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Learn how to introduce beautiful native plants into your home landscape, and gain the benefits of lower water and maintenance requirements, pollution reduction, environmental restoration and increased sustenance for butterflies, birds and other wildlife.
The Houston Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas will sponsor their 12th Wildscapes Workshop, celebrating the beauty of our earth with an educational seminar on native plants, nature, and wildlife, on Saturday, September 26, 2009.
Emphasis will be on using native plants to create more biodiverse environments that are practical, sustainable, and hospitable for birds, butterflies and important pollinators. Four speakers will entertain with presentations on various aspects of our natural environment. The workshop also includes exhibits showing examples of naturally landscaped homes, other educational exhibits, doorprizes, and a nature book sale. The native plant sale will offer many of the specimens featured in the Great Plants for Wildscape Landscapes presentation. Watch our website for a list of plants that may be available.
The workshop will be held at the Houston Community College West Loop Campus, 5601 West Loop South at Pin Oak Park. You may download a registration form here. A continental breakfast, refreshments, and box lunch are included with registration.
Prairie Rescues, presented by Jaime Gonzales, Naturalist, Katy Prairie Conservancy.
The Katy Prairie Conservancy, Houston Audubon, and other environmental and government agencies, held native plant rescue events at Saums Road Prairie during the summer of 2008. The goal was to relocate native grasses and wildflowers from the Saums Road Prairie before its destruction for a development project. Plants from the prairie were transported to sites across the City of Houston to create small pocket prairies to demonstrate and educate residents on the value of coastal prairies in our native ecosystem. Each pocket prairie has become a wildlife magnet for butterflies, dragonflies, and other insects beneficial to birds. The goal of the Pocket Prairie Project is to encourage visitors to these pocket prairie sites to include more native plants in their landscaping projects.
With Houston’s accelerated rate of growth, biodiversity is being lost at a rapid pace. The Nature Conservancy and the Texas Heritage Society have labeled coastal prairies “globally imperiled”. The pocket prairies are small, but they can serve as seed banks for future restoration projects. If coastal prairies are not conserved we will lose much of our region’s rich natural heritage that we highly value. Individual gardeners can slow the rate of wildlife extinction by planting natives in their yards, creating wildlife corridors throughout the City.
Great Plants for a Wildscapes Landscape, presented by Mark Bronstad of Doremus Nursery.
Mark is a plant propagator and grower for Doremus Wholesale Nursery in Warren, Texas, located at the edge of the Big Thicket. Many of the native plants in our sale are propagated and grown at Doremus. Mark will give a presentation on plants that will be available at the native plant sale, and he can answer questions about propagating and growing native plants.
Local Butterflies & Flight of the Monarch, presented by Farrar Stockton, President, NABA BEST.
Farrar Stockton, President of Butterfly Enthusiasts of Southeast Texas, will give a presentation on local butterflies of Houston. In addition, Farrar will discuss the flight of the Monarch. Every fall, monarch butterflies migrate across eastern North America to remote sites in central Mexico. Their long flight is fuelled only by nectar from flowers that are blooming on the way. In recent years, there have been concerns about the continued health of monarch populations, and of the migration itself, as land use change has altered both breeding habitat and migratory pathways. Join us to hear more about monarch migration and butterflies of the Houston area, and what you can do to make sure butterflies will be here for the enjoyment and delight of future generations.
Native Pollinators, presented by Jack Brady, Research Assistant with the Texas Agrilife Research and Extension Center in Stephenville.
Jack will identify pollinators and discuss their importance to our gardens and our wellbeing. Wild native bees, numbering more than 4,000 species in North America, contribute substantially to pollination when their habitat needs are met. More than 80 percent of the world’s 250,000 flowering plants depend on pollinators, and from 15 to 30 percent of the food eaten throughout the world comes from plants that need to be pollinated. Jack will describe habitats that are needed to attract and sustain pollinators and he will let us know what we can do to provide homes for pollinators.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: Bill Hopkins
