Why I love the Florida Native Plant Society

Florida Native Plant Society

Previously, I talked about our native plant resources in Florida including the Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS), this time I’ll provide more details on how much I like FNPS.

My local chapter (Ixia in Jacksonville) holds informative meetings with expert speakers on a wide range of topics relating to native plants or habitats, offers plants for sale or raffle at most meetings, runs field trips, and participates in outreach programs. Our chapter has developed an “Alter-Natives” brochure for northeastern Florida that lists native plants to replace those frequently sold (and sometimes invasive) plants. Here’s a link to a pdf file of the brochure. We’ve adopted a small park in Jacksonville called Native Park, but ironically it was filled with non-native plants–we have made this into a showcase for native plants in an urban setting. In short, our chapter is filled with smart, active and caring folks doing important work as a group and as individuals.  Here’s a link to find an FNPS chapter near you.

The Annual FNPS Conferences

While the chapter is great fun, the annual state-wide FNPS conference is my chapter on steroids!  I’ve been to two conferences now and I find that them to be even more stimulating and inspiring.  There are 37 chapters around the state: so there we are all together each of us talking about our projects and learning from speakers and local field trips.  I took some photos and will provide a short tour of the 2012 conference which took place on May 19th to 22nd near Orlando.

Native plant vendors display their plants for sale under the live oak tress.

NYC’s High Line Park: a community restoration

NYC’s High Line Park is maintained by a non-profit,
Friends of the High Line,” which hires the gardeners
and organizes the many activities. 

After a long wait…

I’d been wanting to visit the High Line Park in Manhattan (a public park built on an abandoned elevated train platform) since I first heard about it back in 2009 when the first section opened. I finally made it on a recent Monday morning when my daughter and I walked the whole length—1.45 miles. What a wonderful community project!

I’m writing about this project here because I think it shows that when you build habitat areas, even in densely crowded urban areas, that it’s good for the birds, the humans in the neighborhood, and for the economic health of the area. In other words, if you build it, the birds will come and so will the humans. See below for my conversations with 2 of the staff gardeners for the care that is required to keep up the planted areas.

Supporting wildlife beyond your garden gate

Go beyond your garden gate

On this blog most of us focus on our own properties with ideas and success stories of how our mostly native landscapes have attracted wildlife. But anyone who is concerned about the environment can also become an advocate for Mother Nature. It's a pleasant experience to write for people like myself who also believe that creating more wildlife-friendly habitat is a good idea, but isn't one of our goals reaching out to wider audiences who might not have thought that their landscaping decisions are important?

A poison is a poison is a poison

A working ecosystem means that 
you encourage Mother Nature's predators. 
Here, a garden spider captures
 a polka-dotted wasp moth.

The Poison Cycle

In a balanced ecosystem, predators will be in the minority. In other words, in a natural environment, there are many more prey organisms to ensure a continuous food supply for the predators. In such an ecosystem, there are huge numbers of prey including, aphids, white flies, cabbage worms, leaf miners, mole crickets, spider mites, and others that may be eating your crops, lawns, and landscape plants, but relatively few predator bugs such as praying mantids, assassin bugs and relatively few bug predators such as lizards, toads, birds, and bats.

Let's consider what happens when you attempt to poison pests. A general insecticide (organic or not) will kill the majority of bugs in an area, but more than 90 percent of them were beneficial or benign. Predators such as bats, frogs, lizards, and birds will go elsewhere to feed and even the microbes in your soil may die.

A look back for lessons for the future

A while back, I started scanning the family slides, when I finished my own slides of our kids growing up and various pre-digital life adventures, I started in on my parents' slides. They died in 1995 & 1996, so it was high time to get these images into a digital format. What struck me as I went through my long-ago childhood was how hard they had worked to provide outdoor adventures for us.

I’m looking for birds on a Connecticut beach in the 1950s. Note my leggings and our brand new 51 Ford–we called her the blue flyer.

When we lived in Stamford, I fished in the Rippowam River next to our apartment complex. I’d dig night crawlers from the riverbank for bait and store them in my pockets. While the worms must have been a mess, I was still allowed the freedom to play. Sometimes I even caught something–not sure whether we ate this eel or not. This was 3rd grade–my braids are gone.

Doug Tallamy!

Doug Tallamy, Native Plant Hero!

The hero of native plant enthusiasts everywhere, Doug Tallamy has made the case for using native plants in every landscape, no matter how small, in his iconic 2007 book Bringing Nature Home. He says that planting natives in small landscapes will not recreate ancient ecosystems, but it does create biodiversity to support what’s left of our wildlife.

Doug Tallamy was a keynote speaker at the 2012 Florida Native Plant Society’s annual conference in May. He packed the hall and received a standing ovation at the end of his presentation. I think the ovation was well deserved, not only because of his great presentation, but also because of his commitment to the cause. He has provided us (native plant enthusiasts) with easy-to-understand talking points on why using natives in the landscapes is important.

A few people CAN make a significant difference

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead

The entry to Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve

I first heard about Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve at the 2010 Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS) Conference in Tallahassee when Dan Miller made a lunchtime presentation. He told about how he a few others had saved a unique acres-wide population of trout lilies in south Georgia just north of Tallahassee from development. His photos and his story took my breath away. This year I knew when they were going to bloom because of photos posted on Facebook, so my husband and I made the three-hour trek out to the preserve on Valentine's Day. (Yes, no flowers were harmed in my Valentine's Day treat.)