By Nikki Belmonte
“I don’t have much longer on this planet, and I want to spend my time in service.”
That was a sentiment shared with me recently by one of our volunteers, Marilynne. She was voicing her frustration with the commercial box stores selling the invasive, exotic plants that we at Georgia Native Plant Society (GNPS) spend hours and hours removing. While changing the commercial nursery industry is a longer battle, we can have an immediate impact on our local lands through rescue and restoration.
Service to Marilynne as well as dozens of other GNPS volunteers means restoring native habitat in their communities. Through GNPS’s plant rescue program, volunteers rescue native plants that would be destroyed in development projects and transplant them to restoration sites and educational gardens. In the metro Atlanta area, there are several active restoration sites and a handful of plant rescues each month.
Are we not rescuing and restoring ourselves at the same time?
Service to the community can come in so many forms. Conservation service is an important form, and somewhat underrated. For some, pulling English ivy and Chinese privet may feel like an act of redemption. For others, working the land is an escape into the natural world, connecting with the land through all the senses while healing it at the same time. Digging up a few dozen native plants from a soon-to-be construction site may seem futile to many, but it is a powerful act of conservation service that contributes to saving biodiversity, and saving ourselves. As Jeanne Reeves, the founder of GNPS’s rescue program, once said, “Saving [native plants] from certain destruction not only perpetuates their lives, it educates and enriches ours.”
At Herbert Taylor and Daniel Johnson Park in Atlanta, restoring an urban oasis within the “city in a forest” is a community imperative. Regular volunteer work days are ongoing organized through the park’s friends group, with a focus on saving the tree canopy from being engulfed by kudzu, English ivy and Chinese wisteria. GNPS expertise comes into play as invasive, exotic species are removed and there is room to restore and enhance the land with native ferns, forbs and shrubs. It is a powerful experience for the volunteers to drive change, and the satisfaction of seeing that change right before your eyes is gratifying. Ninety-two year old neighbor, Richard, regularly works the property. It has encouraged him to remove invasive and exotic plants from his adjacent yard, making room for the native plant populations to return, along with a variety of native songbirds and hawks. I think Richard, and so many others, feel restored through their service to the land.
The concept of rescue and restore is in full cycle at Heritage Park in Mableton. Plant rescues organized in the west metro area supply many of the native plants installed along the park’s highly used trail. Recent work removing an array of exotic ferns and forbs along the creek bed allowed for rescued Christmas fern, Southern lady fern and broad beech fern to be planted among pipevines, chestnut oak saplings, sweetgum and pokeweed – a wonderful palette of native Piedmont species.
At Mary Scott Nature Preserve in Dekalb county, scout troops frequently assist volunteers with GNPS as well as the friends group in the removal of invasive, exotic plants thus allowing all ages to serve their community park while learning the value of native habitat.
Generosity in dollars does make a difference. For native plant habitat restoration to stick, long term observation and maintenance is necessary. GNPS restoration sites have volunteer liaisons that put extra time into assessing, planning and coordinating the work needed to be done to maintain a restored native habitat. In their annual reports, requests for more hands, more training, more tools and more education are repeated themes. With the capacity to afford professional services to complement the volunteer manual labor and recruitment (and supervision) of large volunteer groups, the service that GNPS volunteers are doing could be greatly amplified.
During this season of giving, I encourage you to look to the land. Give green this year, and give generously. Consider serving your community through rescue and restoration, and perhaps some reflection. During Georgia Gives on Giving Tuesday and through December, Georgia Native Plant Society is highlighting the ways in which we rescue, restore and serve our communities. Read more about our service to the community and get involved in a way that is meaningful to you.
