New Hanover County Extension Master Gardener’s Nature at Home Update
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Our Nature at Home (NAH) season is winding down now, as we are sending off the last of our site visit reports to participating homeowners. We had another good year, adding ten more trained Ambassadors to our ranks, giving us a total of 31 certified NAH Ambassadors. Since we started this program in 2022, we have visited 85 properties and have so far certified 48 of them as meeting the NAH qualifications and receiving the official sign. In order to handle the growing NAH program, a Steering Committee was formed consisting of Catherine Nesbit, Marge DeForest, Deb Chappell, Karen Sorenson, Evan Mauk, and Barb Ingram.
We all enjoyed making site visits, researching and writing up site reports, our annual meetings/celebrations, and Doug Tallamy’s talk at UNCW in October. Many of us participated in and/or facilitated the “Community Read” book discussion of Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope.
In 2024 we edited and revised a number of documents in our NAH Google Drive materials with an eye to excellence and professionalism. These included the NAH
application, site report form, procedural documents for ambassadors and schedulers, and recordkeeping documents. A team visited the local nurseries and updated the Recommended Native Plants document which lists many of the native plants that grow well here and that are available for purchase. In addition, the NHC Extension public-facing website content relating to NAH has been revised and updated. A photography team is working on developing a set of before/after images of some of the gardens, which we hope will help homeowners to better imagine the possibilities when introducing native plants into their landscapes.
One goal of NAH is to share our program with other NC counties and our Google Drive materials will enable them to start their own programs more easily. This year we trained six Pender County EMGV and their Horticulture Agent, and we shared our documents so that they could get their own NAH program started there.
We were invited to share our program statewide via the EMG College in Raleigh in September. EMG College offered counties an opportunity to present to all EMG volunteers and extension staff in attendance about a program being done in their county. Marge DeForest sent in a proposal and NAH was accepted for the Lightning Round featuring 6 ten-minute presentations. She prepared a PowerPoint about NAH with the message that other NC counties could implement a similar program, and access materials we’ve created. She did a great job presenting it and fielded questions from interested EMG volunteers from all over NC.
We are in the process of finalizing evaluations to be completed by residents who have had site visits so we can get feedback for continual improvement. Word-of-mouth feedback is very positive. NAH also received positive feedback from WHQR public radio journalist Kelly Kenoyer when she featured us in “Dispatch: How I learned to garden native plants from the experts”.
By way of NAH applications we’ve had an opportunity to become involved in a couple of special projects: Davis Senior Center property and a Habitat for Humanity 35-home community called Haven Place in Castle Hayne. Both of these are in early stages, but are exciting projects for NAH.
This fall the Outreach Committee presented the NAH PowerPoint at the Native Plant Festival and at two branches of NHC Public Library, and are in the process of updating their presentation. The committee is growing and they are excited to talk with community groups and HOA’s.
Finally, we are planning our annual training for new Ambassadors in March 2025. Stay tuned for information coming soon about how you can get involved with this important EMG Volunteer program.
Special thanks to Miles Buddy for handling the Extension administrative aspects of NAH in a cheerful and responsive manner! And many thanks to Matt Collogan for his support along the way!
To learn more about the Nature at Home Program, please contact:
Gabriella de Souza at gadesouz@ncsu.edu or
Miles Buddy at mmbuddy@ncsu.edu