A Family Affair
Ana Grace Schactman’s mother, Pat Grace, was one of the original Wild Ones St Louis chapter members. Ana joined her mother at the second meeting. Pat was a huge influence on Ana’s love of nature, because after Pat joined the Webster Groves Nature Study Society in 1954, she would take her five children to the woods as often as she could. “Mom would plunk us down in a creek so we could watch tadpoles and crawdads and find fossils in the gravel, while she would watch birds in the trees above.” Ana spent a lot of time exploring the wooded lot next door and playing in Shady Creek near her home. Ana says, “It was precious to have a little woods and wildflowers around. Growing up with the sound of birds was very calming.”
In the early days of Wild Ones, members would go to the annual meeting together. On the way to the Ann Arbor, Michigan meeting, Scott Woodbury brought walkie-talkies to communicate between cars. “The group in the first car tried identifying plants at 70 miles an hour and relaying to the second car, and we ended up laughing for miles.” Ana remembers the fun of Wild Ones being a new and close-knit group. “There was so much to learn from each other.”
Some of the early Wild One’s meetings involved doing a chore together. At one February meeting, Scott showed them how to dig out a blackjack oak that had volunteered in Ana’s front yard. They wrapped the roots, then carried and planted it in the backyard. At another February meeting at Ana’s little house, twenty-two people encircled Bill Davit as he taught them to make cordage out of rattlesnake master leaves and dogbane stems: materials that made indigenous sandals over 8,000 years ago.
On Earth Day 1990, Wild Ones joined with other nature organizations to plant 10,000 trees along Riverview Drive and across the Mississippi in Illinois. “Together, we actually planted 10,000 trees! Amazing!” At more recent service projects, Ana joined Forest Park Forever to plant wildflowers along the creek, and trees in the woods near the Muny Opera. “The embankments are now fully grown, and it was nice to see everything blooming the following Earth Day Event.”
“Being involved with Wild Ones allowed me to build joy and confidence in gardening with natives and with educating others. I learned to communicate well with city officials to educate them about my intention to live with native plants. We came to a compromise by adding pathways, borders, and lawn along the street. The last time I saw that inspector we just walked around the yard and talked like old friends. He was much more tolerant.” That confidence expanded to a conversation about native plants with the head of the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer Department, after a conference on Mississippi Watershed Management. MSD began to work with rain gardens, riparian borders, and an awareness campaign to slow stormwater and not pollute waterways. Later electric utility Ameren Missouri began to send flyers about “Right Tree in the Right Place” with their bills.
Ana says, “Wild Ones is a wonderful organization. In Wild Ones we learn the value of native plants and trees in our environment and show the proof of that in our own yards. By that example, we help educate family, friends, neighbors, and city officials, and through group effort, we get information passed on to the right people. Our local utilities, city governments, departments of transportation, and trail builders now have great information about native landscaping. Wild Ones is a real resource!” Ana is proud to be a part of a group passing on information to thousands of people supporting native landscaping.
post by Besa Schweitzer, Chapter member and volunteer
To learn more about our Keystone Member series and other members we are highlighting
visit: https://stlwildones.org/keystone-members/
