Category: trees

Discover Nine Ways to Help Heal Earth at Upcoming Durham Garden Forum Lecture

On By durhammastergardenersIn Durham Garden Forum, Durham NC, ecology, Gardening information, gardening NC, how to improve soil, native plants, plant-microbial relationship, regenerative agriculture, renewable gardening, soil health, soil microbes, sustainability, sustainable gardening, sustanability, tree ecology, trees, Uncategorized, Upcoming gardening events

(Image credit: Cathy DeWitt CC BY 4.0; Seuss CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; Bruce Kirchoff CC BY 2.0)

Want to learn more about how you can have a positive impact our our environment? Join the Durham Garden Forum (DGF) on Tuesday, August 20, from 7:00-8:30 pm for an in-person lecture at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Dorris Duke Center, at 420 Anderson Street in Durham. Event parking is free.

This event is free to Durham Garden Forum members and $10 for non-members. Not a member? If you join now through the end of 2024, membership extends to the end of 2025.

Prior to the lecture, the DGF will host a participant Plant Swap from 6:00-7:00 pm. Bring a plant, take a plant, and come to connect with other plant-loving people.

2024 Keynote Presenter

We are living in a time of unprecedented environmental change. Every minute, we cut down nearly 30 football-fields worth of trees. Every year, we degrade and erode billions of tons of topsoil. We are depleting clean water sources. What can individuals do to slow these changes and perhaps begin to reverse them?

Matt Archibald, ISA Certified Master Arborist at Leaf & Limb, will deliver the forum’s annual keynote address titled “Nine Ways to Help Heal Earth.“ He’ll share plant-related strategies meant to restore our struggling, ever-changing planet. Learn how to preserve trees, build healthy soil, and choose native plants for a healthier ecology. You’ll leave with ideas to implement immediately to help address serious environmental issues.

Matt is a 10-year veteran in the tree industry. He discovered his passion in life when he started learning about trees and their ever-expanding universe of information. Identification and biology are two of the subjects Matt likes most, but soil, tree ecology, and fungi are also high on the list.

The Durham Garden Forum is an informal group that meets once a month to enrich gardening knowledge and skill.  Meetings are on the third Tuesday of the month from 7–8:30 pm.  Most meetings are via Zoom.  Members have access to a video library of presentations, and they also receive discounts at Durham Garden Center, and For Garden’s Sake, and Deep Roots Natives.

Durham Garden Forum (DGF) memberships cost $25 per year.  You can access the membership form here (scroll down to bottom).  If you are a DGF member, you will receive invitations to register for each month’s meeting. For new members joining now through the end of 2024, membership extends to the end of 2025.

Dates, topics, and presenters for upcoming DGF lectures include

October 15, 2024 “Easiest Houseplants Ever, With Style” with Tovah Martin, horticulturalist, author, freelance writer, photographer and lecturer

November 19, 2024 “Strengthening Communities Through Urban Gardening for Pollinators” with Stefanie Steele, NRCS Partner Biologist, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

December 17, 2024 “Cultivating A Sustainable Future: Cornell Botanic Gardens’ Native Lawn” with Todd Bittner, Director of Natural Areas, Cornell Botanic Gardens

January 21, 2025 “Vegetable Crop Production for Triangle Growers” with Michelle Wallace, Regional ANR Extension Educator, Northwest, Central state University Extension

February 18, 2025 “Carnivorous Plants” with Chris Liloia, curator of the Habitat Gardens at NC Botanical Gardens

Questions?  Contact durhamgardenforum@gmail.com.

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The Plant Festival Returns on April 6: Join Us!

On By durhammastergardenersIn Backyard Treasures Plant Sale 2024, Garden events, gardening, Gardening information, houseplants, Learn With Us, Natives, ornamental trees, Perennial, Plant Festival, Durham County, trees, Uncategorized

By Deandra Hill, NC State Master GardenerSM volunteer of Durham County

Plant Festival

Saturday, April 6, 2024

10:00 am – 1:00 pm

721 Foster Street, Durham, NC

https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/plant-festival-2024

Tennyson tells us that “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” It is indeed spring, and my thoughts have turned more than lightly to thoughts of the Plant Festival! 

