by Susan Leahy Board member-at-Large and Landscape Challenge Chair
On Sunday, May 7, volunteers gathered to plant the front yard of Laura Arthur, the Landscape Challenge winner for 2023. She opted to supplement the grant award so her entire front yard could be planted. She lives in the North Hampton neighborhood near Tower Grove Park. This area is one in which natives are starting to strongly take hold. Her neighbors have already expressed great interest in her garden.
Laura grew up in rural South Carolina where she spent a lot of time playing in the woods and a creek. She has a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Wofford College. She was fortunate enough to spend a semester abroad in Australia learning about rainforest and reef ecology.
She came to St. Louis in 2013 to study genetics at Washington University. Laura says she has found a great community of friends in St. Louis. Here she met her future husband, Andrew, found a house in the North Hampton neighborhood and was able to indulge her love of native plant gardening. She is currently a scientist at a biotechnology company where she studies cells of the immune system as a treatment for cancer. Her leisure time is spent learning more about native plants and St. Louis history and propagating native seeds.
Erin Goss, Native Plant Initiative Coordinator at Shaw Nature Reserve and a Wild Ones member, was the landscape designer for this project.
The site is full sun, with clay soil, and included plants such as
- Gray goldenrod
- Sideoats grama
- Western sunflower
- Purple penstemon
- Slender mountain mint
- Pale purple coneflower
- Prairie junegrass
- Western prairie aster
- Coral bells
- Calamint
- Thread-leaf bluestar
- Purple love grass
- Virginia bluebell
- Downy phlox
- Lanceleaf coreopsis
- Little bluestem
We look forwarding to visiting Laura’s landscape as a future Garden Gathering!
