If you do nothing else, share! Social media is a very effective way for us to spread the word about native plants. If you are on Facebook, don’t just “like” the posts on our page – please also share them to your timeline. Retweet our tweets, use the #plantnovanatives hashtag on Instagram, re-pin on Pinterest – make home habitat go viral! Adding encouraging comments is helpful as well. And please see the short article at the bottom of this update and send it out via any newsletter or social media you can think of.
Send us your photos for Instagram – Speaking of social media, we now have a Plant NOVA Natives Instagram account – now all we need is Followers and content. Please follow us, and take lots of photos so we can post them.
Japanese Stiltgrass got you down? Click here for a list of some plants that can stand up against a field of Stiltgrass. If you have solid observations of other Northern Virginia native plants that do the same, please let us know so we can add them.
HOA Forum October 11 – Common Space for the Greater Good: Practical Steps for Healthier Landscaping, 5-9 pm in Sterling. See details and register here.
Lots of other interesting events and upcoming native plant sales can be found on our website calendar.
Garden centers – More volunteers are needed to put NoVA Natives stickers on plant signs at Meadows Farms (Manassas and Woodbridge locations) and Merrifield (Fair Oaks). Contact plantnovnatives@gmail.com. (Stickers and other supplies cost money, by the way, so donations to the campaign would be greatly appreciated also!)
Events in need of volunteers: Please sign up here to talk to people about the value of planting native plants. No experience necessary, just a basic understanding about why this is a good idea. (If no one signs up, we won’t be there, so please help out if you can.)
9/18 Virginia Climate Crisis Forum, Vienna 7:15 pm
9/23 Manassas Latino Festival – Spanish-speaking volunteers needed.
9/23 NatureFest – Runnymede Park, Herndon
Posting on Patch and NextDoor – Here is a very easy and very helpful way to volunteer: take our monthly articles and repost them on your local Patch and NextDoor.com sites. For example, a single NextDoor.com posting may reach 8,000 people in your neighboring communities. This is particularly helpful since most of those people may have never heard of native plants before. Email plantnovanatives@gmail.com if you can help with this.
For the Patch online newspaper - a volunteer is needed for each of these versions:
Annandale, Ashburn, Burke, Centreville, Chantilly, Clarendon-Courthouse-Rosslyn, Dale City, Del Ray, Fairfax City, Falls Church, Kingstowne-Rose Hill, Lake Ridge-Occoquan, Leesburg, Lorton, Manassas, Manassas Park, McLean, Mount Vernon, Old Town Alexandria, Reston, Tysons Corner, Vienna, West End Alexandria, Woodbridge
For NextDoor.com – a volunteer is needed for every zip code in Northern Virginia EXCEPT these:
20120, 20124, 20147, 20152, 20158, 20164, 20165, 20169, 20170, 20171, 22003, 22015, 22032, 22041, 22046, 22124, 22180, 22201, 22204, 22205, 22213, 22301, 22302, 22303, 22305, 22306, 22308, 22309, 22310
Come to our Steering Committee meetings – All are welcome. This is where we generate ideas for the campaign. We post the dates and locations on our website calendar. The next one will be on Thursday, October 18 at 10 am.
This month’s newsletter article – Please reprint or link to this article on our blog, which includes previous articles in this series. (For posting on NextDoor.com, use this link instead.)
Plan Next Year’s Staycation Now – Plant Native Plants!
Why go on a safari when a safari could come to you? Imagine yourself sipping lemonade on your lawn chair while strange and marvelous creatures entertain you. This is what you experience when you turn your yard into a wildlife sanctuary. Fall is the time to put in the plants that will bring this parade to your door.
Most perennials and shrubs and some trees do best when planted in the fall. The cooler, wetter weather puts less stress on the plants while their roots continue to grow well into winter. If you want to enjoy butterflies and birds, choose native plants, as those are the ones that support our local wildlife.
In Northern Virginia, we are lucky to have three native-plant only nurseries, as well as several other commercial nurseries that are labeling their native plants. In addition, September brings several special native plant sales including ones in Herndon, Arlington, Springfield, and Alexandria. You can find all these locations on the Plant NOVA Natives website.
Pictured is the caterpillar of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly demonstrating its “snake tongue” defensive maneuver.
For more inspiration, check out our 1-minute native plant “Staycation” video.
Plant NOVA Natives is a joint marketing campaign of over forty private, public, and non-profit organizations and hundreds of individuals. Our mission is to educate the community and to promote the benefits to water quality and natural habitat of planting beautiful Northern Virginia natives, through the efforts of committed volunteers using multimedia outreach and events, and by working with local growers and sellers of native plants. All are welcome to participate in this collective action movement.
To unsubscribe, please email plantnovanatives@gmail.com.