Plant Festival team co-chair Lissa Lutz, excited to meet community partners and members at the inaugural event. (Image credit: Deandra Hill)
 

Actually, co-chairs  of the 2024 Plant Festival team, Wanda Crutchfield, Lissa Lutz, and I, along with many others, have been planning since winter to build on the success of last year’s inaugural event. We had an unexpectedly robust turn out despite having to move the event indoors at the last minute, as we discovered the wind did not intend to leave tents and tables in the same place that we set them!

High winds and rain did not discourage the community from joining us at Foster Street to meet with community partners and fellow Master GardenerSM volunteers to propagate our mission of providing research-based gardening information and advice to the public.

Plant Sale Offerings on Display

The 2024 Plant Festival will feature many of the plants offered the following week at the annual Backyard Treasures Plant Sale on April 13.1 The attendees are able to see the amazing plants our volunteers have been lovingly growing and tending. They are also able to ask experts about veggies and herbs, native plants, perennials, and houseplants and their needs. 

Last year, we partnered with community groups with whom we share similar interests: a number of community gardens, such as Briggs Avenue Community Garden, NC Central’s student garden, and Urban Community AgriNomics (UCAN), founded by former Durham County Extension Director Delphine Sellars. 

Plant Experts and Community Partners Answering Questions

(Left to right) Photos highlight our community partners’ involvement at the 2023 festival. A volunteer from Keep Durham Beautiful discussing composting basics; Durham Beekeepers volunteer delights attendees with information on bees; 4-H volunteers help kids make bouquets. (Image credit: Deandra Hill)

We had groups devoted to conservation, such as the NC Native Plant Society and Keep Durham Beautiful. Durham Beekeepers and Extension Master GardenerSM volunteers showed up to present information on keeping bees and backyard chickens. Not forgetting the children, we had 4-H and Durham Public Schools’ Hub Farm. 

Our volunteers represented the Extension Master GardenerSM program with tables about propagation, container gardening, and our very own demonstration garden, as well as being on hand to answer questions about gardening.

This year, we are lucky to feature many of the same community partners and plant pros at the Festival. In addition, we have experts providing information on veggie container gardening and using “green” pots to help lessen plastic waste.

Plant and Gardening Book Give-a-ways

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Well, at our 2023 inaugural event, the Plant Festival gave away 250 plants that represented the offerings from the Plant Sale, as well as free garden books welcome to anyone who attended! We will be returning again this year with a plant give-a-way and free books while supplies last.2  

This year we will also be offering free trees! We will be distributing 2-year-old oaks trees, locally grown at Panther Creek Forest Farm, in partnership with Keep Durham Beautiful. Durham community members will be able to take home and plant one of these keystone plants that play such a pivotal role in our ecosystem.

(Left to right, top to bottom) Just a few of the many plants that will be part of the Plant Festival give-a-way including tomatoes–several varieties (Solanum lycopersicum L.); paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysanthia); golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum); polka dot begonia (Begonia maculata); basil (Ocimum basilicum), and butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). (Image credit: Master GardenerSM volunteers of Durham County)

Community Representation at the Event

In conjunction with efforts of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, the Plant Festival team has worked diligently to increase the representation of our community partners to include groups that match the faces and demographics that make up our community.

To that end, we reached out to community organizations in the Native American, Black, and Latino communities. We are excited to also be including El Futuro, the Black Farmers’ Market, and NC A&T along with our returning community partners. We may even have a couple more new faces by the time this blog is posted. This work can seem slow, but we have high hopes to keep reaching out and extending our figurative hands to more groups. 

So here’s to a sunny and breezy (but not windy!) day this April 6. We hope to see your smiling face in the crowd. 

To see a full list of plants you will see at the Plant Festival along with a full list of exhibitors and educators who will be there, check out this link:

https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/plant-festival-2024

Notes

1–For additional information on the upcoming Backyard Treasures Plant Sale on April 13, including photos and lists of plants available for purchase, visit the online site. https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org.

2–The first 250 attendees to the Plant Festival will receive a ticket for a free plant with a time, starting at 11:00 am. Check out all the plant offerings before 11:00 am, and when your time slot comes up, trade your ticket for one of the plants of your choice. Time slots are every 15 minutes between 11:00 and 12:30, and you must be present to claim your plant. One ticket per person, please.

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