By Nikki Belmonte
“I don’t have much longer on this planet, and I want to spend my time in service.”
That was a sentiment shared with me recently by one of our volunteers, Marilynne. She was voicing her frustration with the commercial box stores selling the invasive, exotic plants that we at Georgia Native Plant Society (GNPS) spend hours and hours removing. While changing the commercial nursery industry is a longer battle, we can have an immediate impact on our local lands through rescue and restoration.
Service to Marilynne as well as dozens of other GNPS volunteers means restoring native habitat in their communities. Through GNPS’s plant rescue program, volunteers rescue native plants that would be destroyed in development projects and transplant them to restoration sites and educational gardens. In the metro Atlanta area, there are several active restoration sites and a handful of plant rescues each month.
Are we not rescuing and restoring ourselves at the same time?
Service to the community can come in so many forms. Conservation service is an important form, and somewhat underrated. For some, pulling English ivy and Chinese privet may feel like an act of redemption. For others, working the land is an escape into the natural world, connecting with the land through all the senses while healing it at the same time. Digging up a few dozen native plants from a soon-to-be construction site may seem futile to many, but it is a powerful act of conservation service that contributes to saving biodiversity, and saving ourselves. As Jeanne Reeves, the founder of GNPS’s rescue program, once said, “Saving [native plants] from certain destruction not only perpetuates their lives, it educates and enriches ours.”
At Herbert Taylor and Daniel Johnson Park in Atlanta, restoring an urban oasis…
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