GCW’s Exhibit at the Zone V Mini Meeting October 2019

At the recent Zone V Mini Meeting, each of the clubs in Zone V exhibited a display, highlighting an issue pertinent to the subject of the Conference.  As part of the meeting each club created an exhibit of their choosing. The exhibits reflect the mini meeting theme ‘A Nod to Natives, sustaining our birds, bees and trees’. This was an opportunity to assemble a display that might be used again by the club and was a chance to show the club’s creative strengths.

GCW’s Exhibit at the Zone V Mini Meeting

Dr. Richard Lightly, one of the Club Advisory Committee members, has taken on an extensive renovation of the fields and woods around Coniston/Kendal aimed at rejuvenating open spaces for birds/insect habitat with an emphasis on the eradication of invasive and planting of natives.   This exhibit highlighted that restoration project. It was a joint effort between the Conservation Committee and the Horticulture Committee. The intent of the exhibit was: Saving and Restoring the Coniston Woodland: Lessons learned from seven years of vine suppression, large invasive shrub removal and replanting a woodland with native trees.

Special thanks go to Dr. Richard Lighty for the documenting and researching the project, as well as Cecelia Habgood for all of the spectacular artwork.

Other Clubs in the Zone featured exhibits on other issues, such a pollinator habitat.

Garden of Solace

Take a moment to read this touching essay written by Margo Rabb in the New York Times this week about 25-year-old grief and a garden we have all madly fallen in love with.

Margo Rabb is an acclaimed novelist whose debut, Cures for Heartbreak, was hailed by critics and young readers alike. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Rumpus, Zoetrope: All-Story, Seventeen, Best New American Voices, New Stories from the South, and One Story, and have been broadcast on NPR. Margo grew up in Queens, New York, and has lived in Texas, Arizona, and the Midwest; she now lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.

Remember closing day for Chanticleer is fast approaching. The garden is open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The garden is also open on Friday evenings until 8:00 p.m. from May through Labor Day. Chanticleer will remain open until Sunday, November 3rd, 2019

Tony Avent Announces the Phase-out of Plant Delights Nursery

Tony Avent runs two enterprises out of what was once a hardscrabble tobacco farm 20 minutes south of Raleigh, N.C. The first, Plant Delights Nursery, will this year ship 120,000 novel and pricey ornamental plants to garden enthusiasts across the United States.  Avent became a well-known champion of off-the-wall plants with no obvious commonality except for his belief that connoisseurs would want them. 

The other endeavor is a botanical garden of Avent’s invention, filled with rare and unusual plants that the 62-year-old plantsman has collected on 80 expeditions in the States and 12 other countries. Supplementing those with plants from other collectors, he has amassed 26,000 species and varieties and has a collection greater than many public botanical gardens in the country. Juniper Level Botanic Garden is his way of preserving the biodiversity of garden-worthy plants at risk of being lost. It is also a botanical smorgasbord assembled to sate the insatiable: one man’s appetite for plants.

Juniper Level Botanic Garden is only open to the public eight weekends each year

Last year, he and his wife, Anita, announced that they were donating the botanical garden to North Carolina State University and planned to phase out the nursery as a large-scale enterprise (garden members will have access to some plants). The Avents are raising money for an endowment before the transition. Read more about his plans in a recent article in the Washington Post. 

Renovation of Wilmington’s Historic Rodney Square is Officially Underway

Ground was broken on September 9 for the $7 million renovation of Wilmington’s main public square, Rodney Square.

The city’s largest public square is suffering from deterioration because of deferred maintenance and needs an overhaul. This first phase of the renovation project is expected to be completed early next year. Rodney Square will get fountains, upgraded lighting, benches and tables, and new paving and plantings as a result of the facelift. The publicly and privately funded project is expected to cost between $6 million and $8 million. Officials say the renovations are intended to improve accessibility of the square and accommodate a wider range of smaller community events there.

Rodney Square is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an example of community planning, development and civic architecture.

The Delaware Transit Corporation is one of several public/private partners behind the project. Downtown Visions, the city of Wilmington and the Buccini/Pollin Group are also stakeholders.

