The North Metro Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Native Plant Society
Overview
The North Metro Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Native Plant Society was formed in 2021 and we have over 400 members and growing! While we have no particular geographic boundary, our members are mostly in Marietta, Roswell, North Atlanta, Dunwoody, Woodstock, Alpharetta, Chamblee, Cumming, Sandy Springs, Acworth, Kennesaw and anywhere in between and beyond.
Meetings
We meet at various locations in our areas on both weekends and weekdays to accommodate our varying commutes and schedules. Check out our schedule events on the list to the right!
Bylaws and Board Members
At our first annual meeting in 2021, we adopted our bylaws. At our third annual meeting in 2023, the members elected board members: Carling Kirk (President), Connie Ghosh (Vice President), Dana Hallberg (Treasurer), Lilly Vicens (Secretary), and Kerry Defoe (Member-at-large.)
Contact
You can reach us by email, or check out our Facebook page. You can also connect with other members in our private Facebook group.
How can I join?
For current members, login and update your chapter affiliation through the chapter affiliation form. For new or renewing members, you can also select your chapter affiliation on the membership form.
Chapter News & Events
Native Garden Tour
Saturday, September 30, 2023
10AM to 4PM
You’re invited to the second annual Intown Atlanta GNPS Native Garden Tour. Tickets include admission to five habitat sites.
The self-guided tour is an opportunity to find inspiration for ways to add biodiversity to your own yard or patio as you wander through beautiful habitats created to support pollinators and other animals. Come see bees, butterflies, and birds feasting on nectar and berries. The gardens are private properties that have been certified GNPS Native Plant Habitats. The gardens can be visited in any order and the onsite tour is self-guided. At each property, GNPS volunteers will be available to answer questions.
Invite your friends and neighbors! Tickets are limited and may sell out so get your tickets early. Children under 12 and volunteers attend for free.
Volunteers attend for free. Volunteers will be asked to work about four hours at one of the gardens. If interested email alederberg@gnps.org.
Not a member? Join GNPS and save $5 on your ticket plus become eligible for member-only events!
Purchase your tickets here.
Ticket proceeds support Intown Atlanta’s educational, restoration, and advocacy activities focused on inspiring Atlanta to grow and preserve native plants.
A brochure that includes addresses and descriptions of the properties will be emailed to ticket holders a week before the event.
The tour takes place rain or shine.
The five gardens are described below:
Native Garden 1
In just over 10 years, this quarter-acre Morningside property has been converted from a traditional “lawn-with foundation plantings” type of residential landscape, to a planned habitat with close to 200 species of native plants. It is a pesticide free and remarkably productive food forest (for humans and wildlife) and a place to enjoy close encounters with dozens of species of insects, birds, small mammals and reptiles.
Native Garden 2
This Morningside homeowner started gardening with native plants in 2017 after hearing an inspiring talk by Doug Tallamy. She has been especially interested in the keystone native plants that host the most caterpillars which in turn feed baby birds. She started her garden with the top keystone natives: Oak, willow, cherry/plum, goldenrod, asters, and sunflowers and then just kept adding native nectar plants. September should be an ideal time to see butterflies.
Native Garden 3
This garden is a special narrow, long yard in Virginia-Highland with a high diversity of native plants that provide year-round food and shelter for birds, insects, small mammals, and other wildlife. Berry-producing shrubs, vines, and trees, sheltering evergreens, small prairie pockets filled with pollinator plants, mature canopy trees, a fern-filled seepage, and partly shady woodland edges combine with brush and stone piles, logs, and water sources to provide a diverse wildlife habitat.
Native Garden 4
At this amazing deeply sloped property in Decatur, the owner used a profusion of native shrubs and grasses to replace a non-native landscape over six years. An overgrown backyard was removed in favor of natives. A lovely array of Solidago and little Bluestem Grass greets the visitor in the front yard; Inkberry, Florida Anise, and Muhly Grass highlight the back.
Native Garden 5
To support wildlife, this half-acre wooded property in Avondale Estates required several years of invasive plant removal, and replanting with an understory of native shrubs, small trees, ferns and pollinator plants. This ongoing restoration project shows how an owner-designed and maintained native plant garden can be achieved.
Purchase your tickets here.
Pre-order Woody Plants for the Fall
Pre-order Woody Plants for the Fall
To provide our members with access to more trees and shrubs at our Fall Plant sale we are offering the pre-order of select woody items, that can be picked up the same day as the plant sale, just 2 miles down the road at Wills Park. Availability is limited as these items are very popular so you will need to order between now and September 11th.
Event: Native Plants of the Cherokee
Join the North Metro Atlanta Chapter for an educational event, Native Plants of the Cherokee on August 13th at 10:30AM at the Alpharetta Library featuring author Mark Warren talking on how some of the most common native plants and trees were used by the Cherokee for food, medicine, insect repellent, crafts, shelter and fire. Mark Warren is the owner of the nationally renowned Medicine Bow Wilderness School in Dahlonega, GA, has been teaching nature and survival skills of the Cherokee to adults and children for half a century.
About the program
Mark believes today’s society can — and should — learn some valuable lessons and skills from those native people who inhabited this continent hundreds of years before European explorers ever landed on its shores. He will be discussing how some of the most common native plants and trees were used by the Cherokee for food, medicine, insect repellent, crafts, shelter and fire. Mark will bring along some plants and handmade crafts for viewing and discussion.
“All of us who live in Southern Appalachia reside on land that once belonged to the Cherokee. While these native people led lives of intimate daily interaction with their natural surroundings, most folks today have reduced nature to a backdrop of scenery. The great deficit in this scenario is our lack of understanding that we still depend upon nature. That dependency is largely hidden to us, especially to the new generations that come along to take over the ‘rules’ of how we behave with nature — air to breathe, water to drink, energy to consume for our daily actions. These are commodities that are easy to take for granted. If taken for granted, humans will have no reason to respect and conserve the pieces of the puzzle we call ecology.” – Mark Warren
About Mark Warren
Mark Warren is a graduate of the University of Georgia. At Medicine Bow, his nationally renowned wilderness school in the Southern Appalachians, he teaches nature classes and survival skills of the Cherokees. The National Wildlife Federation named him Georgia’s Conservation Educator of the Year in 1980. In 1998 Mark became the U.S. National Champion in whitewater canoeing, and in 1999 he won the World Championship Longbow title.
Warren has written extensively about nature for local and national magazines. He lectures on Native American history and survival skills, and Western Frontier History presenting at museums and cultural centers around the country. He is a member of the Wild West History Association, and Western Writers of America. His Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey trilogy was honored by WWA’s Spur Awards, The Historical Novel Society and the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Awards under the original hardback editions, Born to the Badge (2018) and Promised Land (2019.)
His published books include: from Lyons Press, Two Winters in a Tipi and Secrets of the Forest (a four volume series on nature and primitive skills), from Five Star – Gale Cengage and Two Dot, Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey (an historical fiction trilogy on the life of Wyatt Earp), from Five Star – Gale Cengage, Indigo Heaven, The Cowboy, The Librarian and the Broomsman from the anthology Librarians of the West: A Quartet, Westering Trail Travesties, and from Speaking Volumes, Song of the Horseman and Last of the Pistoleers.
**Note: The Alpharetta Library prohibits the sale of books at events. If you would like to purchase from the author, please visit his website at www.markwarrenbooks.com