The New England Botanical Club will hold its December meeting on December 3 at 7 pm at Haller Lecture Hall at Harvard University, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge. Heather McCargo, Founder and Former Executive Director, The Wild Seed Project in North Yarmouth, Maine, will speak on the Wild Seed Project: Grassroots Seed Propagation of New England Native Plants. Native plants are beautiful, important for our local ecosystems, and do not need the high nutrient and water inputs of commonly cultivated plants. In this presentation, Heather covers the many reasons we all should care about our region’s native flora and the importance of bringing these native plants back into our gardens and developed landscapes. She also discusses current native plant trends and issues in the nursery trade (including cloning and the loss of genetic diversity), and explains how we all can support our native flora by planting seed-grown native plants. The meeting is free and open to the public.
The goal of Wild Seed Project is to build awareness of the vital importance of native plants and to provide people with the tools to restore biodiversity in their own communities. The organization equips community members, public officials and municipalities, and land-holding individuals and organizations – from farmers to land trusts – with the skills and resources they need to collectively repopulate landscapes with native plants that expand wildlife habitat, support biodiversity, and build climate resilience.
