The Gardening for Wildlife Committee began its year by all members voting to have as our main project, the mission of certifying the City of Wilmington as a Community Wildlife Habitat. Our goal is to meet the requirements set forth by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) by the end of January 2025 to coincide with the Club’s 100th anniversary. We submitted our fee and began our project!
Stressing the need for members to certify their own gardens, we are well on our way to city-wide certification. In order to certify, our committee started creating and restoring wildlife habitats by doing education, outreach, as well as administrative work in the point system requirements. Schools, parks, HOA’s businesses and a university are targeted areas in which we are working towards community certification.
For our January General meeting, Natalie Bohorquez from the NC Wildlife Federation gave an informative speech to the club about the need and how to certify your garden, the Butterfly Highway and encourage the use of native plants and pollinators. We then met and created a timeline on how to get Community Certified by the end of 2025. Reaching out to various collaborators such as the St. James Community, Lower Cape Fear Wildlife (LCFW), the NC Cooperative Extension-NHC Center and Arboretum, NHC Parks and Recreation, the Rose Society and Cape Fear Alliance for Trees, we have been able to accomplish a great deal of the requirements needed. We greatly appreciated the publicity about our project from the article in Wrightsville Beach Magazine entitled “Gardening for Wildlife” and to Cape Fear Going Green for their article. Some of the projects we participated in were identifying native plants at our Horticulture displays as well as local nurseries, sending letters to Garden Tour owners about the certification process, collaborating with Lora Sharkey of LCFW, setting up and having a booth at Earth Day in April, a presentation on mosquito control and how to save pollinators at the Arboretum in May. Our biggest accolade so far has been to have Mayor Saffo read the Proclamation that May 2024 as Gardening for Wildlife Month! We then proceeded to have a kick-off party for our certification process at a local establishment downtown. We hope that you will join us in our efforts to have the City of Wilmington Community Wildlife Certified!
Stressing the need for members to certify their own gardens, we are well on our way to city-wide certification. In order to certify, our committee started creating and restoring wildlife habitats by doing education, outreach, as well as administrative work in the point system requirements. Schools, parks, HOA’s businesses and a university are targeted areas in which we are working towards community certification.
For our January General meeting, Natalie Bohorquez from the NC Wildlife Federation gave an informative speech to the club about the need and how to certify your garden, the Butterfly Highway and encourage the use of native plants and pollinators. We then met and created a timeline on how to get Community Certified by the end of 2025. Reaching out to various collaborators such as the St. James Community, Lower Cape Fear Wildlife (LCFW), the NC Cooperative Extension-NHC Center and Arboretum, NHC Parks and Recreation, the Rose Society and Cape Fear Alliance for Trees, we have been able to accomplish a great deal of the requirements needed. We greatly appreciated the publicity about our project from the article in Wrightsville Beach Magazine entitled “Gardening for Wildlife” and to Cape Fear Going Green for their article. Some of the projects we participated in were identifying native plants at our Horticulture displays as well as local nurseries, sending letters to Garden Tour owners about the certification process, collaborating with Lora Sharkey of LCFW, setting up and having a booth at Earth Day in April, a presentation on mosquito control and how to save pollinators at the Arboretum in May. Our biggest accolade so far has been to have Mayor Saffo read the Proclamation that May 2024 as Gardening for Wildlife Month! We then proceeded to have a kick-off party for our certification process at a local establishment downtown. We hope that you will join us in our efforts to have the City of Wilmington Community Wildlife Certified!
