February 12, 2025 Meeting

 

Native Plants: Creating Habitats for Birds and Pollinators

with Andrea Halliday

7:15-9:00 p.m., presentation 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Main Hall, Hilyard Community Center, 2580 Hilyard St, Eugene (map)

 

Oregon Sunshine

 

Join us for our first meeting of 2025 to learn about creating habitat for birds and pollinators by planting native plants on your property. This presentation will define native plants, explain biodiversity, and explore why native plants are important for biodiversity. Going a step further, we will learn what a keystone plant is, why you should plant them, and which native plants in our area are keystone species. Hint: it has to do with caterpillars!

 

 

This approach to creating and restoring habitat was devised by entomologist Doug Tallamy and described in several of his books. We are lucky to have as our speaker someone with many years of on-the-ground experience doing this work in our local ecosystem, so she can speak to the details of maintaining your plantings, including issues such as irrigation, weed control, and preventing deer damage.

 

 

Our speaker is Master Gardener Andrea Halliday. She and her partner have spent the last 15 years diversifying the forest on 19 acres of a reseeded clearcut halfway up the Fox Hollow side of Spencer Butte. For the last 4 years they have been actively removing invasive Himalayan blackberries and planting native plants. Andrea is chair of the Lane County Master Gardener Native Plant and Pollinator Committee which is dedicated to providing education to the public on how and why to garden with native plants.