Re: Native Plant Rescue

**l*@juno.com**

Hi Peter,

My stint in Cherokee ran from 1972 through 1978; Asheville's biggest
claim to fame was that you could get your car fixed at Sears. The
Biltmore Estate was closed to the public because it was in such
disrepair. The big plant scavenger hunt in the mountains was always for
ginseng. I know there have been drastic changes since then. 

I'm quite a bit north of the Pine Barrens, in Sussex County. In the last
two years, there have been stories in my local paper about cranberry
farmers overstepping the bounds of their permits and the like, but the
most egregious assaults have come from the building lobby, which is
trying to convince the legislature that there just isn't enough land in
South Jersey and that some new towns should be built inside the protected
area in order to accommodate them. 

New Jersey is run by the building industry and those towns in the North
that are outside the Highlands protection area have targets on their
foreheads. One of those would be my town. We have an activist
Environmental Commission, which I chair but like many, we first had to
apply triage to development proposals before we could turn our attention
to educating other township officials about such things as habitat and
rare plant communities.

I see native plants as the next big trend here. Ordinary people are very
concerned and want us to post pictures of invasives on the town web site.
We have two Master Gardeners on the Environmental Commission and a third
is the wife of our Planning Board Chair. Our local MG group will meet in
January to form a separate sub-group devoted just to native plants. I
already received a positive response to the idea of a plant rescue group.

Peter, please contact me offline if you come up this way. Andover
Township has an abundance of limestone fens, some on property protected
by The Nature Conservancy and there are globally rare habitats here.

Regards,

Lois J. de Vries
PO Box 125
Lafayette, NJ 07848
973-383-0497; Visit http://loisdevries.blogspot.com

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:14:26 -0500 "The Wild Gardener"
<thewildgardener@earthlink.net> writes:
> Lois: Down here in the mountains around Asheville, we've been out 
> saving 
> plants--to my own knowledge--some fifteen years. My books on native 
> plants 
> continue to sell and I lecture (for whatever the specific group can 
> afford) 
> on growing and preserving native plants. The local Botanical Gardens 
> at 
> Asheville and the bigger North Carolina Arboretum, not to mention 
> all the 
> Master Gardeners, answer calls whenever land is up for 
> development--which 
> now seems to be all the time. The NPS actually impregnates 
> unspecified 
> collections of galax and other rare medicinals with fluorescent 
> dyes. And 
> the days of collecting, then selling wild orchids only happens these 
> days in 
> Hendersonville. Out biggest battle is the fight between craftspeople 
> who 
> dote on Japanese honeysuckle and the preservationists, like the rest 
> of us, 
> who want it outlawed forever.
> What's happening with the Pine Barrens?
> Regards, Peter
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <loisdan@juno.com>
> To: <gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 5:57 PM
> Subject: [GWL] Native Plant Rescue
> 
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I thought some of you who are Master Gardeners, or otherwise 
> involved
> > with your local extension service, might be interested in this 
> article
> > 
>
<http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20071230/NEWS/712300306/1018/SERVICE
> > S03/NEWS/Rescuing_native_plants>. As a former resident of the 
> Great
> > Smokies in North Carolina, I'm glad to see that some people are 
> taking
> > action before it is too late.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Lois de Vries
> > Visit http://loisdevries.blogspot.com
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