2025 Year in Review

by Marsha Gebhardt, President, St. Louis Chapter

It is with pleasure and pride that I share some details of the excellent work by members of the Wild Ones St. Louis Chapter in 2025.  Connecting people and native plants for a healthy planet.

Chapter Leadership

In November the following board members were re-elected:

  • Dawn Weber – Vice-President and Technology
  • Penny Holtzmann – Treasurer
  • Rene Benage – Membership and Plant Sale Coordinator
  • Brenda Adams – Member-at-large and Chairperson, Program Committee

Charlie Carey, recent creator of two impactful videos, was elected as a new Board Member-at-Large, replacing Kate Lovelady who is stepping down.

We thank Kate Lovelady for her years of service on the Board of Directors and her work with the Mentoring Program and the Seed Pod Program.  She will continue to oversee these programs until successors are in place.

The chapter leadership team grew in 2025 with a significant increase in committee membership.  The chapter has several committees where members can share their time and expertise to help our chapter educate and inspire the St. Louis region about native plants.  In addition, many members have made a difference in their local communities on their own to support native landscaping. 

You can find out more about the chapter’s committee-based volunteer opportunities at:  Volunteering is a win-win!  – Wild Ones St. Louis.  To learn more about chapter board members, committee chairs and coordinators, check out this link on our website: https://stlwildones.org/whos-who/

Membership (Renee’ Benage, Membership Chair)

  • Membership in 2025 totaled 468 households, with about 530 individual members. This compares with 223 households in 2020.  Note: Our membership retention rate of about 77% is most impressive to National.
  • The growth in membership has increased the amount of people power and financial resources which we use to create local mission-driven programming.
  • Use the Contact Us page to contact Renee’ with questions about membership.

Budget (Penny Holtzmann, Treasurer)

  • Primary sources of income:
    • Membership dues reimbursement (@ $9+ per membership) – more than $4,000.   (The remainder of fees from each membership, more than $11,000, goes to fund the national advocacy and education efforts, and the chapter support functions of Wild Ones National.)
    • Plant sale (at Shaw Nature Reserve) has provided $4,000+ in recent years, but the 2025 sale was cancelled due to weather.
    • Endowment – In September 2024 we received a donation from the estate of Cynthia Brown, a previous member of our chapter who had moved to another state.  Use of the $10,000 is restricted to education.  We have spent $5,166, mostly on public garden grants, and have $4,834 remaining.
    • Enterprise grant – Wild Ones St Louis member Sara McClenning, who is employed with Enterprise Mobility, recommended our chapter to receive a charity grant.  Enterprise approved her choice and granted us $1000 in December 2024.  Sara submitted a second grant, which was awarded and we expect to receive the $2000 in the coming months. 
    • Direct contributions, donations – The chapter is also grateful to have received $1,796 in contributions/donations this year; $1,000 of it from Laura Smith.
  • Primary budgeted expenditures:
    • Donations/Sponsorships
      • Shaw Nature Reserve, Native Plant School – $2,000
      • GrowNative! (Missouri Prairie Foundation) Gold Sponsorship – $2,000
      • Bring Conservation Home (St. Louis Audubon Society) Goldenrod Sponsorship – $1,500
      • Great Rivers Environmental Law Center – $500
    • Grants – $4,000 is budgeted.
    • Educational/tabling brochures, publications – $2,000

Chapter Programming (Brenda Adams, Program Chair)

  • Winter Speaker Series – January, February, March.  –  See summaries of the knowledge shared at each event https://stlwildones.org/?s=speaker+series 
  • Garden Gatherings – April through October (Wednesday PM and Saturday AM) – Check out each month’s highlights, written by member Donna Short.
  • November Seed Exchange and Annual Meeting – Highlights from this well-attended event are found on the same page.

