Chapter Calendar

Grow your own native perennials from seed! Experienced grower Sharon Burnham will demonstrate two different methods for starting native perennials. We’ll talk about the basic requirements for most seeds: cold and moisture. We’ll demonstrate how to imitate nature by using the refrigerator and freezer or by seeding pots with a method to yield the best success. We’ll also talk about other aspects of seed starting, how to research each plant, and what to do once they’ve sprouted. 

We'll also be distributing seeds for you to take home!

All members are welcome to join us at our first Board Meeting of the year.

In this special collaboration, Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, botanist, and founder of Plant Baby Plant, joins youth leader and Nurture Natives founder Esther Bonney for an intergenerational conversation about belonging, reciprocity, and native plant action. 

Together, they will explore questions such as:

How do we create opportunities for young people to have a voice and feel empowered, even when they are not homeowners or decision makers?What kinds of relationships and mentorships help people stay engaged in native plant work over decades?Why do stories, shared practices, and community invitations matter just as much as plant lists?

Robin and Esther will reflect on what invites people into this work, what keeps them here, and what elders and youth have to teach each other.

February's chapter meeting will feature Sam Chappell from the Blue Ridge Soil and Water Conservation District about the work they do as part of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. We will also be hearing about the VCAP Program, which is a program for homeowners who are interested in conserving water in your landscape (e.g. rain gardens or rain water harvesting), promoting wildlife habitat (i.e. added vegetation to aid in infiltration can also create spaces for wildlife), reduce surface water pollution, among other benefits. Plus, through the VCAP Program your project may be eligible for financial aid! 

From the SWCD website: "The Virginia Conservation Assistance Program (VCAP) is an urban cost-share program that provides financial incentives and technical and educational assistance to property owners installing eligible Best Management Practices (BMPs) in Virginia’s participating Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs).

These practices can be installed in areas of your yard where problems like erosion, poor drainage, or poor vegetation occur. Qualified sites shall be used for residential, commercial, or recreational purposes with a proposed practice that addresses a need."

More information about the VCAP Program and the Blue Ridge SWCD in the link below.

We hope to see you there!

Our upcoming webinar with Basil Camu explores practical, evidence based ways to heal suburban and urban landscapes by working with trees, soil, and natural systems, drawing on real world practices from Leaf & Limb and community centered models for restoring life where we live, work, and play.!  

How much do you know about your local deer population, other than they like to eat your garden?  Master Gardener and Wild Ones President Sharon Burnham will speak at the Roanoke Home & Garden Show, presenting tips to manage your garden with less stress so that you have a garden to show off! She wrote the section on deer in the Guide to Gardening to Southwest Virginia Plants and will show examples of some of her favorite deer-resistant plants.

All Wild Ones members are welcome to attend.

Come learn about the 5 critical components to making good compost from Davey Stewards of Star City Compost.  He'll talk about the proper C:N ratio in a compost pile, moisture content, airflow through the pile, inoculating the pile with decomposers, and size of the pile.  He'll talk about how people can ensure they are accounting for those components in backyard piles, as well as how it's addressed at Star City Compost. 

Star City Compost officially opened their doors as Roanoke's only composting facility in January 2024. Star City Compost provides residential and commercial services for composting responsibly, so food scraps stay out of the landfill and instead become nutrient-rich soil. With their strong mission, values and community building rooted long before that, the vision of creating an ecological infrastructure for the local community has come to life in the greater Roanoke area. 

Come prepared to learn and ask questions, whether you're new to composting, a seasoned composter, or even new to the idea of composting. We are lucky to have Star City Compost's wealth of knowledge with us.

We hope to see you there!

From the Roanoke Rambler: Spring Seed Swap Event at Blindhouse Beer on March 14

Mark your calendars for a free community seed exchange event on March 14 from 2 to 5 p.m. at Blindhouse Beer (534 Salem Ave SW, Roanoke). 

The event is organized by local Roanoke artist and farmer DeHanza Kwong; the seed swap is a natural extension of her monthly Drink & Draw events (held at Blindhouse Beer from November to February), which seeks to provide a safe, nonjudgmental community space and art supplies for drawing, and to showcase a local nonprofit, which has included Southwest Virginia Wildlife Association, Ladies and Gents of the Blue Ridge Transgender Alliance and Saint Francis Service Dogs. A portion of the evening’s beer sales benefit the featured nonprofit, and representatives are also invited to attend, talk about their organization and bring representatives to inspire attendees’ drawings (like portraits of drag queens or guide dogs, for example).

