Invasive Plants Workshop Are invasive plants taking over your garden? Are you tempted to buy the most unique plant at the garden center? Help is coming! On August 11 at 1:00 pm at Menokin, near Warsaw, Virginia, in a "hands-on" demonstration where participants can see, touch, and smell the various plants, Ted Munns will demonstrate the long-term problems of some common plants sold in local garden centers. Some garden center plants look like native varieties but are actually invasive non natives or have been bred for color but have no pollen or nutritional value for local birds and insects. Ted holds an Associate’s Degree in Horticultural Technology and is both a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. Some invasive plants, the “must haves” of home gardeners, begin benignly in our gardens but escape into our roadsides, woods, and parks due to the moderate climate of Virginia’s Coastal Plain. These plants, usually natives of Europe or Asia, choke off and smother our native flora and destroy habitat to the detriment of our native insect pollinators, birds, and vertebrates. Nothing grows in the thick tangles of kudzu, English ivy, or wisteria, and some plants like the tree-of-heaven exude a sap that kills other plants and can be caustic to the skin. The more we know about eradicating exotic alien plants and encouraging native plantings, the better we can stop the decline of our native plants and restore our natural environment. There is no registration and the workshop is FREE. For more information call Pam Narney at 804-333-1776.
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