Village and Wilderness

Microhabitat Program Resource Center

An open access resource for new and emerging microhabitat programs

Microhabitat Program
Resource Center

An open access resource for new and emerging microhabitat programs

Village and Wilderness is interviewing established and innovative programs to record successful and replicable solutions to common problems. Our growing list of case studies will be posted here, providing a menu of options that programs can learn from.

CASE STUDIES

Training volunteers on seed collection in the field. Source: Wild Seed Project

Building a Volunteer Cadre for Native Seed Collection: 
Lessons from Heather McCargo, Founder of Wild Seed Project

All microhabitat programs must ensure that their participants have access to native plants, preferably of local genotype. But the availability of these plants, and the seeds to propagate them, may be very limited because the careful gathering, processing and propagation of local seed (and the distribution of the propagated plants) is not always commercially viable. Microhabitat programs may then undertake this work themselves, by engaging volunteers.

Village and Wilderness connected with Heather McCargo, the founder of Wild Seed Project, a noted seed stewardship and distribution organization, to gather her wisdom on fostering a volunteer cadre for seed work. What we learned is that seed work lends itself very well to volunteers, and that with thoughtful management (for which McCargo gave us some detailed tips), a lot can be achieved with a relatively small number of reliable people.

Backyard Habitat planting with Verde
Source: Audobonportland.org

Diversifying Participation in Backyard Habitat Programs Through Community Partners

Lessons from the “Backyard Habitat Certification Program” of Columbia Land Trust and Portland Audubon.

The Backyard Habitat Certification Program (BHCP) is a microhabitat program jointly managed by Columbia Land Trust and Portland Audubon. This program, which currently includes over 10,000 backyard habitats, aims to restore ecosystem function via private sites throughout the Portland-Vancouver metro area of Oregon and Washington states.

This case study explores how BHCP is working to create a more inclusive and diverse program, thereby expanding its ecological and social impact and benefits. To increase access for people who do not own their own backyards, for example, BHCP now includes over 400 community sites such as churchyards and apartment-complex gardens. Another strategy has been to partner with mission- and culturally-specific community organizations in the area. BHCP’s experience reveals useful takeaways for forging relationships with community organizations. Briefly:

  • Look beyond a one-size-fits-all approach when engaging with partners
  • Meet the community where it is at with regard to interest in the environment
  • Understand community concerns and fears
  • Hire and deploy native language speakers
  • Build multi-person relationships
  • Reinforce the partner organization’s capacity and funding
  • Show up in the community to engage and learn
Natural Neighbors volunteers assemble CSA-style plant packs. Photo source: BiodiversityWork

Innovations in Creating Responsive Native Plant Markets:
A Community Supported Model

All microhabitat programs must ensure that their participants have access to native plants, preferably of local genotype. But the availability of these plants, and the seeds to propagate them, may be very limited because the careful gathering, processing and propagation of local seed (and the distribution of the propagated plants) is not always commercially viable. Microhabitat programs may then undertake this work themselves, by engaging volunteers.

Here we explore an innovative solution devised by Natural Neighbors, a microhabitat program of Martha’s Vineyard-based BiodiversityWorks, in partnership with Polly Hill Arboretum, a local nonprofit, to solve this problem.

Drawing on the Community Supported Agriculture model, this initiative offers Natural Neighbors participants access to plant packs, at cost, to suit specific yard conditions that are determined during site visits. Program participants purchase shares of the plant packs ahead of the season. While the sale price of plants is subsidized, the model is finding important ancillary benefits: It is mitigating risks for the plant producer, offering more inclusive access to the program and plants, driving popularity of the program and support to both organizations, and increasing the diversity of plants that are being introduced into yards.

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

Figure 1: Map of the geographic scope of programs
Source: A survey of American residential garden conservation programs, Journal of Urban Ecology, Volume 9, Issue 1, 2023.

A Survey of American residential garden conservation programs 

Dr. Nina Fogel and her collaborators identified and reviewed 115 residential garden conservation programs across the US, comparing characteristics such as geographic coverage, organizational affiliations, objectives, program features and level of rigor in participant support and certification. Significant variation between programs made it difficult to assess their collective impact, and the authors recommended a number of improvements and more uniform standards. Examples include legible yard signage, ecoregion-specific resources for homeowners, community inclusion and engagement, and rigor in certification criteria.

Furthermore, they advocated for more communication among program managers to facilitate learning and comparable standards and results across programs. Their paper also includes a questionnaire that program managers can use to self-assess their program for conservation impact and community reach as they consider launching new programs or enhancing existing ones.

TOOL KIT

Nature Advisors, a microhabitat program of Deep Roots KC, Kansas City, MO. Source: Deep Roots KC

Nature Advisors’ Volunteer Training and Resources Website

Nature Advisors has generously provided newsletter readers with access to its online volunteer training and resources tool. It features a self-paced curriculum for prospective “Nature Advisors” who conduct site visits; a quiz to determine volunteer eligibility; and additional resources such as a site report template. We hope that this will be a useful example for other programs to check out. Nature Advisors credits the Bring Conservation Home program of St. Louis Audubon for mentorship in building this curriculum and template. Click on the link below, and use the password makingadifference to access this online tool.

Microhabitat program map.
Photo source: Village and Wilderness

Map of Microhabitat Programs Nationally

Over the past year, we have been raking the web, research papers and other sources to find microhabitat programs that provide in-person support and site-specific recommendations to program participants. We have located 25 programs to date, enough listings, we figured, to warrant a cartographic depiction of program locations. Do you know other programs that should be included in the map and directory? Please refer them to us at in**@vi******************.org. We would love to learn more about them.

