2020 State of the Chapter: Furthering the Wild Ones Mission During the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Marsha Gebhardt   
President, Wild Ones St. Louis Chapter  

Wow!!  How many of us have said that, or something much harsher, in 2020?! 

Last February I posted my State of the Chapter Report about 2019, entitled Expecting an Outstanding 2020.  At that time, no one expected that a pandemic would alter virtually every aspect of our lives.  The Wild Ones St. Louis Board and our Grants and Program chairpersons scurried to think and plan ways to provide as much as possible for our members and subscribers; despite the limitations necessary to keep people safe.   

I am proud to share this State of the Chapter Report, which includes some of our successful adaptations to the unique challenges of 2020. 

Wild Ones St. Louis members’ national impact

Susie Van de Riet – Our board submitted Susie Van de Riet’s name when Wild Ones National asked for our recommendation for a landscape designer.

  • The grant project she contributed to is the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust grant. It funded a new Wild Ones publication to promote the benefits and ways to create and maintain attractive native landscapes around a home. The project team chose Landscape Designers for six ecoregions around Chattanooga, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Toledo, and the Twin Cities. Garden designs were prepared with regional and yard-specific growing conditions in mind. In April the six garden plans will become online resources for Wild Ones members, complete with lists of local native species of trees, shrubs, forbs and grasses used. A booklet of these solicited designs will be made available to chapters to be shared at programs, outreach and plant sales.
  • Susie’s business, St. Louis Native Plants, is our chapter’s only business member. More importantly she has long been an active and well-respected native plant landscaper and speaker in the St. Louis region.  Susie’s article, Gardening for Good Bugs was featured in the Wild Ones 2020 Spring Journal.  She presented Fighting the Bad Bugs with the Good Bugs at our chapter’s March 2019, Winter Speaker Series event.

James Faupel –  James was interviewed on the Nature Revisited podcast. The title was “An Urban Ecologist”. He was described as “part of a growing movement championing the ecological benefits of cultivating native plant species”. In this podcast he provided a strong voice for the native landscaping movement, and for the movement in the St. Louis region, specifically. He explained the why of native plants clearly, calmly and without judgement. He inspired listeners by including specifics to back up the urgency and the reasons for hope. James was vice president for our chapter for several years, until he had to resign due to his increased workload around native landscape restoration at the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center.   

Programing/Gatherings

Susan Orr, Program Chair

Despite COVID-19 restrictions, our average attendance each month for in-person events was 68 members.  This compares with averages of 57 members in 2019 and 35 members in 2016.

Winter Speaker Series

These events were held at the Brentwood Community Center, and again had impressive attendance:

Looking toward 2021 – The board, along with Program Chair Susan Orr, decided to provide our scheduled Winter Speaker Series via Zoom. Members will be given the link to attend each event.  They will occur on the second Wednesday in January, February and March.

Yard Tours

Due to concerns about COVID-19 contagion, our first two yard tours were shared via blog posts vs the planned on-site visits:

We managed to safely manage our outdoor events. We invited only members, to keep attendance down.  We omitted a firm start time and the introductory gathering; instead we urged folks to come any time during the scheduled time period and sent preview info about the garden(s) along with the reminder of the event.  Everyone carefully followed the safety rules of mask-wearing and social distancing.  While we couldn’t see the broad smiles on the many faces, we could all hear in voices and words the joy around being able to share our knowledge and enthusiasm despite the pandemic

Click on the link to see the Gathering highlights 

Looking toward 2021 – Garden Gatherings will be the new name for our April through October events. We got the idea from our sister chapter, Wild Ones St. Charles Area.  We anticipate we will operate them just as we did in 2020.

Potluck and Seed Exchange

  • This annual November event was cancelled due to Covid-19.

Membership

Fran Class, Membership Chair

Still growing! – This year our membership has stayed above 200, reaching 225 in the third quarter! Twenty-seven new people joined our chapter in the first five months.  This is particularly impressive because, due to COVID-19 cautions, we haven’t been able to provide the kinds of activities that often introduce us to new folks: tabling events and opening our monthly Gatherings to all of our 900+ website subscribers.

I think the continuing increase in memberships is due to several things: efforts by our regional network of organizations with shared missions, our excellent website and blog post contributors, and maybe most importantly our members’ sharing of information and inspiration with their neighbors, family and friends. Also…the movement is intensifying locally, regionally and nationally!

Web presence

Dawn Weber, Webmaster

Another indicator of growing interest in native plant landscaping, is the fact that our subscriber list for website updates and gatherings reached 900 in June and is close to 1,000.  This echoes some of the earlier comments that our message is still spreading, despite the chapter’s scale back in events. 

