Chapter Calendar

Garden Club of Virginia is hosting another Historic Garden Week! 

See description below and event link for registration and to purchase tickets:

This walking tour features five distinguished properties in the North Broad Street Historic District. Built between 1867 and 1891, the homes showcase a rich blend of architectural styles popular in the Victorian era, including Italianate, Second Empire, and Queen Anne. Gardens vary from traditional to cottage to contemporary, offering visitors a delightful mix of design inspiration. Visitors are also invited to see Virginia’s Champion Dutch Elm as well as 76 other species of trees located on the neighboring Roanoke College campus. 

Please join us for a special program with speaker Kyle Cohen of Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), with the goal of increasing awareness and ability for citizen groups to monitor for new SLF populations. We'll learn about on the distribution of Spotted Lanternfly in Virginia, the ways in which it threatens native forests and herbaceous plants, and how to identify the pest at all life stages. The presentation will include recommended integrated pest management strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of Spotted Lanternfly in gardens, including cultural, mechanical, and organic chemical controls. 

Speaker: Kyle Cohen, Spotted Lanternfly Surveyor

PLEASE NOTE: This program is being hosted at our usual chapter meeting location, but is an extra program this month, and is on SUNDAY, 4/26 at 3pm.

Join award-winning author, photographer, and educator Rick Darke for What Is Wild and Why It Matters, a free national webinar on Tuesday, April 28th at 10 am CT. Discover how inviting a bit of authentic wildness can create a vibrant landscape that sustains you and local biodiversity. This national event is presented in collaboration between Wild Ones and Homegrown National Park.

Learn propagation techniques from Ian Caton, owner of Wood Thrush Native Nursery and a local legend in the native plant world, located just down Hwy 221 in Floyd, VA. If you're not sure where you've heard of Ian before, check your Plant Virginia Natives SWVA guide - he has contributed to the first iteration of the guide and some of the great photos of native plants come from his observations.

Ian will be sharing what he knows about propagating native plants using cuttings, and we can't wait to learn how to multiply our native garden favorites for future seasons.

Read a little about Ian here, or check out Wood Thrush Natives' website.

https://www.lwladesign.com/people/ian-caton/

https://woodthrushnatives.com/

All members of Wild Ones are welcome to join us for the next Board Meeting.

Can you reliably identify some of our common native trees? It can be an overwhelming task with so many different sources - field guides, phone apps, Google images, your friends' opinions! Each method is different and has varying levels of reliability.  In Part I of a two-part program, Professor Heather Butler will teach us how to apply some basic steps and tips for identifying the trees that surround us. You'll never look at the trees on your walks in the same way you did before.

 Prof. Butler is  an Assistant Professor of Biology and Program Head of Science at the School of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, Virginia Western Community College. She teaches Dendrology, Biology, and other subjects, and is the committee chair of the Bee Campus Committee.

Part I is open to everyone. Part II will include a field walk for members only to practice these identification skills and techniques, location, date and time TBD. 

Wild Ones Roanoke Region is pleased to partner with the Roanoke Master Gardeners, the Blue Ridge Wildflower Society, and the Mill Mountain Garden Club in presenting the well known landscape architect Preston Montague. Mr. Montague has been featured in online programs, at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Winter Symposium, and most recently at the Piedmont Landscape Association Annual Seminar.

In “Bringing Ecology Home,” Mr.  Montague will share how native plant communities, such as the wilder landscapes of the Piedmont, can inspire residential gardens. Using a recently submitted Wild Ones landscape plan for Greensboro, North Carolina as a case study, he will highlight key decisions, challenges, and lessons learned in applying conservation gardening principles to the home garden. Attendees will gain practical insight into how to translate these ideas into their own landscapes to create spaces that reflect place and support biodiversity.

You can find the Wild Ones native plant landscape design created by Preston Montague for Greensboro, NC,  here. 

Preston Montague is a landscape architect and artist working to strengthen relationships between people and the natural world. His environmental design studio deploys art, horticulture, and landscape architecture in the service of building places that have meaning and ecological depth. In 2025 he served as inaugural artist-in-residence at Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. When not in studio, Preston enjoys teaching landscape architecture at North Carolina A&T State University and hiking the wilder places. For more information on Preston, please visit www.prestonmontague.com 

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon!