June 2026 Update

by Eileen Ellsworth

The birds are voting for native plants! No, not baseball - birds! Please see the article at the bottom of this update and share as widely as possible.

Upcoming events  

• Green Spring Gardens events - Register online or call Green Spring Gardens at 703-642-5173.

• Saturday, June 20:  Garden Tour - Green Spring Up and Down  

9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Explore both upper and lower gardens, including the Virginia Native Plant Garden and woodland stream valley. 

• Saturday, August 15: Basic Botany and Plant Identification  

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Discover the fundamentals of plant identification in an engaging, beginner-friendly presentation with hands-on specimens. 

8th Annual Native Plant Conference for Professionals

Please spread the word! Any paid professionals (or horticulture students) in the landscape industry are invited to our native plant conference aimed specifically at them. Thursday, August 20, 2026. Details and registration here. (The registration link should be live very soon.)

Free trees in Arlington!

EcoAction Arlington, through its Tree Planting Program, offers Arlington residents* the chance to receive free native trees to help grow our urban canopy. Details here.

• The Tree Canopy Equity Program - Apply for free native tree(s) and shrub(s) if you live in one of these neighborhoods: Arlington View, Arlington Mill, Aurora Highlands, Barcroft, Buckingham, Columbia Heights, Glebewood, Glencarlyn, Green Valley, John M Langston, Long Branch Creek, Penrose, Radnor/Ft. Meyer Heights. 

• The Tree Planting Program: If you live in a neighborhood other than the 13 listed under the Tree Canopy Equity Program and are a property owner, you may apply for a free native tree to be planted on your property. 

Report your native tree and shrub plantings

Please help Northern Virginia meet its tree-planting obligations by reporting your tree and shrub plantings here. So far 21,840 have been reported!

Report your tree rescues

Millions of trees in Northern Virginia are at risk from invasive non-native vines. You can help by saving them on your own land or by volunteering on public land. So far, 24,392 tree rescues have been reported in Northern Virginia. Please add your report here if you live anywhere other than within the Fairfax County/Falls Church boundaries.  In Fairfax/Falls Church, please report here instead.

Next Steering Committee meeting – July 23, 10am-noon via videoconferencing. All are welcome. Check our Event Calendar for future meetings.

This month’s newsletter articles to share. For social media, please use this link.

How to Win the Flycatcher Vote

The flycatchers are back! No, not baseball - birds! Great Crested Flycatchers, Willow Flycatchers, Eastern Wood Peewees, Acadian Flycatchers, and others have arrived in Northern Virginia from the tropics and will breed across our region in the coming months.

Flycatchers are ecological indicators of environmental health. As the Wildlife Sanctuary Program of the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance teaches, it’s the animals, not the people, who vote on habitat health. While the flycatcher populations have dropped over the decades with habitat loss, many still find what they need here and continue to return.

How do we keep winning the flycatcher vote? It all comes down to native plants and trees – the base of every terrestrial food web on planet earth.

Let’s start with their food. Flycatchers only eat insects, and a wide variety thereof despite their name. Bees, wasps, flies, winged ants, moths, caterpillars, and beetles are all on the menu. They don’t visit bird feeders. Only abundant and diverse insect populations will sustain them. Never doubt that the native plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees you plant are doing just that – creating abundant and diverse insect populations for all insect eaters to enjoy.

Their nesting requirements are just as particular. They are cavity nesters, using abandoned woodpecker holes, crags, and other naturally occurring crevices. Only woods that are not over-managed by people offer what they need. Biodiversity matters as well. Some flycatchers incorporate snake skins, mosses, lichens, spider silk, and other naturally occurring materials into their nests. Native trees, shrubs, and plants attract every manner of native wildlife these birds need to thrive.

Flycatchers clearly find such habitats here, though they’re not as common as we’d like. Perhaps we could expand the birds’ summer nesting sites if we thought more broadly about what already exists that attracts them to our region.

All properties in Northern Virginia are in watersheds, and some of those properties are near, or even contiguous with, the stream valleys and woods that comprise and surround them. If your property is contiguous to woods, perhaps think of ways to extend those woods onto your property with new native plants, shrubs, and trees that invite what already lives there to share your outdoor habitat. If your property doesn’t physically touch the woods, perhaps consider it a steppingstone for

new wildlife to explore. In either event, all efforts to increase the density of native plants and the pollinators who use them could be all that’s needed to win the flycatcher vote.

Ideas on how to invite wildlife onto your property from contiguous woodlands with specific advice about what to plant can be found here on the Plant NOVA Natives website. In addition, the Wildlife Sanctuary Program of the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance can offer guidance on this process.