Native Plant Program
Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties are coming together, yard by yard, to add beauty, health, and resilience to our community through the many benefits of native plants.
Through a grant from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, HHCD is partnering with landowners in the region to convert lawns and other managed landscapes into native plant gardens and meadows. We are hosting a series of workshops on the topic, and landowners can request a professional consultation and receive a starter set of native plants or seed to turn your lawn into a more resilient, carbon-sequestering, pollinator supporting, beautiful space!
Our Winter Workshop Series Returns with more great Native Plants How-To
Please register here.
Transform Your Yard to Support Pollinators: A 12 Step Program with Heidi Dollard
Many people now realize the importance of pollinators and other essential wildlife. They want to make their yard pollinator-friendly, but don’t know where to start. This talk will step you through the process of evaluation, planning, and implementation, with many options for large and small changes.
Gardening for Biodiversity with Native Plants with Heidi Dollard
The “little things that run the world” are in big trouble: Insect populations are plummeting, and many species are headed for extinction. This spells disaster for our food supply, our ecology, and indeed, life on earth. The good news is that we can turn this around, starting in our own yards. By planting native plants, and other simple steps, we can restore vital insect populations. Come learn what you can do, and be inspired!
How to Maintain a Native Plant Garden: managing the changes that occur over time with Amy Meltzer
You have chosen and planted your native plant garden or meadow, and a few years later, whatever design you planned is no longer in place. Some plants have spread, others seem crowded, some are turning brown in summer, others are thriving. Unexpected plants have popped up as birds, squirrels and the plants themselves have put seeds into your garden. Your growing conditions may have shifted due to climate change. You will learn the choices you have for managing the changes in your garden, depending on your preferences and your site conditions.
Gardening for Biodiversity with Native Plants: providing habitat for pollinators, birds and other essential wildlife with Amy Meltzer
In this talk, Amy will focus on the current biodiversity crisis; the evolutionary history among native plants, insects, birds and fungi, and how these interdependent relationships among diverse species are necessary for their survival. She will show how growing native plants and using ecological landscape practices can simultaneously reverse biodiversity loss, increase resilience in our landscapes, and slow climate change – all while creating a beautiful garden!
Beyond Flowering Plants: Helping Pollinators Thrive Year Round with Amy Meltzer
This talk includes a brief introduction to the biodiversity crisis, explaining why providing habitat for pollinators is essential for maintaining a sustainable ecosystem. Amy will show that pollinators not only need flowering native plants as food for adults, but also need specialized native plants that provide food for their young. You will learn about the kinds of shelter needed year round for pollinator health and reproduction, and how to manage your landscape to provide it. Amy will also discuss the need for water and the importance of minimizing night light. She will share extensive resources on choosing and sourcing native plants and managing our landscapes to support biodiversity.
Designing with Native Plants with Heidi Dollard
Do you want to use native plants in your yard, but don’t know how to find, choose, and place them in your landscape? This talk will cover how to use them in your garden to best effect for both humans and biodiversity, with examples from historic styles and current garden trends. We’ll also discuss how to purchase and propagate native plants, and suggest native substitutions for common non-native plants, and highlight the most garden-worthy native flowers, trees, and shrubs.
Environmentally Friendly Lawns and Lawn Alternatives with Heidi Dollard
Lawns are ecological dead zones. 40 million acres are devoted to lawn in this country; the largest irrigated crop. Mowers emit at least 16 million tons of CO2 per year. At the same time millions of species are headed for extinction, in large part due to habitat loss. So, changing the way we manage lawns and/or reducing their size presents a huge opportunity both to save species and address global warming- right in your own yard! This talk covers many ideas on how to convert your lawn to an ecological benefit.
Managing Invasive Plants – the Why and How with Heidi Dollard
Invasive plants are one cause of declining pollinator populations, loss of native plants, and are hastening the extinction of many animal species. Learn which plants are invasive and how to manage them to preserve and enhance wildlife habitat.
Coming in this fall (date TBA)…
The Fall Clean-up: Less is More
How you clean up your yard in the fall has a great environmental impact! By doing less, you can do more to help the biodiversity crisis, reduce global warming, and save work and money while still maintaining an attractive landscape.
We are delighted to partner with several nonprofit organizations and municipal groups to develop Native Plants Demonstration Gardens at the following locations:
- Hadley Public Library | 50 Middle Street | Hadley, MA (planted June 2024)
- Holyoke Senior Center | 291 Pine Street | Holyoke, MA (planted June 2024)
- Gaylord Memorial Library | South Hadley, MA (planted July 2024)
- Lilly Library | Florence, MA (planted September 2024)
Why Native Plants?
Native plants provide the best habitat and food for pollinators. These plants and animals have formed interdependent relationships over millennia. In addition to providing pollen and nectar, many native plants act as nurseries because they are hosts to the early life stages of pollinators, while many cultivars offered by the nursery industry are sterile – offering no food to our pollinator friends.
Due to the use of pesticides, habitat reduction by over-development and replacement of native plants with industry cultivars, and atmospheric pollution, pollinator numbers have declined by 75-80% in many areas! This decline at the foundation of our food web puts all life on the planet in peril — including humans. The GOOD NEWS, is that by adding native plants back into the landscape, we can begin to reverse the situation.
But native plants do even more than shelter and feed pollinators. They also help make the very soil under your feet more resilient! Native plant roots penetrate the soil deeply, sequester carbon, create channels in soil for air, water, and biology to infiltrate, and result in a robust ecosystems that supports beneficial plants, insects, and microbes. The deep root network also helps the soil to be more resilient to severe weather events, as it literally holds the soil together. The soil acts like a sponge, retaining much more water during flood events.
By converting lawn to native plants, you will:
- Invite more birds, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and other beneficial insects to your yard
- Support the bird population by creating more butterfly habitat (more butterflies = more caterpillars = more baby bird food and improved bird survival)
- Improve the health of your soil
- Make the land more resilient to weather events
- Conserve one of our most precious resources – water!
- Get to know the beauty of native plants and their special relationships with native pollinators
Please complete the Interest Form to request a free consultation with one of our native plant experts.