Wednesday, June 21, 2023, 7 pm
Little Red Wagon Native Nursery
4113 Henderson Blvd. Tampa 33629
(Tampa Bay Butterfly Foundation event space, to the right of the plant shop)
Susan Early, Speaker
"To Weed or Not To Weed: That is the Question"
(With apologies to Wm. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Rosinweed.Ironweed.Milkweed.Chickweed.Pokeweed.
When so many plants include the term weed in their names, how do we know whether we should welcome that plant into our yards or if we should dump the plant in the yard trash can? To confuse us even more, lawn maintenance or pesticide companies insist they know the answer, and for a fee they will be pleased to take care of a problem we didn’t even know we had.
Instead of relying on a profit-driven sales representative or anyone else to tell us the answer, this presentation will suggest 4 questions we can ask to help us make this decision ourselves based on what we value and then ask these questions about several common plants that we might find in our Florida yards.
Susan was born in Tampa and has lived there almost all her life. In fact she lives next door to the house she grew up in and her son lives in her childhood home. After graduating from USF, she taught high school English for 38 years , almost all at Pinellas Park High School. When she retired in 2011, she happily filled her time with travel and gardening instead of teaching literature and essay writing.
She joined the Florida Native Plant Society sometime after 2016 and the newly formed Florida Native Gardening FB Group in 2019, eventually joining the group’s admin team. She remains committed to native gardening and her goal of building a safe habitat for urban wildlife, her 2 pups and herself on Tampa’s Interbay Peninsula.
There will be light refreshments and a plant auction at the meeting. If you have plants to exchange or a snack to share, please bring them along.
Susan Early in the Loire Valley
Karla Alvarado, Curator University of South Florida Herbarium
"What is the Atlas of Florida Plants all About?"
If you missed the March meeting, it was recorded and you can watch it now
Enter passcode: *7EHwO=s
Suncoast Thanks Our Business and Non-Profit Members
Anderson Lesniak Limited, Inc
Conner Landscape Architects
Cut-Ups Lawn Service, Inc
Environmental Consultants LLC
Quest Ecology
Regenerative Shift
Springer Environmental
Whitwam Organics, LLC
Photo by Jan Allyn, Pinellas chapter
