Events: Annual Membership and Business Meeting – 2025

We were so excited to host our first annual Membership and Business Meeting on October 15, 2025 at the Fredericksburg Branch Library Theater!  It was a chance to celebrate the revival and expansion of our local chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society.

Every good celebration begins with food!  And boy did we have food!

The meeting gave us a chance to come together, to meet others with our interests and to relax and chat.  Stacey Churchill provided an overview of the three areas our chapter would focus on:  Grow (everything having to do with growing natives in your own space), Know (botany, local ecosystems, battling invasives), Protect (advocating for native plants, wild spaces and promoting legislation to that end.)      

We celebrated all of those who worked to get our chapter established.

It all began with our Steering Committee members: Ernie and Lynn Ackermann, Kelly Sherman, Mike and Pat Worsham, Nancy Verity, Laura, Ian and Quinn Curran,  Wendy Lanehart, Janice Black,  Bo Spotts, Karen Dolvin,  Jan Smith, Renee Ford,  Jackie Keith, Raven Rockwell, Kassandra Givler, Ruth Landry-Stone, Mark Adrian. Joy and Rosie Green, Charlotte Hunter, Mary Kukla, Ernest Malcolm, Angella Barnes and Stacey Churchill.

To get our Steering Committee organized we selected Committee Chairs: Ernie Ackermann, Mike Worsham, Joy and Rosie Green, Ruth Landry-Stone, Kass Givler, Jackie Keith, Laura, Ian and Quinn Curran and Stacey Churchill.  This dedicated crew put in place the bedrock of our chapter, which allowed to move forward.

The final step in petitioning for our chapter’s revival was selecting an Interim Board:  President: Stacey Churchill, Vice-President:  Joy Green, Treasurer:  Kassandra Givler, Co-Secretaries:  Ruth Landry-Stone Lynn Ackermann.  This team established our fall 2025 programs, created a Nominating Committee for our first official Chapter Board and defined the organizational structure for the future.

We have a chapter because of the interest and hard work of each of these volunteers – we celebrated them with gratitude!

Next it was time to get serious.

– We elected our new Board of Directors:  President:  Stacey Churchill, Vice-President:  Joy Green, Treasurer:  Kassandra Givler, Secretary:  Mary Anne Hanrahan.

–  We introduced those who have volunteered to be Committee Chairs:  Membership:  Jan Smith, Know:  Rosie Green, Protect:  Ruth Landry-Stone, Communications: Kass Givler.  We had a little fun dressing them up for their new roles.

– We voted on and approved our bylaws.

We ended with more food and a plant sharing event!  It was such a success that we will do it again next year!

(photo credit:  Kassandra Givler)