Our Foundation
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.

Welcome our new members! Many thanks to those who have renewed your memberships and given donations.
We are so grateful that many of you have increased your membership levels and it is very much appreciated! Memberships help support our organization and our gardens! It is especially important during this continuing challenging time.
January Class

Thursday January 14th ZOOM online class at 4:00 p.m.entitled ~ Ask the Experts ~ presented by Julie Carlsen, Eloyce O’Connor and Erin Harwood, Barbara Hedges and Brigg Franklin

Strictly a Q&A session to get some of your questions on specific topics (see flyer) answered by one of our NatureScaping members.
We are partnering with the Camas Library.
Bulletin Board
We have a new bulletin board display on the front of our smaller shed. Come visit and check it out in person (social distancing rules). Thank you Rosemarie!
Garden Project
Past newsletters reported upon the progress with our Hedgerow Project. Here is the final report from our president who oversaw the project.

“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments” Gertrude Jekyll, British Horticulturalist

In January 2020, the Clark County Master Gardener Foundation awarded NatureScaping of SW Washington grant monies for native plants to create hedgerows along 149th Street.  Hedgerows are like hedges but are more thickly planted with a variety of native and wildlife friendly trees, shrubs and perennials to provide wildlife: food, shelter, nesting sites and a travel lane. 

In our May 2020 News Nuggets, I shared our plans/experiment to create a series of Pacific Northwest Native Plant Shrubs/Perennials Hedgerows to replace the grass strip along 149th Street.  Every year, along with mowing this strip, we try to control (to no avail) the invasive non-native blackberries, oblong (or eggleaf) spurge-Euphorbia oblongata- (Clark County Class A weed), and field bindweed (Clark County Class C weed designated for control in agricultural settings).  The shrubs and one tree along this strip were removed by arborists with AK Timber Services.

Following COVID guidelines, Clark College Environmental Ed Students, Master Gardeners, our Garden Coordinators and community volunteers worked over 100 hours during 2020 preparing the site by laying cardboard, spreading bark chips thickly over the cardboard and planting native shrubs.

Through many donations of bark mulch from the Clark County Arborist Free Chip Drop program, Shorty’s Garden Center, H&H Wood Recyclers, Hardy Plant Society of OR and NatureScaping funding, volunteers covered the entire grass strip from the Entrance Garden all the way down 149th St. through the Flying Flowers Garden with cardboard and bark chips.

A’s Garden Center donated native shrubs for the Collector’s Garden, and the Master Gardener Foundation grant funded native shrubs and perennials from the Battleground School District’s CASEE native plant greenhouse, Clark College Native Plant Center, Portland Nursery, Bosky Dell Natives, Watershed Garden Works and Goodyear Farms.

Following are before and after photos.

NatureScaping of SW Washington is grateful we are able to keep the Wildlife Botanical Gardens open during these challenging COVID restrictions.  We love seeing the public visit the Gardens wearing their masks and enjoying the peace, every changing landscape, noisy birds and beauty.   We hope to see you in 2021 in the Gardens, at a Zoom class or in person when the world reopens to face to face meetings. May gardening bring you joy and new experiments in 2021!

Meredith Hardin, Presidenthttps://apps.ecology.wa.gov/publications/documents/1310027.pdf

 

Have you Seen This?…..
At our gardens it appears we are experiencing something that is occuring in our area. Apparently it’s been going on at various levels since November, and it seems to be getting worse. Avian Salmonella.  At the NW Bird Haven Garden, our coordinator is taking extra precautions with thorough cleaning and disinfecting.
Here is a short video regarding the bird salmonella. More information listed in the attached News Nugget portion of the newsletter.
Members Missives
Follow up…
Last month In this section I announced the passing of our member Paul Stasz who was a NS volunteer and also volunteered with a number of other organizations related to plants and the environment . I have since learned and would like to share, that a memorial fund for Paul Stasz has been established by Friends of Fort Vancouver. They call it the Heritage Garden Fund. Anyone who wants to make a donation can go to the website, friendsfortvancouver.org, and go to the donate page for information about Paul and the fund, which will be used for special projects in the Fort garden, where Paul volunteered for 2 years
Nature Related Quote of the Month
From John Ruskin:  Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
Enjoy! Stay safe and take care.