialist with UW Extension, told the Oshkosh City Sustainability Advisory Board on Feb. 3 that Wisconsin is getting warmer and wetter and that local landscaping practices should adapt to more extreme swings between heavy precipitation and drought.

"It's warmer, it's wetter, it's gonna be rougher, and we need to plan different things to really mitigate those," Klooza said during a 45-minute presentation that summarized state climatology data and recommended plant-selection and site-design strategies for homeowners, developers and municipal projects.

Klooza said atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from preindustrial levels of about 280 parts per million to roughly 420 ppm today and that Wisconsin has averaged about a 3-degree increase since 1950, with the last two decades the warmest on record. He told the board that Oshkosh's plant hardiness mapping shifted toward USDA Zone 5 in recent years and that the state has seen about a 20% increase in average precipitation since 1950, concentrated in winter and spring. Those changes, he said, mean gardeners and landscape planners should favor wider-ranging, drought- and flood-tolerant species and design features such as berms, rain gardens and drip irrigation.

Klooza offered practical recommendations the group discussed after his talk. He recommended:

- Using organic mulches and drip irrigation (he said Winnebago County received a grant to install irrigation at an Extension demonstration site and suggested kits…