October Conservation Corner

The Downtown Greens Fall Native Plant sale was a great success! Now we will take our leftover large potted plants and start the Great Conversion-ing!

This will look like a lot of weeding and planting native groundcover with herbaceous perennial forbs in our garden beds.

Our focus moving forward with the Downtown Campus ornamental garden beds is the Dr. Doug Tallamy Homegrown National Park method of packing in diverse native keystone species and using (leaving) a couple ornamental plants here and there; because our banana trees are fun, okay? However, we know now that some plants can help our local environment and ecosystems, and some plants can harm them.

Khalilah and Em have identified and selected the plants that can stay, and have placed a bounty on every invasive plant population in their sights, and then it's off to the races.

Any blank space that arises in their wake will be filled with a native plant that suits that area the best - right plant, right place! Our leftover violets will be used as living mulch in just about every bed, our Solidago and Rudbeckias will join others in the Upper Garden's hillside meadow, and the more shade-loving mistflowers will join the Lobelia in the Lower Garden.

These plants will also be joined by several other species donated to the nursery such as swamp milkweed, rattlesnake master, and more that we hope to add to our inventory come Spring 2027... so, keep an eye out for what's to come!