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.
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

“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.


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