We seek peace in our own lives through meditation and the study of the Dharma (the traditional Buddhist teachings). We contribute to peace in our communities through ecological restoration, as a remedy for some of the violence done by development.
At our Wild Plant Nursery and the field sites that it serves, we work to conserve the native plant communities of the greater Washington region, home to one of the richest floras in eastern North America. Our Tree Bank / Hispaniola is conserving the forests of central Hispaniola, the richest surviving remnant of the Caribbean forest biome, a global biodiversity hotspot.
We see ecological restoration as essential to conservation because many natural areas are now too small and isolated to persist over the long term in their current state. In the greater Washington region, we are reestablishing forests and meadows on degraded sites. In central Hispaniola, our Tree Bank farmers are replanting native forest on their lands.
This page contains all of our recent publications, as well as a selection of older ones. Also included here are reading lists, additional program information, background organizational information, media coverage of the Sangha, links to the websites of our most important collaborators, and links to a selection of other information resources. (Some very specific program material, available on relevant program pages, is omitted here.)
If you can't find what you're looking for, or if you would like to have a high-quality printed copy of one of our publications, please feel free to contact us. Please note that nearly all of the documents here are in pdf format. For the most recent version of the free Adobe pdf reader, click here.
Open the most recent issue of our quarterly newsletter, the Acorn. You can also open a document containing links to previous issues.
We don't make much of an effort to court publicity, but we occasionally attract some coverage.
In July 2011, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society News reprinted Chris Bright's interview of Rod Simmons. (The interview was initially published in the March 2010 issue of the Acorn.) See pages 8-9 of the July-August 2011 CHRS News.
Also in July 2011, Fairfax Public Television's Charles Mills and Nelson Cuellar produced a 21-minute video on the Sangha, as an extracurricular project. You can see the video on YouTube.
Another July 2011 entry: the Washington Post published an article on our Wild Plant Nursery. (The article was a corrected reprint from the Fairfax TImes, which had published it a week earlier.)
In June 2011, CBS News profiled the Sangha's DC-area activities in a show called “Stewards of the Earth: One Planet, Many Faiths.”
In December 2008, the Springfield Connection newspaper did an article on the Sangha.
In February 2007, the Chesapeake Bay Journal published an article on our invasives control efforts.
Our Tree Bank farmers were amused to see themselves covered in the October 2006 issue of the Acorn, our newsletter.