AT: Gardening for Monarchs & Other Wildlife with Native Plants in Your Ecoregion

Virtual. Registration Required. Fee = $55

This interactive two-day workshop will be hosted online (via Zoom) on June 21 (8:00 am-3:30 pm CDT), and June 23 (8:00 am-3:30 pm CDT), with plenty of breaks and time for Q & A. Registration page, indicates the workshop runs June 21st-23rd; however, the workshop will only be held on the 21st & 23rd; there will be no meeting on the 22nd. We will send a link to the meeting 2 days beforehand, via email. When you register, please double-check your email address to ensure you receive future instructions to join the workshop.

As part of the National Wildlife Federation’s Monarch Stewards Certification Program, the Federation is offering Gardening for Monarchs & Other Wildlife with Native Plants in your Ecoregion. This is one of three workshops that can be taken (in any order) in the Program. Complete all three workshops and become a certified NWF Monarch Steward! The Federation collaborates with many other conservation groups, federal and state agencies, to host and teach these workshops.

To bring back the monarchs and help protect all pollinators & other wildlife we need to create native gardens in our urban & suburban spaces. Through this workshop, participants will learn to design, install, and maintain their own monarch-friendly native gardens —that also benefit many kinds of wildlife—choosing the proper native plants for their ecoregion, site, and weather conditions. Workshop participants will also learn to use their new native gardens as an environmental educational tool.

Main Topics:

• How gardening for monarchs benefits many other wildlife species
• The human benefits of native gardening
• Importance of gardening with native plants
• Components of a native garden
• Creating native gardens, what to keep in mind
• Providing themed native gardens
• Growing your own native milkweed, the successful technique
• Basics of Landscape Designing (includes exercises)
• Installing and maintaining your new native garden

Lunch & Learn sessions that complement the information offered in this workshop will be offered:

To complement what you will learn during this workshop, we will offer Lunch & Learn Sessions specific to the ecoregions of Texas and North Carolina will be offered afterward. During these sessions, we will provide you with a list of native plants suitable to create native gardens in your ecoregion. These sessions are free of charge to participants who take any of the three Monarch Stewards workshops and respond to our after-workshop surveys. Take this opportunity to learn from state experts about what are the most suitable and available native plants to create your gardens!

We will organize the Lunch & Learn Sessions for the rest of the states of the country as participants from those states join our workshops. Thus, if you are located in a different state to Texas and North Carolina, do not hesitate to register!

Registration Fee includes:

• One copy of the second edition of the book: “Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife” by David Mizejewski, National Wildlife Federation’s Naturalist
• Access to digital resources on native gardening
• Copy (in notes format) of the workshop presentations
• Lunch & Learn Sessions about native plants in your region

Further details: Please note that this is an 11-hour training course, divided into two days, with breaks between presentations and individual exercises.

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