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.
Welcome members–those who have renewed and those newly joined! Thank you! Memberships help support our organization and our gardens!
Note: We can now accept memberships and renewals online with this link: Membership/Renewals.
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!
March Class
Saturday March 18th at 10:00am entitled ~ Attracting Birds and Watershed Health ~ conducted by Antonya Pickard, Backyard Habitat Certification Program. See Antonya’s bio below.
Birds delight us with their presence in our backyards and provide many beneficial services. We will discuss how to build habitat areas, Hedgerows, Raingardens, and specific birds you might like to visit your garden!
Antonya’s bio:
Antonya (Anya) Pickard is a Habitat Technician with the Backyard Habitat Certification Program. She is very passionate about conserving and creating outdoor spaces. A self-professed plant and bird “geek.” She’s a Tree Steward for the City of Portland, a crew leader for pruning trees with Friends of Trees, and more recently is volunteering with a local restoration team in her neighborhood. She works with select clients in garden design and maintenance. Coupling all of that with yard site visits for BHCP she’s visited around 1000 properties under an acre and can quickly hone in on some simple ways to improve habitat and to make your yard better for communing with nature and supporting biodiversity!
February Class-Recap
Our Basic Garden Tool Maintenance class, conducted by Arthur Fuller, Cowlitz County Master Gardener was a big hit! Those who brought tools got them sharpened and we learned how to “do it ourselves”–something I’m going to try.
Saturday Morning Work Parties
Saturday morning work parties (SMWP) begin today! (Saturday) and lasts through October. For those who would like to volunteer at the gardens, each Saturday morning (from 9:00am to noon) volunteers are guided by one of our garden coordinators to work in the gardens. Non-Saturday dates will also be available as determined. We have a sign-up system using SignUpGenius. Additional sign up dates will be routinely added. To sign up to work on listed days, here is the link: SignUpGenius
Student Garden Coordinator Program
We are restarting our program which was interrupted by COVID. Our spring session starts today (Saturday) and will continue for the next 3 Saturdays. There will also be a fall session. This is an educational program that is pairing CASEE students with adult volunteer mentors. The aim is to learn together around nature themed subjects and complete related activities in the Wildlife Botanical Gardens. The program will be facilitated by the well qualified Erin Harwood whom many know as the co-owner with her mother of Garden Delights Herb Farm in Brush Prairie. She is a former teacher at Clark College in the Environmental Studies program and helped start their native plant nursery. Erin also has started her own teaching business.
Bare Root Trees, Shrubs and Perennial Sale
We are having our annual Bare Root Trees, Shrubs & Perennial sale this year at the Wildlife Botanical Gardens located at 11000 NE 149th Street, Brush Prairie on Saturday, April 29th from 9am-4:00pm
Shopping
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, it will be open to the public thereafter until 4:00pm. We will be using SignUpGenius to schedule people in hour increments all day Saturday. Each signup slot on Saturday will allow the attendee up to 4 additional people as needed. A link to sign up for shopping will be live the first week of April.
NatureScaping is offering bare root trees for $15, bare root shrubs for $7, espalier fruit trees (if applicable) for $20 and potted perennials starting at $1. Potted/bagged & burlapped and special items will be priced as marked. There will also be Mason Bee cocoons and supplies as well as photo cards for sale. This year we also share space with a few other local vendors. We will again have a raffle basket containing a variety of items for $5 per ticket. NatureScaping will be accepting credit cards (MC/VISA), cash, and checks.
This fundraiser will be held in collaboration with students from the adjacent CASEE Center who will be selling native landscaping plants from their greenhouse. They will be accepting credit, cash and checks.
Volunteer Opportunity
Volunteers working a 4 hour shift will receive a complimentary bare root tree, shrub (only those varieties with quantities of 10 or more) or perennial. Volunteers with pre-sale hours, may pick up their complimentary plant item the day before the sale on Friday April 28th from 3-7pm. For those volunteers scheduled to work Saturday, with the pledge of fulfilling your Saturday duty, you may also pick up your complimentary plant item during that time. Please note: We will no longer be allowing shopping during your volunteer time.
Sale Volunteers for pre-sale work during the weekday:
Heeler: Place and cover or “heel” the bare root trees into the sale area
Labeler-placer: Writing labels-placing finished labels on plants
Here is a very brief listing/description of some of the various jobs we will need to fill on sale days. As you can infer, some jobs are more physical than others.
Field Helper: Help with selections and help pull trees for purchase
Holding area: “Check in” and hold plant loads while people continue to shop
Bagger: Dip bare root trees in water, place into bags.
Checker: Write up sales slips for cashiers.
Cashier: Do the math (calculators furnished) and take in checks or cash (no coin change transactions).
Our success depends upon our volunteers-please consider helping. To volunteer or if you have any questions please contact Kelli Marine at: volunteers@naturescaping.org
Art in the Garden
Our event this year will be on Sunday July 9th from 10am-4pm. Artists will be displaying and selling their creations at locations strategically set among the gardens. Invitations have been emailed to artists–some past favorites and some new hopefuls. Changes to the gardens means changes to this event–we shall see…..
Did You Notice?
We have some new garden signs funded through the GiveMore24 donations from 2021! A Pollinator sign between collectors and cottage garden. A Butterflies sign in the Flying Flowers Garden. Things worth waiting for….thanks to all contributors. Come see for yourselves!
Organizational News
There have been some recent “changing of the garden guards”–garden Coordinators who oversee the care of the individual gardens and Board Member activity. Highlights in brief, our new Board President is Kelli Marine. We want to welcome new colleagues and thank former ones for their contributions.
Sharing…
Much to share this month…
For anyone interested….
Booklet
With funding from a Washington Native Plant Society (WNPS) grant and with many volunteer hours from committee members (you know who you are) a longtime dream has been fulfilled.
We have created a free 52-page booklet as an educational tool that includes dozens of high-quality photos, descriptions and other information regarding native plants found at The Wildlife Botanical Gardens and reasons to incorporate them in your landscape. Here is the link to finding it on our website:
https://naturescaping.org/resources/free-booklet/
New Feature…..
We have some great volunteers! Kelli will be conducting written interviews with some of them; we’d like to share those via the “Volunteer Spotlight”. To find out who is being featured this month: Volunteer Spotlight
Member’s Memorandums
For those unfamiliar with Terry, she is our resident photographer (website and FB) and poet. Recently an amazing video was made by Rick Zimmer narrating one of Terry’s original poems. Swimming Upstream uses photos of the Columbia Gorge, and adds Native flute music!
Terry has agreed to share–here is a link to the beautiful video YouTube Video and if you’d like to read the poem, it is attached as a PDF.
Nature Related Quote of the Month
From Dolly Parton: Storms make trees take deeper roots.
Stay warm, dry, safe and enjoy!