Internet Presence (Dawn Weber, Vice President and Technology)

  • Email subscribers – 1543 people currently subscribe to the Read All About It monthly newsletter, which is edited by Donna Short.  This is up from 1330 in January.
  • Facebook followers – 3100, up from 1940 in 2022. 
  • YouTube channel followers  https://www.youtube.com/@wildonesst.louischapter2199) – 673 up from 48 in 2022     Two major contributions have added to this increase:
    • This Year in Our Native Gardens – monthly series by Besa Schweitzer
    • Bring Nature Home and A Suburban Serengeti – Videos by newly elected board member Charlie Carey, which each brought 7,000+ views from across the country and around the world.

Partnerships and Projects

  • Partners for Native Landscaping (PNL)
    • The annual Partners for Native Landscaping webinar series was extended into the fall for the first time, attracting just over 4,200 total views.
    • The PNL Workshop had Dr. Heather Holm as the keynote presenter and attracted about 250 participants. 
  • St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour
    • Produced annually through a partnership of this chapter and St. Louis Audubon Society’s BCH (Bring Conservation Home).
    • In 2025 nine homes were on the Tour in Webster Groves.
  • Landscape Challenge – annual front yard makeover competitive award, coordinated by Erin Goss.
  • St. Louis Community College at Meramec
    • St. Louis Community College at Meramec, Horticulture Program is an important part of our local native plant community.  Native plant education is woven into many of the classes and is featured in Native Landscaping Practices. When they celebrated the opening of a new greenhouse and state-of-the-art labs we wanted to show our support by becoming a Birch Level Sponsor with a donation of $500. 
  • Plant Tag ID Project, in conjunction with Grow Native and coordinated by Sue Leahy.
  • There are now plant tags available for almost 300 species, up from 50 when the project was launched in 2022. This year 142 orders were filled, totaling almost 3,500 tags, from 21 states with the majority being from Missouri.
    • A store is available on the chapter website, through which tags can be purchased.

Local Emphasis in 2025

  • Our membership comes from a large area including St. Louis City, St. Louis County and beyond.  Fortunately, through the additions of the active St. Charles Area Chapter and Southwest Illinois Chapter, local needs and interests are being well-met.
  • In 2025 the St. Louis Chapter members continued to work hard to bring resources and programming to local neighborhoods and municipalities.
    • Grants – (Kathy Bildner, Grants Chair) A maximum of $500 worth of plants available for non-profit organizations. See descriptions of the eight non-profit grants awarded in 2025.  https://stlwildones.org/grants/past-grant-awards/
    • Speakers Bureau – (Sue Leahy, Outreach Chair) 14 in-person presentations were given by 4 speakers on 7 topics.
    • Tabling Events – (Sue Leahy, Outreach Chair) 29 events were covered by 41 different volunteers, reaching about 2,500 people.
    • Advocacy – (Pam Hass, Advocacy Committee Chair) The calls to action by the newly established Advocacy Committee made impacts by encouraging chapter members to contact their local representatives about: 
      • Repeal of the native landscaping ban in St. Louis County
      • Support for the new native landscaping revisions in St. Louis City
      • Support for the Maryland Heights meadow scaping proposal 
    • Mentorship Program – (Kate Lovelady, program creator and coordinator) This program, piloted in 2022, saw growth in the program, with 27 mentee applications and 19 mentor applications in 2025.
    • Seed Pods – (Kate Lovelady, Seed Pod Leadership Team coordinator) There are 8 seedpods active in Kirkwood, Ferguson, Webster Groves, Webster Gardens, Cortex, Dogtown, Ballwin, and Grantwood Village. The seedpods are active to different extents, with some being informal neighbor groups, others sponsoring public workshops and events, others caring for neighborhood gardens, etc. The sizes vary from a few people organizing local projects to groups of a dozen or more that gather regularly.

Leaders meet by zoom monthly with a break in winter. The meetings have been helpful for sharing ideas and resources and keeping up motivation.

Wild Ones St. Louis Chapter continues to be proud to be a major player in the St. Louis region’s work that supports the Wild Ones mission: Healing the Earth one yard at a time!

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