PODCASTS

MISCELLANEOUS

Plantspeak. Source: Pixabay
Fill Your Y/ear With These Podcasts

Check out our list of the top podcasts for busy microhabitat program practitioners to stay attuned to important research, debates, perspectives, events and opportunities, while on the go. Each podcast host uses a unique lens to explore the topics of native plants, ecological landscaping and the natural world, with relevance to microhabitat programs and ecological restoration in human-dominated areas. Find these podcasts on your favorite podcast app and add them to your listening line-up for 2024.

Bridge to rewilding.
Photo source: Pixabay

Rewilding Magazine

Check out Rewilding, a wonderful magazine that aims to build “a community of storytelling about rewilding in Canada and the world.” We were particularly drawn to this essay by US-based author and ecological landscape designer Ben Vogt: “Why wildlife gardeners need to become garden designers ASAP”. It underscores the importance of incorporating intentional design and management principles into naturalized landscaping, so that they bring more people along via a “bridge” between ecological and traditional gardening.

April Is National Native Plant Month

In a time of political polarization, it is surely noteworthy that a resolution to declare April as National Native Plant Month passed unanimously in the US Congress in March. Learn about the impetus behind this effort, led by the Garden Clubs of America and its partners, or click on the button below to read the individual state proclamations and more. This annual re-designation prompts optimism for further support for native plants, such as North Carolina’s recent bipartisan law (page 604) and the City of Somerville’s native plant ordinance. What more can be built upon such a foundation of consensus, at local, state and federal levels?

Venus’s Looking-glass (Triodanis perfoliata). Source: Steven J. Baskauf http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/

Microhabitat Programs as Native Plant Refugia

A chance plant encounter in his backyard prompted Tom to create an in-situ refugium for Venus’s looking-glass (Triodanis perfoliata), a regionally common but locally rare plant. This encounter forms the backdrop for a recent article that Tom authored, articulating a growing conviction: That microhabitats can and should play an important role in bridging populations of vulnerable (but yet unlisted) species of native plants, not just to help preserve ecosystem function locally, but also to assist with climate adaptation.

Seeds at Nachusa Grasslands Preserve, Illinois.
Photo credit: ©Ami Vitale/TNC

Native Seed Collection Training

Lake County Forest Preserves in IL has partnered with The Nature Conservancy to create a free tool for learning about native seed collection, processing and sowing. The resource is easy to navigate with beautiful photographs illustrating the plant-seed cycle of many species. To quote the official announcement, “The training is intended for all levels of experience with native seed activities. It is an excellent resource for those interested in starting a native seed program and can be provided as an initial training for volunteers before joining a native seed activity and/or shared with community partners. It covers basic concepts including types of seed, collection techniques, processing and more. Beyond the basics, it provides specific guidance for a variety of mostly non-woody plant species found natively in the Midwest and Eastern regions of the United States.” Questions? Please contact Megan Whatton, Nature Allies Program Manager, The Nature Conservancy (me***********@TN*.org).

Combination of wild bergamot and butterfly weed.
Photo by Tripti Thomas-Travers

Favorite Native Plant Combinations

Check out this article in Gardenista, in which renowned landscape designers and ecological horticulturalists recently weighed in on their favorite native plant combinations for different parts of the country. Perhaps these will spark new ideas for those of us in the midst of creating microhabitat designs.

Combination of wild bergamot and butterfly weed.
Photo by Tripti Thomas-Travers

Village & Wilderness in Blue Dot Magazine

Tom was invited to provide a profile of Village and Wilderness and the Microhabitat Program Incubator, in Blue Dot Magazine earlier this spring. Read this piece to get a refresher on who we are and what we do.
Rebecca McMackin speaking at TED. Source: TED Website

Let your garden grow wild

The awesome Rebecca McMackin, ecological horticulturist and former Director of Horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park, spoke at TED in October 2023. The video was recently released. In her talk, McMackin makes a simple and evocative case for native plants and eco-friendly management practices in the garden, in this time of climate and biodiversity crisis. Consider including this video in your advocacy toolkit to help communicate with those who are not yet familiar with the cause.
Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), a widespread invasive plant in the US Northeast and Midwest. Source: Pixabay

Invasive Species Eradication Funding Opportunity

This grant opportunity, offered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, is currently open until May 27, 2024. According to the grant description, “…proposals will be considered for on-the-ground projects that eradicate an invasive species or those projects that advance research that increases the effectiveness and near-term availability of eradication tools.”
Rally, 2024. Photo source: Land Trust Alliance

Village and Wilderness at Rally 2024

We are delighted that our proposal for a workshop at the Land Trust Alliance’s Rally in Providence, RI, was accepted. This session—Small Spaces-Big Impact: How Yard Habitat Programs Advance Land Trusts—on Friday 9/27 3:30-5pm ET, will be moderated by Tom and feature panelists Mary Fortmann (Lands in Harmony program, Openlands), Glenn Lamb (Land Trust Alliance board member, former ED of Columbia Land Trust), Tania Parker (Rewild Ojai, Ojai Valley Land Conservancy) and Beth Peluse (Conservation@Home, The Conservation Foundation). If you are planning to attend Rally this year, please let us know, as we would love to connect in person there if possible.

Access to native plants, preferably of local genotype, is essential for microhabitat programs. But the availability of these plants, and the seeds to propagate them, may be very limited because the careful gathering, processing and propagation of local seed is not always commercially viable. Microhabitat programs may then undertake this work themselves with volunteer help. This piece gathers advice from Heather McCargo, founder of Wild Seed Project, a noted, Maine-based, seed stewardship and distribution organization, on fostering a volunteer cadre for seed work. The lessons imparted are also applicable to volunteer engagement more widely. Read more…

More case studies coming soon