Hello,

As the days grow longer and temperatures trend upward, our thoughts turn to the garden and to the plants emerging from their dormancy. This week we feature a case study about how one microhabitat program in our network employs an innovative community-supported model to supply ecotypic native plants to program participants who, like us, eagerly await the growing season. We also draw your attention to two more resources to hold you over until spring: a magazine with verdant stories from around the world, and a new map of our program directory. Do you know of other microhabitat programs that could be included? Please let us know.

Let’s keep learning and growing together!

Tom & Tripti

CASE STUDY:

Innovations in Creating Responsive Native Plant Markets:
A Community Supported Model

Native plants are the building blocks of microhabitat programs. However, reliable access to native plants, particularly of local genotype, can be challenging. At base, supply and demand are often not aligned, and do not always encompass what is needed to restore biodiversity in its many forms. This may be particularly true in small and isolated communities where the cultivation of plants of local genotype by commercial entities is not commercially viable.

Here we explore an innovative solution devised by Natural Neighbors, a microhabitat program of Martha’s Vineyard-based BiodiversityWorks, in partnership with Polly Hill Arboretum, a local nonprofit, to solve this problem.

Drawing on the Community Supported Agriculture model, this initiative offers Natural Neighbors participants access to plant packs, at cost, to suit specific yard conditions that are determined during site visits. Program participants purchase shares of the plant packs ahead of the season. While the sale price of plants is subsidized, the model is finding important ancillary benefits: It is mitigating risks for the plant producer, offering more inclusive access to the program and plants, driving popularity of the program and support to both organizations, and increasing the diversity of plants that are being introduced into yards.

This case study is part of a series of written resource materials that Village and Wilderness is developing to share lessons and best-practices across existing and emerging microhabitat programs.

MAGAZINE AND ESSAY:

Rewilding Magazine

Check out Rewilding, a wonderful magazine that aims to build “a community of storytelling about rewilding in Canada and the world.” We were particularly drawn to this essay by US-based author and ecological landscape designer Ben Vogt: “Why wildlife gardeners need to become garden designers ASAP”. It underscores the importance of incorporating intentional design and management principles into naturalized landscaping, so that they bring more people along via a “bridge” between ecological and traditional gardening.

ONLINE TOOL:

Map Of Microhabitat Programs

Over the past year, we have been raking the web, research papers and other sources to find microhabitat programs that provide in-person support and site-specific recommendations to program participants. We have located 25 programs to date, enough listings, we figured, to warrant a cartographic depiction of program locations. Do you know other programs that should be included in the map and directory? Please refer them to us at info@villageandwilderness.org. We would love to learn more about them.

CONFERENCES:

What are your Favorite Conferences and Professional Gatherings?

Help us compile and curate a list of high-quality conferences (in-person and virtual) that microhabitat program practitioners could benefit from attending. Send us your top recommendations for events that are great for learning, sharing, networking and, potentially, fund raising.

What is a “Microhabitat Program”?

Microhabitat programs restore ecosystem function in the fragmented landscape be it for people or biodiversity or both. Examples include community-scale efforts to create backyard habitats, bioswales in urban areas, pollinator patches in agricultural areas and more.

Please share this newsletter with anyone who might be interested.
Have thoughts, ideas or feedback for us? Get in touch at info@villageandwilderness.org

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We help community-based organizations invent, share and grow replicable, climate adaptation solutions. Our flagship project is the Microhabitat Program Incubator.