“We've had incredible success so far,” Kwong says. “People of all skill levels show up, connect with their neighbors, learn about important local causes and discover their creative side in the process.”

Last year, Kwong, who operates BirdnD Farm in Bent Mountain with her partner, hosted a seed swap as part of a Drink & Draw event in partnership with LEAP. She noted that folks seemed most interested in exchanging seeds and learning about gardening, so this year’s event won’t include a nonprofit beneficiary or drawing focus. Bringing seeds to swap is optional; free seeds will be offered by Wild Ones Roanoke Region Chapter, which specializes in native plants, and the Salem Public Library’s free seed library. “I used to manage a seed library as a reference library,” Kwong says. “It can be a lot of money for an upstart ; if people get free seeds and information, it may give them the courage to start.”

Join Joey Santore, creator of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, for a candid Wild Ones National Webinar examining how inherited garden aesthetics shape native plant landscapes. Drawing on field experience and real ecology, Joey challenges tidy design norms and explores why dense, irregular plant communities are often the most resilient and ecologically sound.

Learn about tools that can up your game in the garden – and some best practices on tool care and sharpening before the busy season. Bring those dull tools you have and get them sharpened by Any Edge Sharpening (for a fee) during the meeting. Your garden will thank you.

First-time event featuring multiple organizations to help people understand and use native plants.

Talk by Sharon Burnham, President, on coping with deer and rabbits.

Clean Valley Council will present Roanoke Earth Day Celebration 2026 in historic Grandin Village, Roanoke, Va., on Saturday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

This year’s Roanoke Earth Day Celebration theme is “Choose the Planet Over Plastic” to help raise awareness about our collective responsibility to be aware of just how much disposable plastic we use, to eliminate single-use plastics, and to understand the impacts on our environment, on human health, and of the rapidly spreading pollution from microplastics. The day empowers people and communities to take charge of protecting the planet.

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. 

Join the Rockbridge Master Gardener Association for their annual Arbor Day Program. President Sharon Burnham will give an overview of fabulous native shrubs for the home garden for the benefit of birds, insects, and us gardeners!

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. 

Join us for an exciting talk with Dr. Rachel J. Collins, the Brian H. Thornhill Endowed Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies and Director of the Environment Center at Roanoke College, and local community ecologist.

In this talk she will go through how they installed a native meadow on a landfill site in Salem, turning a degraded invasive species infested area into a vibrant ecosystem supporting native plants and wildlife. Beyond the ecosystem benefits, she will describe how such restoration efforts can multifaceted benefits.

This talk is Part I of a two-part program, and open to all. 

Part II is a field trip listed as a separate event. The field trip will be to the Roanoke College Environmental Center with Dr. Rachel Collins, and is for members-only. (Consider joining today!)

In Part II of this program, we will rejoin Dr. Rachel Collins for a tour at the Environmental Center and see firsthand which native plant species have thrived, what the ongoing challenges are, and survey the many student projects that go beyond the plants. 

The key takeaway Dr. Collins would like to leave you with:  doing restoration work like this is not that hard, and the benefits are many.

NOTE: This event is for members only. Consider joining today!

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 

Do you want to see more birds, wildlife and pollinators in your landscape?  Discover how native plants support a diverse ecosystem and why they are a good choice for your future plantings.

 Our speaker for this program is Keala (kay - ah - la) Timko, whose experience spans:

·        Gardening on two continents, four countries, and eight states

·        Specialties: Ecological Restoration, Sustainability, Native Plants, Insects and Food Webs

·        18-year Cooperative Extension Master Gardener 

·        Harrison Fellow of the Historic Landscape Institute of Monticello and UVA  

·        Moved to Rockingham County, VA in 2013

·        Husband, Dave, and Keala designed and built their net-zero home, while attempting to eradicate invasive plant species and to ecologically restore their 9+ acres with native plants.

·        Enjoys sharing horticulture knowledge and gardening experiences 

Details coming soon! 

Our guest speaker for this evening is Greg Corman, landscape designer and WORR member! His experience in gardening ranges from Arizona to Virginia, and in this presentation he will inspire us on how to incorporate interesting objects, seating, and other décor into your native plant garden.

Details coming soon! 

Annual Chapter Meeting with Elections, State of the Chapter Report, Year-end review, potluck and raffle! Please bring a dish to share, and please bring your own plate/cup/utensils to keep down on the waste. 

Please note: this will be our last event in 2026; the incoming and outgoing Board Members will use December to meet and onboard, and start planning 2027! 

Details coming soon!