Maria Rodale has been on a journey to better understand gardening.

“Why do we garden?” Rodale asked at the Aug. 20 meeting of the Salisbury Township Environmental Advisory Council.

Referring to her most recent book, “Love Nature Magic” (240 pp.; Chelsea Green Publishing, 2023), Rodale, a Salisbury Township resident and EAC member, said in her PowerPoint presentation, “I was determined to have the perfect garden.”

Rodale said she had to confront “things in my garden that annoyed me.”

One such plant is the Mugwort.

Said Rodale, former CEO and Chairman of Rodale, Inc., “Many of the plants we consider weeds are essential hosts for the caterpillars and birds that eat most.”

“Nature wants to communicate with us and help us to understand how to help ourselves,” Rodale said, whose more than one dozen books include “Organic Manifesto: How Organic Food Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe” (2010) and “Maria Rodale’s Organic Gardening: Your Seasonal Companion to Creating a Beautiful and Delicious Garden” (1998).

“Everything is sentient and conscious. I became a student rather than a steward,” Rodale said.

Rodale asked, “Who do we garden for?

“We garden for wildlife and pollinators,” she said. “We garden for food. We garden for beauty and pleasure. We garden for the future.

“Healthy soil grows healthy food, which grows healthy people,” Rodale said, a daughter of Robert Rodale and Ardath Rodale. The Rodale company was founded in 1930 by Maria’s grandfather, J.I. Rodale.

“Nature is not competing. It’s collaborating. Mugwort is still teaching me,” Rodale, cochair of the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to regenerative organic agriculture that is in Maxatawny, Berks County, said.

At the EAC meeting, Rodale reported on a meeting she attended of approximately 40 representatives from EACs in the greater Lehigh Valley held in the Bethlehem Township Community Center.

“Each group is working on something different,” Rodale said.

Referring to a Lehigh Valley Planning Commission survey, Rodale said, “The biggest issue is air pollution. We’re [the Lehigh Valley] one of the worst polluted in the nation.

“That’s [air pollution] something we should learn more about or work with other EACs,” Rodale said.

“A lot of them are looking at their communities from a map perspective,” Rodale said of the EACs, adding, “Do the greenways connect? Are there trail ways?”

Salisbury Township Commissioner Heather Lipkin, who is the board of commissioners’ liaison to the township EAC, said, “We are working on our comprehensive plan. We had an initial meeting. They’re looking at everything, housing, parks, traffic. We have to come up with a 10-year plan.”

A fall flyer from the EAC is under consideration to be distributed in a township mailing.

The Salisbury Township Environmental Advisory Council is next scheduled to meet 7 p.m. Oct. 15 in the meeting room of the Salisbury Township Municipal Building, 2900 S. Pike Ave.

The Salisbury Township Planning Commission meets 7 p.m. Aug. 27 in the meeting room of the municipal building. On the agenda is the review of a minor subdivision project at 1763 Broadway submitted by Green Hammer Properties, LLC, which proposes to subdivide the property into three lots and develop a single-family, detached dwelling on Lot No. 1 and semidetached (twin) units on Lots No. 2 and No. 3. All will have frontage along Broadway.

The Salisbury Township Board of Commissioners meet 7 p.m. Aug. 28 in the meeting room of the municipal building. A meeting agenda was not posted on the website as of the Aug. 24 deadline for this article.