Our Bedrock
Mission Statement: Gardens and programs that inspire, educate and enrich our lives and our community.
Purpose Statement: To educate and encourage citizens on the importance of developing, restoring, maintaining and conserving wildlife habitat and the native plants that comprise that habitat.
Here’s our 2021 Annual Report: Annual Report 2021
Welcome new members! To those who have renewed your memberships (and even added a little extra) thank you so much! Memberships help support our organization and our gardens!
Note: We can now accept memberships and renewals online! Membership/Renewals. We are seeing this get more traction lately–we hope it makes it easier.
However, to help us cover our processing costs for the convenience of using online payments, it is necessary to include those costs in our online membership fees. Amounts remain the same as before for checks/cash.
Separate donations can also be transacted online! Donations/Memorials.
February Class
Saturday February 19th Zoom class at 1:00 entitled ~ Beginning Bird Identification ~ presented by Brandon Burger, Backyard Bird Shop.
Brandon is one of our popular presenters and he’s back to help us identify some of the birds (especially sparrows species) that we see in our area. Snap some pics of birds you need help identifying and if time permits, we’ll share them via Zoom and try to name them.
We are again partnering with the Camas Library.
January Class–ReCap
Great class with Nicole Forbes, Education & Events Director with Dennis 7 Dees Landscaping & Garden Centers (https://www.dennis7dees.com ) entitled Happy Houseplants. We saw some beautiful plants at Nicole’s home in the comfort of our own homes. If you missed the session it is now available to view on The Camas Public Library’s YouTube page. Here’s the link: Happy Houseplants. Also, here is a link to the handout referenced in the talk.
Note: We have a playlist at the Camas Library YouTube page where you can view the entire offerings of recorded class sessions from past months at:
Camas Library YouTube-NatureScaping Classes
Save the Date(s)
Plant Sale
Plans for our Bare Root Trees, Shrubs & Perennial Sale are taking shape. The sale will take place on Saturday April 30th and Sunday May 1st 10:00am to 3:00pm. Members, (up-to-date with their dues and new members) will have early and exclusive access to the sale starting at 9:00am until noon on Saturday. Thereafter it will be open to the public. A limited, controlled number of people, yet to be determined, will be allowed to shop in hour increments during the sale time frame throughout Saturday only. We will be using SignUpGenius to schedule days/time slots. Once the time slots are filled, no more shoppers will be allowed. Sunday will be unscheduled and open to all. Preliminary flyer 2022 Sale Flyer, more specific details to come. Is it too soon to hope for good weather?
Plant Sale Volunteers–Please contact Marlene Dellsy to volunteer at the plant sale this year. We will need lots of help!! I will start calling folks so if you see my name pop up on caller ID…….(note: I think it was corrected, but there is a chance you may see the name Rick L___ displayed but it’s me!)
Plant sale plant donations/potting party—our perennial team is looking for healthy plant donations of flowering perennials, preferably those that attract pollinators. These are asters, echinacea, hardy geraniums, hosta, liatris, monarda, rudbeckia, solidago, yarrow and many more. Please contact Julie Carlsen at: juliemcarlsen_flora@msn.com/ 360 687-0495 (home phone) for more information. Perennial potting sessions will be scheduled later in February.
Art in the Garden
Yes, talk has begun for what will be our 10th anniversary of Art in the Garden on Sunday July 10th. We hope to send out invitations to artists by the end of this month or so. We’ve already had inquiries. Is it too soon to hope for good weather?
We were mentioned….
In the June 2021 newsletter we reported our Water Wise Garden as receiving a Platinum level certification by the Backyard Habitat Certification Program. The Open Gardens Project interviewed Meredith, our President and the Water Wise Garden Coordinator for a blog post on
January 7th, 2022 by Megan Van de Mark. Read it at: Water Wise Garden-Open Gardens Project
Note: NatureScaping was mentioned in the reference section of an article by Scott Hewitt in The Columbian newspaper regarding the subject of Meadowscaping.
Also a picture taken at our gardens some time in the past was used by The Columbian in a Q&A article by Allen Wilson.
We were there…..
We were invited to participate in the recently held Seed Swap & Giveaway event sponsored by KD Homestead and the Hockinson Main Street Team. Two of our members, Kritstine White and Ada Carter were organizers of the event. They wanted to help spread the word about our Wildlife Botanical Gardens; the event benefited the North County Food bank. We appreciated their efforts and the opportunity to use our relatively new banner obtained right at the beginning of COVID.
Bulletin Board
Next time you are visiting the gardens be sure to check out the new display on the outside of one of our sheds located in the center of the gardens. In the meantime, here is a peak . Thank you Rosemarie!!
Did You Know?
Geocaching
Geocaching is a type of global treasure hunt of people looking for caches, or hidden stashes of objects. Geocaching may also be described as a series of hide-and-seek games, where hiders provide online clues for seekers. Seekers use global positioning system (GPS) devices to find hidden caches.
There are 4,888 geocaches around Portland. Learn More
The Wildlife Botanical Gardens is the home of one of them! Brigg Franklin, our Geocache Coordinator spent a recent afternoon cleaning and updating the garden’s geocache and clue tags (thank you Brigg). You can view the on-line information about the garden’s geocache at this web site:
https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1GHJR_wildlife-botanical-gardens
Website Update
We recently added another update to our website–the monthly (NS News) newsletters for all of 2021 and January of 2022 have been added to the site. Current newsletters will continue to be added each month.
Sharing…….
This month I’d like to share a story written by Martha, one of our garden coordinators. Many of our coordinators and our resident photographer interact with visitors to the gardens and have many wonderful experiences and stories to tell which demonstrate how much the gardens mean to folks–this is one of them.
A picture taken by Terry is included to lift your spirits.
Correction…..
Thanks to one of our astute members, it was brought to our attention that one of the pics in January’s newsletter was incorrectly identified as a Junco–it was a Spotted Towhee! Sorry about that–just testing to see if you’all are paying attention.
Nature Related Quote of the Month
From Annie Leibovitz: Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.
Stay Safe and enjoy!