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| Wild Ones, Wild NewsBecki Wells, President 2022 Here we are almost to the end of Summer with Fall approaching. It’s been a very busy year so far. We have been working at growing our gardens and our Wild Ones Quad Cities Chapter! The hard lifting is almost in place and as we grow, putting the fundamentals of our Chapter together with National Wild Ones, will get easier and easier. We have served several hundred Quad Citizens with our programs, events and community outreach. Some highlights were; taking Behavior challenged children to Vander Veer Botanical Center and showing them native vs non-native plants, helping the Putnam fill their roster of speakers, having a table at a Church Garden Party, (note to self, it may rain so remember the top to the tent!). These, plus many more Programs and Events. This Chapter rocks! Because of all of you, we are approaching 75 members and have a goal to reach 100 members by the end of the year. You can help. Just refer a friend, co-worker, family member or anyone you know to join the Quad Cities Chapter. Make sure that they put your name down as the referrer on the application. At the end of the year, the Member with the most referrals will WIN a FREE ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIP! It’s that easy, talk about the benefits of Wild Ones, make sure they put your name down as referrer, and WIN. The link to join is quadcitieswildones.org If you have any questions, drop me an e-mail at [email protected]. As we approach the end of the Year, we will be responsible for electing new Officers and Chairs for our various Committees. If you wish to serve as an Officer or Chair or Committee member please e-mail me. We will also need a nomination committee by mid-October, to vet the candidates and present the Officers to the Chapter, for nomination and voting. Again, e-mail me if you have interest in participating in this process [email protected]. Keep up the great work you are doing, sending the message, “Healing the Earth one Yard at a Time.” BeckiThe Power of CommunityJodi Dye Zimmerman Program Chair [email protected] Thank you to those who have been able to attend the recent activities of our Quad City Wild Ones chapter. There is great value in reaching out to those who need to hear the message of the benefits of native plantings/gardening, with the full ecosystem taken into consideration. I am happy to be a part of Wild Ones because they do such a great job at outreach and education. New knowledge is delightful, but there is also peace in gathering with likeminded people who share these values and have already done the mental heavy lifting to alter their social conditioning of what constitutes a yard/park. I thank all of you who show up to programs and share your knowledge and stories. You are helping to restore my faith in humans’ ability to emerge from our “species-centric” worldview to address the crisis of ecosystem collapse. Our Wild Ones chapter has been organizing monthly gatherings for individuals to connect over a shared love of native plants. Some are “experts,” some are newbies. All benefit from these gatherings. If you have yet to attend a program, you should mark your calendars for our upcoming programs. There is happiness in gathering with fellow local native plant lovers. If you have a program idea or ideas please send them to me and I will do my best to make it happen. Thanks again from Wild Ones !Volunteering OpportunityPaul Crosser Membership Chair [email protected] Greetings Wild Ones – Quad City Chapter Team: Here is an opportunity to get a lot of native plants in the ground and get a donation to our chapter! We will plant a property on 41st Street in Moline near the Ben Butterworth Parkway. It is approximately 170’ x 52’. That will be one nice-sized pollinator patch right in the city. I am finishing the plant layout and it looks like ~250 – 5.5” pots and 13 shrubs and 2 Red Bud Trees. The native flowers are all second-year growth, so the property should be impressive by July 2023. When will this take place? Today, all I can tell you is that it will be mid-September. We can do a couple of planting shifts to accommodate schedules. If you do not mind, send me your contact info and I will send out planting dates and times. What do we have to do? The area will get a cover of weed stop material. It will be better than the product one might buy at a box store. We will place the pots with the flowers/shrubs where they need to be planted. Your job will be to use a trusty razor knife, cut a hole in the fabric, plant the native flower or shrub, then move on to the next one. We do not have to place the mulch. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! Where will we park? There is a metal building adjacent to the north owned by the same person. This area can be used for parking. If we have 10 volunteers, and each volunteer plants 25 plants, we are on our way. Figure 1 hour, maybe 1.5 hours to knock out this many plants. It is a tough time of year to secure the shrubs and trees, so more on that later. Should you have a strong lead on ninebark, red chokeberry, or nannyberry shrubs, or the red bud trees, let me know. I already checked with Tanner at Perennial Crops in Fulton – he is tapped out. Possibility Place can help, but I would need to make the 160-mile trek to pick them up. As usual, no cultivars of these species need apply. The owner has rest room facilities in the metal storage building that we can use. He will have hoses to water the plants, but a watering can or two would not be a bad idea. NO NEED TO LIMIT PARTICIPATION TO 10! LET’S MAKE THIS A PLANTING PARTY! PHOTO OPS, SO ORDER YOUR DESIGNER GARDENING ENSEMBLE EARLY.Upcoming Programs August 9th 6:30 pm tour the ecological centered landscaping that includes new rain gardens at a new net zero house in Port Byron. The address is 4018 229th St Cir N, Port Byron, IL. A local master gardener will be on hand to field questions. Home owner Jack Achs will tell us about the outdoor design decisions. Please RSVP to Jodi Zimmerman at [email protected]. September 10th A guided tour of restored prairie at the Wapello Land and Water Reserve in Hanover, Illinois from 2-4pm. Barb Seikowski will be leading us around the lovingly planted prairie and helping us to identify the beautiful native plants. Limit on this program is 15 people. Please RSVP to Jodi Zimmerman at [email protected] to enjoy this relaxing tour. Rain date September 17th. October 15th 9:30 am to 12:30 pm lunch will be provided by our kind hosts Becki and Wes Wells. 306 Fairfield Road, Port Byron Il. We will be seed gathering and plant swapping. Please bring your seeds in baggies marked with the seed name and date. Also, if you have a potted plant to swap or to give away, please bring that as well. A short program by member, Paul Crosser on Seed Gathering and Saving will be presented. This is a WILD garden! We need a hard count of attendees to allow our hosts to plan for food/beverages. Please RSVP to [email protected] to confirm attendance. Call Becki Wells at 563-210-3455 for questions. November 15th 6:30 pm at the Scott County Extension Center for a talk on the Importance of Night and Day Cycles to our Native Gardens, our Pollinators and even Ourselves. Open to all. Please RSVP to Jodi Zimmerman at [email protected]. December 13th Deep winter and dreaming of Spring, join us for a year in review/social time/elections. Details and location to follow. Please consider putting “Natures Best Hope” by Paul Tallamy on your holiday list if you don’t already own it. We are looking to have a book club style meeting January 17th 2023 to kick our year off. Watch this space for more details.Wild Ones in the Community Becki Wells President, willdonesquadcities.org Septermber 10th Monarch Release Party, Nahant Marsh, Educational Center, 9 am see this link for more information: https://nahantmarsh.org/monarch-release-party/ We will have a table at the event promoting membership, and handing out a take away, that is yet to be determined. We will need 2-3 volunteers for this event, please e-mail me at [email protected] if you could help with this event. This is a really fun event, it’s priceless to see the look on the faces of children when they learn about Monarchs.Video Spotlight Importance of Native Plants by Becki Wells Doug Tallamy is well-known in the Native Plant world. He has written several books and has spent his life working on making this Planet a better place. Here is a 3 minute video by Doug Tallamy about the Importance of Native Plants; take a breath and listen to his wise words: The Importance of Wild Plants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trJKZDEfvrcMembers in Action    |
Thank you to our Business Member, Purple Violet https://purplevioletshop.com/ Please consider purchasing your native wild flowers from Purple Violet Shop, and mention that you are a member of Wild Ones!  Copyright © 2022 Wild Ones Quad Cities, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: [email protected] |