Local gardening experts say including native plants in one’s garden is a beautiful way to help support pollinators, provide shelter for wildlife and offer help to problem areas in your green spaces.
Discover more about how native plants can help enhance habitat values in your landscape with botanist Dave Allen as he presents “Native Plants in the Landscape,” the next in the Clallam County Master Gardeners’ Green Thumbs Garden Tips education series, set for noon-1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, on Zoom.
Join the presentation by going to tinyurl.com/GTGTallen (meeting ID 920 0799 1742, passcode: 709395) or by calling 253-215-8782.
Allen will discuss ways to include native plants in landscapes that are valuable in supporting insects vital to the food web and how — with correct maintenance practices — these plants can aid in supporting local wildlife populations. He will also highlight a number of plants native to the Olympic Peninsula that help create sustainable, integral landscapes which in turn provide increased habitat and aesthetic value.
Allen has worked in habitat restoration, re-vegetation and native plant propagation for more than 35 years. He has earned a degree in botany, as well as teaching credentials in vocational agriculture (horticulture) and biology.
Allen worked with an environmental consulting firm in California in 1985 performing restoration and re-vegetation work in various habitats such as coastal sand dunes, Monterey pine, oak woodlands, sand parkland, riparian, freshwater and saltwater marshes, vernal pools and Mojave Desert.
He was also a botanist for the National Park Service and worked on the Elwha Dam removal re-vegetation project as well as other smaller projects for Olympic National Park.
Allen established the Shore Road Nursery that focuses on growing plants native to the Olympic Peninsula.
Sponsored by WSU Clallam County Master Gardeners, the Green Thumbs Garden Tips education series seeks to provide home gardeners with education on research-based sustainable garden practices in Clallam County.
The series is offered via streaming presentations from noon-1 p.m. the second and fourth Thursday each month through October (in November, December and January, one program is offered). Scheduled presentations are subject to change. Visit the WSU Extension Clallam County website calendar (extension.wsu.edu/clallam) for the latest information on upcoming presentations.
For more information, call 360-565-2679.
