We will meet at Richard Mullinax's home for a tour of his garden and a workshop led by Julie Moore on looking at plants and learning about flower features that are used to correctly identify plant species. (Without phone apps!)
Julie Moore is an endangered species biologist who for 30 + summers has taught wildflower identification at Adult Nature Camp in the Virginia mountains. Which characteristics are most helpful in making a correct identification? Ever wonder what terms like lepidote, flocose, cespitose, and hispid refer to? It is fun to look at flower parts and learn to recognize plant families based on floral characteristics.
Richard is professionally a "garden personal trainer", and with his husband Perry Pike has been gardening their 2.5-acre home garden for 6 years, increasing diversity of native plants and habitats, adding a bog garden and converting some of the mowed lawn to meadow.
Bring a hand lens if you have one or a magnifying glass. Also a bag lunch; we'll picnic and chat about native plants between tour and class. Flowers (with accompanying stems and leaves) will be welcome too for ID practice.
The garden is mostly sunny and we will gather on a screen porch (with a couple fans) for the class, so dress accordingly.
Registration required; group cap is 15. NCNPS members will have priority for signing up. Registration will open to non-members after August 16 if space is still available.
We encourage carpooling. We'll send Richard's street address and directions for parking (on a nearby street) in a later email closer to Aug 23.
Please only sign up if you plan to attend. If life happens and you are no longer able to come, please cancel your registration and/or let us know so we can open up the spot to someone else.
Registration Notes: After you register, you should receive a confirmation email. If not please check the registration page to be sure you're actually on the list or go ahead and re-register. Email us if you have questions or can't access the event page on the NCNPS website.
If you're signing up for two people, please either enter separate registrations or enter the second person as a guest, even if you have a family membership. Otherwise it throws off the count and registration list. If both people use the same email address you can just leave the email address blank for the guest registration.