Growing Awareness: How Ozone Gardens Help Us See the Air We Breathe
What’s Up, Forsyth? In our last post, we dug into how ozone affects plants and why some are more susceptible than others. Today, we're putting that knowledge to use by introducing you to a way to monitor air quality right in your own backyard! We are also sharing tips and preliminary findings from our very own ozone garden in Kernersville— a recent collaboration between the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden and Triad Air Awareness . Figure 1. Air Awareness Coordinator, Sarah Coffey, standing next to the newly installed Ozone Garden sign at the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden in Kernersville, NC. What’s an Ozone Garden? An ozone garden is a specially designed garden filled with plants that are sensitive to ozone. In addition to beautifying any space and serving as a hub for native pollinators, these plants are bioindicators — living organisms that help scientists and citizen scientists monitor environmental health. When ground-level ozone interacts with the cells inside leav...