"You can’t just sit at home and whine about it:" Interview with Alex Farr, President of Sea Oats Chapter (St. Augustine)

Alex Farr, President of the Sea Oats Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society

Sea Oats was, until recently, a small, struggling chapter that wasn't holding regular meetings. When asked why she did jumped in to lead the chapter, she said, "No one else wanted to do it. I was like, damn it, let's do it!"

Alex has been a Florida Native Plant Society member for five years, she was working in general horticulture when she saw a tiny little notice in the newspaper for a native plant meetup group, so she joined. She quickly learned about native plant landscaping and soon joined St. Augustine Beach's Beautification Advisory/Tree Board. Three years later she has transitioned three city landscapes from non-native to native and is the Vice-Chair of the Board!

Initially, the leadership at the time put Alex in charge of the Facebook page, which was essential in keeping her engaged in the chapter. Chapters, take note.
Past presidents Michael Bowles and Eric Powell chat in the garden.

I asked her what her chapter's thing was. What are they into?

They got a grant from the Wildflower Foundation and they're using it to create a native garden on a historical site leased to the Council on Aging next to the Council's Memorial Garden. They had to get the city and county and archaeologists to sign off on the garden because it’s on a historic site. They found some tile and nails Alex thought was exciting, but the archaeologists were pretty blase about it. The archaeologists gave them the go-ahead but they couldn’t plant anything with a deep root system. They've had to rebuild after two hurricanes and finally Alex has two regular volunteers to help her with the garden.
Alex Farr, Eric Powell, Michael and the Flagler College volunteers in the garden
The chapter is also big into environmental activism, but they don't toot their own horn in any way. No selfies at commission meetings, no posting of position statements, nothing. It's nice to be so humble but we've gotta work on that.

Alex has a few goals for next year:

Recruit younger members. Raise the profile of the chapter. Have regular meetings again. Get the garden rehabbed. Get involved with elected officials in counties and cities. Have regular plant walks again. Understand what's going on with the mangroves moving in.

I asked her how FNPS has improved her life, but really what's she learned from FNPS has been alternately empowering and annoying.

Alex: "In some ways I have more knowledge but it just causes me to be annoying to my neighbors and people in Home Depot who are planting the wrong thing. I’m really into wildlife and the native plants are important to keep our wildlife going. I have to be patient and realize it takes more time. I guess the thing with the native plant society is learning the ways I can use the knowledge, how to navigate the channels of officials during city and county committees to get something I want to get done. You can’t just sit at home and whine about it."

Check out photos from their latest field trip to Moses Creek Conservation Area on Flickr.

by Valerie Anderson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florida Native Azaleas

Image
Piedmont Azalea, Rhododendron canescens. Photo by Lilly Anderson-Messec By Lilly Anderson-Messec While growing up in North Florida, I began to recognize the arrival of spring by the boisterous show of white, pink, and fuchsia blooms of azalea shrubs. The house I grew up in had large, mature azalea hedges with a variety of different colors and forms. Every spring, my mom would bring in vases full of them and my dad loved to point out the showy shrubs as we drove through town. I suppose I assumed these plants were native, but most likely I never gave it a thought. I didn’t differentiate a native plant from a non-native one because I didn’t yet know the importance of native plants as the basis of our functioning ecosystems. I was so surprised when I learned the azaleas I was so familiar with (Rhododendron indicum) are actually transplants from Asia! They are favored by the horticultural industry for their fast, vigorous, and dense growth of evergreen leaves and large, showy blooms. Curio...
Read more

Wednesday's Wildflower:Spanish Needle

Image
Spanish Needle, Bidens Alba Submitted by Donna Bollenbach, Suncoast Chapter Biden's alba , all photos by Donna Bollenbach Nothing attracts more butterflies and bees than a simple white flower called Bidens alba . Also called Romerillo, Beggar’s Tick, Spanish Needle or Monkey’s Lice, this Florida native wildflower is the third most reliable source of nectar for pollinators in our state. There would be many starving bees and butterflies if not for the Bidens family of flowers. More so, Bidens alba and its sister plant, Bidens pilosa , are both edible and have medicinal value. Yet, many gardeners have a love/hate relationship the plant, and some even consider it a pesky weed. Why?
Read more

Paradise Tree: Beautiful and Useful

Image
"The native Paradise tree is more useful than Google, and easy to grow." And how could any blogger resist leading off with this intriguing quote from the Key West Garden Club? I am a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist, but I only know so much; so I always check out  statistics from experts before posting information about plants. I have a beautiful Paradise tree in my yard, it came from the raffle table at my chapter's program night about six years ago.   Paradise tree                Simarouba glauca For the first six years the little tree had a perfect, closed, cone shape; but just this summer I was astounded one morning to walk out and notice that my tree had changed. The canopy had begun to open up, there were open spaces between the layers of branches. It seemed to happen overnight. Proving again that a garden is constantly in motion, which is one of the fascinating things about o...
Read more