Our Facebook page has more than 1,300 followers.  One main goal this year of the Facebook page was to share the online events of like-minded organizations, taking advantage of the increase in online speaker events to broaden our perspective on the native plant movement in other areas of the country. Because of the often short timeframe between learning about an event and the event taking place, this was the best way for us to spread that information quickly and as timely as it could be. 

Budget

Penny Holtzmann, Treasurer

  • Our 2020 Budget planned for expenditures of $4000 over income. Instead, it turned out that our income was $64 over expenditures. Our 2020 ending balance was $127 more than our 2019 ending balance.
  • Income was $1,177 less than budgeted. We had somewhat reduced profits from our annual plant sale and none from the cancelled St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour.  However, we had more income than expected through our portion ($10) of each member’s dues.
  • Expenses were $5,342 lower than budgeted. This was in large part due to fewer garden grant applications from schools and other non-profit organizations.  We again donated $1,500 to Shaw Nature Reserve to continue our support of the Native Plant School, and $1,000 to support the activities of GrowNative! (Missouri Prairie Foundation).
Annual Plant Sale

Plant Sale Committee: Chair, Dawn Weber with Susan Burk and Sue Leahy

In recent years, our chapter has earned the bulk of our income, about $4000, from our plant sale at Shaw Nature Reserve’s Wildflower Market in May.

Adaptation – Because the SNR sale was pre-order only this year, we held our own.

Susan Burk suggested the first sale, at her home, because she had grown hundreds of seedlings over the winter with the intention of selling them at our tabling events. Members were invited to ‘shop’ and make donations for their ‘purchases’. Proceeds were $1,500.  The Board voted to keep 50% and return 50% to Susan to reimburse her for supplies.

  • Sue Leahy agreed to host our second sale. Several members donated plants for this sale.  These were added to 10 flats that the chapter had purchased for a cancelled event.  Proceeds were over $2,700!
  • Our total income was about $3,062; impressively close to our approximately $4,000 profit from our SNR sale.
  • We also informed subscribers to our website about the resources in the region. Help! My plant sale was cancelled   

Looking toward 2021 – We will again do our own plant sale because SNR will again do pre-order and pick-up only. (We believe a primary goal of participating in that sale has been education.)  In 2021 our sale will be in late April and only members will be notified.

Grants

Kathy Bildner, Committee Chair

Understandably, there has been a reduction in grant applications during COVID-19. We did not anticipate a typical number of applications from schools in the 2020-2021 school year.  Total paid was $1,498, of the $4,000 allocated.

  • Friends of Ferguson Farmers’ Market – $464
    28 Suburban Ave., Ferguson MO 63135
  • Eliot Chapel – $300 (On hold due to Covid)
    100 South Taylor Avenue, Kirkwood MO 63122
  • Rosati-Kain High School – $450 (On hold due to Covid)
    4389 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis MO 63108
  • Ames School – Old North Butterfly Garden – $250
    1307 St. Louis Avenue, St. Louis MO 63106 –
  • Northwest Sports Complex Park – $300
    4900 Byrnesville Road, House Springs MO 63051
  • Jefferson Elementary School Rain garden – $132.50
    4315 Cardwell, St. Louis MO 63122
  • Pierremont Elementary School garden – $500
    1215 Dauphin Ln., Ballwin MO 63011

Partnerships and Projects

Partners for Native Landscaping Workshop (PNL)

    • Our annual workshop quickly sold out, in large part due to having Doug Tallamy as the keynote speaker. During the day-long workshop on Saturday, March 7, Doug said this: “There is good work going on in other cities and states.  But in terms of a single city group, I don’t think anybody comes close to St. Louis.  And you’ve been doing it a long time.  There are so many leaders that it was hard to get to my talk because of all the sponsors and partners to be acknowledged.”
    • Looking toward 2021 – The Partners have decided to provide a series of virtual presentations in late winter or early spring! More details in January.

Annual St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour

  • In early April the Tour Committee, consisting of members from Wild Ones St. Louis and St. Louis Audubon, decided to cancel the in-person Tour. There were so many unknowns at the time, due to Covid-19.  We considered doing virtual tours of some of the landscapes, but the logistics seemed formidable and perhaps not worth the effort.
  • Looking toward 2021 – The committee expects to reinstate the Tour in June of 2021. 
Landscape Challenge 

Sue Leahy, Landscape Challenge Chair

  • In 2020 GrowNative! offered to purchase plants for two Landscape Challenge front yard makeovers.
  • The St. Louis Chapter winner was 15-year-old Ryan Cutrell; our youngest member!
  • The St. Charles Area Chapter winners are active members Steve and Patty Berry. (The Berry’s have chosen to be members of both chapters!)
  • This year Sue helped the St. Charles Area Chapter learn the process. They plan to take a stronger role in 2021.

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