General Interest
Generation Y Won’t Garden Because of Fear of Failure?
Millennials, especially the Gen Y batch, are proving a hard target for the nursery industry to get a bead on. They have a fear of failure, said a recent article written for professional growers. Furthermore, the article states that Gen Yers were urged to their best in school every day, (surprise!) to beat the competition;…
Read MoreReport From A Tagalong Spouse
Hosting the VNPS Annual Meeting at the Frontier Culture Museum was a great choice. If you haven’t been to the museum, it consists of about twelve exhibits of typical homesteads, (houses, barns, fields, etc.), of the people who originally inhabited North America, including the American Indians and those people who immigrated to the Atlantic coast…
Read MoreRescue, Reclaim, Restore: Annual Meeting 2015
In the unusual setting of a dairy barn, VNPS President, Nancy Vehrs, opened the 2015 Annual Meeting in Staunton with the quarterly gathering of the Board. After the traditional business session, (the nuts and bolts that keep VNPS running), Rod Walker, from the Blue Ridge Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM) was on hand…
Read MoreTrees Bring People Together
Last Saturday five concerned groups joined forces to show their appreciation for a small park in the city of Alexandria, a park where the biggest shade trees are in danger of disappearing. VNPS members were joined by Tree Stewards, Master Naturalists, members of the local Gladiators basketball team, the West Alexandria Rotary Club, and the…
Read MoreNative Moths, Native Plants, Natural Connections
My interest in natural history started with birds – their form, color, shapes, and diversity fascinated me! But then in 1981 I got my Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and that was all she wrote! Plants were my new love – like birds, there was form, color, shape, and diversity; unlike birds, they kept still! I could…
Read MoreHow To Start A Native Plant Garden
How do I start? Many people wrestle with this question after deciding they want to transform their existing yard into a native plant garden. When Susan and Jim Graham first made that decision they described their existing yard as “ mostly turf grass with an azalea mustache;” a look typical of many of the landscapes…
Read MoreThe Right Kind of Pollinator Garden
A couple of reminders, if folks will, regarding pollinator gardens, especially those to attract and host Monarch butterflies: The overarching principle for all ecological restoration plantings (i.e., those involving the correct use of native plants in parks, waterways, and natural areas) is to “Do No Harm” to the native flora, communities, wildlife, and natural landscape…
Read MoreSpecialist Bees Need Special Plants
Sam Droege, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Biologist, and a bee expert who has studied native bees all around the world, gave a presentation on specialist bees and the plants that support them at the Arlington Library on May 11, 2015. The talk was sponsored jointly by the VNPS Potowmack Chapter, and the Arlington Regional…
Read MoreHiwassee: A Floral Delight!
The New River Trail provided a welcome dose of colorful spring flowers for the members of our New River Chapter and their friends last month. This trail is is actually a 57-mile linear park that follows an abandoned railroad right-of-way paralleling the scenic and historic New River. Old rail beds make gentle hiking and the…
Read MoreAdventures In Plant ID
Every chair was taken and extras had to be brought in for the first of the Piedmont Chapter’s Winter Speakers Series this afternoon in Marshall, VA. An appreciative audience paid close attention as the speaker, Richard Stromberg, revealed some of the tricks of his trade during his talk: ‘Adventures in Plant Identification: Tools, Tips, and…
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