Celebrate Native Trees week Sept 26 – Oct 2. Garden centers and others around the region will be promoting native trees and shrubs. Find details here: www.plantnovatrees.org/celebrate-native-trees-week.
Short article to share
Please see this month’s article on entranceway landscaping at the bottom of this page and post it in newsletters and social media.
Fall native plant sales are coming!
You can buy native plants at our local native plant nurseries as well as other garden centers any time of year, but it is fun when those sellers come to you. Check out the sales in Leesburg, Vienna, Alexandria and Herndon. https://www.plantnovanatives.org/local-native-plant-sales
Help at fairs
We are looking for volunteers for the 9/24 Manassas Latino Festival and for the Burke Centre Festival 9/10 and 9/11. Please sign up here.
Party at the landfill!
Everyone is invited to a party at noon on October 27 at the I-66 transfer station in Fairfax to celebrate the installation of a pollinator meadow on top of the landfill. A pilot plot will be seeded this fall and more in the spring. Details and registration here.
Thanks to Andre Passos, owner of The Grounds Guys, we now have a series of very short videos about saving trees from invasive vines, in English and in Spanish.
· Introduction (8 minutes)
o Spanish
o English
· Identifying the six most common invasive vines (and distinguishing them from native vines) (4 minutes)
o Spanish
o English
· Identifying seven other invasive plants that kill trees (4 minutes)
o Spanish
o English
Please encourage any landscaping companies you know to watch them.
Doug Tallamy is coming (virtually)! September 25. His talk will be followed by a panel presentation by local experts about the resources available in Northern Virginia for translating inspiration into action. Register here. Most importantly, invite your friends who have not yet heard the message!
Report your native tree and shrub plantings
Please help Virginia meet its tree-planting obligations by reporting your tree and shrub plantings here. So far 3,772 have been reported!
Report your native tree rescues
Have you saved a tree from invasive vines, excess mulch, a contractor’s chain saw, or any other threat? Add your report here to the 3,595 trees already saved!
Next Steering Committee meeting – via videoconferencing – All are welcome. Thursday, September 22, 10:00am-12:00pm. Check our Event Calendar for future meetings.
This month’s newsletter article to share – Please use this link for social media.
Welcoming visitors with native plant landscaping
The big signs that welcome visitors to neighborhoods are usually framed by conventional ornamental shrubs, grasses, and annual flowers. Last year, Northern Virginia communities were invited to apply for matching mini-grants to spruce up their entranceways using only Virginia native plants. A condition of the mini-grants was that the projects be designed by a professional landscape designer to require no more long-term maintenance than the typical landscaping crew is accustomed to providing. The original grant money was provided by Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation’s Environmental Education and Stewardship Grants Program to the Audubon at Home program in collaboration with Plant NOVA Natives. Audubon at Home volunteers help residents and organizations strategize about using their properties to create wildlife sanctuaries.
Interest in the grants was high. Thirty-five neighborhoods in Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun counties applied for the six grants, which also required that the communities do outreach to educate their residents about the value of using native plants to beautify their yards and support birds and other wildlife. Conventional landscaping may appeal to the aesthetic tastes of many people, but keeping the look fresh is a challenge and can be expensive. Shrubs that are repeatedly trimmed start to decline, ornamental grasses get overgrown and floppy, and annual flowers have to be replaced three times a year. More importantly, the usual non-native choices for shrubs and grasses in this situation are often invasive, which contributes to adjacent yards and natural areas being overrun by escaped Chinese Privet, Japanese Barberry, Chinese Silvergrass, English Ivy, Periwinkle, Liriope, and other offenders. By contrast, carefully chosen native shrubs can be allowed to reach their natural height without trimming, and tidy-looking native perennials need only be planted once. The result can still satisfy residents’ desire for a formal look (and for flowers) while requiring different but no more burdensome maintenance tasks.
As seen on this web page, even soon after installation, the entranceways of the grant recipients were showing the potential of this new approach. As they fill in over the next two years, passersby will be able to appreciate what native plants can do when installed using solid design principles. Landscaping in an institutional setting has its challenges, whether it be a community association, faith community, or other organization where volunteers run the Board and committees. Tempting though it is to install colorful pollinator gardens with a dizzying array of native flowers to attract butterflies, most communities would be hard pressed to find experienced gardeners to dedicate the hour or so per month needed for an average size garden bed, year after year. This degree of expertise becomes unnecessary if only a few distinctive-looking plant species are installed, making weeding a simpler task for any worker. More tips can be found on the Plant NOVA Natives website. As the volunteers at Auburn Village Condominium wrote, “Communities should not be afraid to have native gardens. They can be designed in a way to look like conventional gardens and at the same time be beneficial to critters. We wanted our space to show the community that beautiful spaces can be created with native plants.”
