Gardening with Nature at the Garden Club

This week I spoke to my first ladies garden club. I was a bit worried about how receptive they would be to my presentation called Gardening with Nature that I created* just for this group. My idea was that if it went well, I would have a presentation to give to other garden clubs. My contact at the club reassured me the ladies would be open to listening to a presentation about habitat gardening.

It was exciting to give a presentation to a group of gardeners who didn't know who Doug Tallamy was and were receptive and open to learning more about an ecologically focused gardening approach.

The Garden Club of Senoia is in a small and growing town called Senoia about 40 miles South of Atlanta, famous now because the Walking Dead was filmed there. (The town is pronounced sun.oy although I keep pronouncing it sun.oya!) I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I arrived, everyone couldn’t have been more lovely and welcoming.

Kimberly Peacock and Julie Schafer, the president and co-Vice President of the club graciously welcomed me to be the guest speaker at their monthly meeting.

It was obvious the hospitality committee had worked hard to make the meeting space more festive and special with vintage linens, silk flower bouquets, and a classic Southern light lunch of cucumber pimento cheese bits, quiche, salads, cucumber sandwiches, and cups of pink champagne cake treats. They also had the cutest iced-tea bar with simple syrup, fruit purees, and lemonade. There were cloth napkins and silverware which was a nice environmental touch.

Everything about the luncheon before I spoke was lovely!

The club’s core mission as a non-profit organization is the beautification of the town which is such a picture-perfect small town that it’s been the backdrop for a host of movies and series over the years. The club is five years old but has a strong sense of time and place and feels like it’s always existed in this community. I appreciate the power of creating a space for a women centered group to come together to connect socially and bond over improving the local community. Georgia has a deep garden club history - the first garden club in the US was in Athens, Georgia. The Garden Club of Senoia is following the tradition of ambitiously bringing beauty and repairing the world where they live. Like most garden clubs, they are rooted in traditional ornamental horticulture and their typical educational luncheon presentations include garden design, Japanese floral design, tablescaping, growing roses, flower arranging, making seasonal wreaths, botanical photography, and watercolor flower painting.

Senoia seems to be the epitome of a small town with the value of community service included!

I was still a bit nervous because even though I worked to soften the message, it’s still change oriented and a bit different from a luncheon gardening talk. I was mindful about the benefits of the historical and emotional connection we all have to traditional gardens and didn’t want to offend anyone by suggesting they just rip out their flower beds filled with heirloom peonies, irises and roses or get rid of their lawns altogether like I’ve done. (My Essential Elements of a Habitat Yard presentation is more directive and is oriented towards folks who are already true believers of an ecological landscaping approach)

Restoring nature where we live is a process and not a directive. This slide is NOT from the one for the garden club but from a more activist presentation I've created for folks who are already on the path of rewilding their yards and want more information and tools about the how and why.

Driving around I saw some newer developments and imagine some members might also have HOA restrictions and not be able to have rewilded yards.

I would imagine this new development in Senoia has an HOA that doesn't allow rewildling the front yard.

The ecological imperative in Gardening with Nature was through the lens of adding habitat for wildlife and along the lines of making incremental changes to add habitat support. Some of the ways mentioned included reducing the lawn; adding native plants; not using pesticides; adding a water source; reducing ALAN (artificial lights at night); leaving the leaves; and adding a brush pile.

The slides for the Gardening with Nature presentation helped frame ways to support habitat for wildlife including the contribution pesticides have made to the 90% population decline in the American bumblebee in the last 20 years.

As a bonus outreach effort, I also donated two of Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home books as door prizes (one was generously donated to Nurture Native Nature for this purpose)

I grabbed a bunch of books off my bookshelf to show just some of the informational and inspirational books available to learn more...and put them with the Doug Tallamy books I donated for door prizes.

Gardeners are already connected to nature in many ways and the Garden Club of Senoia is no exception. In addition to an appreciation for historic garden preservation the club also has a stated commitment to encourage community awareness about the conservation of local natural resources and to protect an environment that will encourage wildlife. These core values of protecting nature and appreciating wildlife leaves space for making more room for nature in home landscapes and even in the multiple public spaces this group is beautifying. (In the video I explain a little about connecting wildlife to native plants - I'm still counting the number of times I've given presentations on my fingers - so I'm still not casual when I speak)

I can empathize with where traditional gardeners might be coming from when they hear my message because I’ve been a gardener all my life. I understand all too well the process of moving from thinking about plants in an ornamental context to seeing them from a functional perspective. I still have one small pot of lily of the valley from my mom’s home in Massachusetts because it reminds me of my grandmother who had a bed of them in her extensive rock garden. Lily of the valley is an invasive species, though, so I would never plant it in the ground or encourage planting it. Yet, seeing and smelling just one flower stalk a year blooming in that pot brings back a flood of memories, so I understand how hard it might be for a gardener to make a paradigm shift to view gardening in a whole new way.

I have an emotional gardening connection to Lily of the valley so I understand how gardeners become attached to some of the plants in their garden.

Once I better understood the connection between plants and wildlife as part of a natural system and the power I had to support or harm it, my journey from non-native plants to native plants that welcome wildlife was easier. In my talk I mentioned the need to have 70% native plants as habitat support for birds, which leaves plenty of room to have 30% of the landscape filled with non-native plants. I also suggested adding even one oak to the yard to support 447 moth and butterfly species in most of Georgia. Moving the needle towards a nature centered yard is still a process that everyone does in their own way. Even small steps can make a difference.

My goal when speaking is to give as much information as possible and let folks process it in their own way.

The garden club ladies politely thanked me, and a few came up to speak with me afterwards. One woman made a great connection around not using reclaimed wood to make bluebird boxes because I explained how pressurized wood before 2003 was treated with cancer causing pesticides called CCAs. A young woman told me as a gardener she can get behind native plants because it’s a whole new category of plants to explore – a talking point I’ll use in the future! I also had a refreshing chat with a young mom who is all about suburban homesteading and does mainly vegetable garden consulting. She agreed with the importance of restoring habitat where we live so children now will have a healthier future. It was an encouraging day, and I hope what I said resonated enough so there’s a few more gardeners in Senoia visiting the local native plant nursery (which is Nearly Native Nursery about 9 miles away) and maybe thinking in a different way about pesticide usage.

I know I sound like a broken record but the decisions we make now will affect future generations. The future is now.

*I need to give a shout out to my daughter Emilia the graphic designer who took my content, photos, and videos and turned them into a creatively designed professional presentation. She also revamped my website to make it more user friendly and cohesive. As a mom, I'm proud and in awe of her talent, but if she wasn’t my daughter, she’d still be my first choice for a graphic designer! She is a versatile artist, a committed team member, passionate leader, and curious learner who has explored every facet of design she can get her hands on, from printed and published works to branding, presentations, website design, packaging, social media, and more. She is also open for contract work – to request a copy of her resume or for professional inquiries, e-mail her at emilia.markson@gmail.com or you can also find her on LinkedIn by clicking here.

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