The Annual Native Plant Festival, held on Saturday, September 19, was redesigned, so attendees could learn about and buy native plants while honoring safety guidelines surrounding COVID-19. This year’s festival had an online component and an outdoor component. The virtual presentations by seven local horticultural experts can still be viewed and enjoyed from your home. 

 The Participating Nurseries

The participating plant sellers were Five Oaks Nursery & Tree Farm, Lloyd’s Nursery, and Transplanted Garden. Shelton Herb Farm was on the tour, with an impressive list of more than 55 species, and Lumber River Nursery and Grizz’s Nursery were also involved (and sold their plants at Shelton Farms). 

Virtual Presentations:

You can still watch the horticultural experts who gave presentations on a variety of plant-related topics. Their online presentations are now available for viewing on youtube.com. This year’s presenters were: Camilla Herlevich, Paul Hosier, Trena McNabb, Beth Sheppard, Roger Shew, Lloyd Singleton, and Becky Skiba, with a special showing of a previous presentation by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home.  

Speaker presentations can be found on youtube.com by searching “Cape Fear Native Plant Festival 2020” or searching by presentation name. The direct links to the presentations and date of Zoom Q&A appear at the end of this posting.

The Native Plant Festival was sponsored by: New Hanover County Arboretum, NC Cooperative Extension, Extension Master Gardener Volunteers, Cape Fear Audubon Society, Southeast Coastal Chapter of NC Native Plant Society, Halyburton Park, and Cape Fear’s Going Green.

The 2020 Presentations, available now, are:

Fostering a Healthy Soil Microbiome – Lloyd Singleton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skka3e2z4tM

Q&A Zoom with Lloyd on Oct 3, 10 AM

 

Branching out, Planting beyond the Norm – Beth Sheppard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otoBJBFFuRQ

Q&A Zoom with Beth on Oct 4, 3:30 PM

 

Natural Areas of SE North Carolina – Roger Shew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjD-dWkF3oI

Q & A Zoom with Roger on Oct 2, 9AM

 

Exploring Coastal Native Plants – Dr. Paul Hosier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeHCugTxBkE

Q&A Zoom with Paul on Oct 4, 2 PM

 

Bringing Nature Home – Doug Tallamy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEf4Uk5mp8g

There will not be a Q&A.

 

What, Why, & When – Trena Mc Nabb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZITFTKeB24

Q&A Zoom with Trena on Oct 2, 2PM

 

Top 40 Coastal Conservation Projects  – Camilla Herlevich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGOJ70HUJn4

Q&A Zoom with Camilla on Oct 2, 11 AM

 

Gardening For Wildlife – Becky Skiba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6cGfrwCnqc

Q&A Zoom with Becky on Oct 2, 4 PM