It’s Native Plant Week in NC!
Celebrating NC Native Plant Week (Oct. 17-23, 2022) seems like the perfect way to officially kick-off The Gardening for Life Project. The GFLP is an all-volunteer team of healthy habitat enthusiasts who decided to get together to learn and share with a vision of ultimately getting more folks talking about ways we can all make a difference. Our number one project is happening March 4th, 2023. It’s the Gardening For Life Celebration, a free community event at Polk County High School in Columbus, NC. Highlights include a keynote presentation by Doug Tallamy, author of NY Times bestseller Nature’s Best Hope, as well as educational exhibits, community resources, native plant displays and more. Get all of the details here.
Of course, an essential facet of healthy habitats and Gardening for Life are native plants. One of the leading organizations in North Carolina advocating the benefits of native plants is NC Audubon. To celebrate Native Plant Week in NC, NC Audubon invites you to “plant for the birds.”
“Leaves are changing, birds are migrating, and the fall planting season has begun. Which means there’s no better time to start growing native plants in your yard to help birds and other pollinators. To commemorate the season, Audubon North Carolina has partnered with Gov. Roy Cooper to designate Oct. 17-23 as the sixth annual North Carolina Native Plants Week.” - Read the entire information packed article by visiting NCAudubon.org.
You might be wondering just what difference this kind of state-wide focus makes. It turns out … quite a lot. Here are just a few examples of native plant and healthy habitat initiatives since 2018, thanks to the dedication and hard work of the NC Audubon team and that of many other organizations advocating the use of native plants:
Watauga and Wake counties have passed resolutions promoting the use of native plants, Durham passed native plants-friendly changes to its landscape manual, the towns of Matthews and Winston Salem changed their plants lists and Asheville went so far as to ban invasive plants on city property. You can even look for evidence along NC highways as the Department of Transportation will be prioritizing native species of trees, grasses, and legumes for highway plantings.
There is so much progress and awareness-building to celebrate and so much more gardening for life to be done. We hope you’ll join us for the March 4th celebration, share your enthusiasm and knowledge with us and help get the word out about just how important native plants are.
For lots of great information, tips and native plant sources visit our Resources Page