“Many elements of the Wilmington community are committed to this restoration and the sustainability of the Rodney Square space,” said BPG President Rob Buccini. “We hope to combine a strong private side with the state and city interests in forming a Friends of Rodney Square organization.”

This is not the first time efforts have been made to revive Rodney Square.

In 1990, a similar group of government and private interests, led by the Garden Club of Wilmington, proposed the goal of restoring the square. Since that time, continuing changes and overuse have tarnished its overall condition. 

Phase One of the project, which is expected to cost $4 million, is scheduled to be finished early next year. A combination of state, city and private money will cover the project’s cost. DTC is investing $500,000. Contributions from the other partners and potential future partners through “Friends of Rodney Square,” have not been finalized.

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State and city officials joined business leaders to publicize the start of the renovation project of Rodney Square.

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Rodney Robinson and Geoff Anderson will give an update on Rodney Square at the Club’s October meeting. Go to Calendar for more details about the meeting.

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Renovation Plans for Wilmington’s Rodney Square

Saving the Monarch Butterfly

What’s Happening to the Monarch Butterfly?

The monarch butterfly migration is one of the most magnificent and intriguing of all natural phenomena. Monarchs migrate to Mexico each fall from the central and eastern United States and southern Canada to overwinter in the oyamel fir forests in mountains west of Mexico City. That is a more than 2,000 mile journey, flown by an insect weighing less than one-half of a gram. (By comparison, a penny weighs 2.5 grams.) In the 1990s, estimates of up to one billion monarchs made the epic flight each fall from the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada to Mexico, and more than one million monarchs from the western U.S. overwintered in forested groves on the California coast. Now, researchers and citizen scientists estimate that only about 56.5 million monarchs remain, representing a decline of more than 80% across North America.

Where Have All the Butterflies Gone?

The very existence of the eastern North American monarch migration is under immediate threat due to a number of causes: mining and illegal logging in Mexico are destroying the fir forests where the monarch overwinters; in the U.S., the loss of habitat due to development and land management practices are having widespread impacts; and in what may be the most damaging of all, chemically aided agriculture in the United States and Canada is killing both monarchs themselves and the host plants that are critical to their life cycle. Genetically modified seeds used in industrial agriculture, especially corn and soy, are engineered to withstand widespread application of the herbicide glyphosate (sold under several trade names, including Roundup), which is annihilating our native milkweed plants. This is catastrophic for monarchs, as they only lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Without milkweed, on which they lay their eggs and whose leaves exclusively feed their larvae (caterpillars), monarchs cannot survive.

What is being done

Read more about a new wildflower meadow at a Tennessee welcome center that is just one of many efforts to address the loss of pollinator habitat in this recent New York Times Opinion article.

Plants growing along I-65 near the Tennessee and Alabama border. Swath mowing allows wildflowers to bloom and attracts pollinators. Credit tWilliam DeShazer for The New York Times

How You Can Help

Here are some tips on how you can help to reverse the tide and stop the decline of these incredibly complex and wondrous butterflies.

1. Plant milkweed. There are three milkweed plants native to our region: common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). They are easy to grow and thrive in full sun, in a range of soil conditions. Learn more about milkweed

2. Grow nectar plants. Adult butterflies need nectar for food. Some great native nectar-producing plants to grow in your backyard are: asters, black-eyed susan, coreopsis, goldenrods, Joe-pye weed, purple coneflower, smooth oxeye, and wild bergamot.

3. Avoid herbicides and insecticides. Learn to love weeds in your lawn and forego weed killers. Avoid spraying pesticides whenever possible; pesticides kill good insects (like monarch caterpillars) as well as undesirable insects.

4. Choose your food wisely. Buy organic and non-GMO as much as possible. Conventionally grown vegetables and grains, especially corn, require the use of many herbicides.

5. Buffer your fields. If you have fields managed for hay production, create and maintain a buffer around the edges where milkweed and native nectar plants can grow. Learn more about mowing for monarchs

Source: The Brandywine Conservancy