Gardening for Monarchs & Other Wildlife with Native Plants – in Texas!

 Amid COVID-19, this interactive two-day workshop will be hosted online (via Zoom) on July 21 (12pm-5pm), and July 23 (12pm-6pm), with plenty of breaks and time for Q & A. Registration page indicates the first day of the workshop (July 21); however, once you fill out the registration form and cover the fee, you are registered to attend both days of the workshop, July 21 & 23.

As part of the National Wildlife Federation’s Monarch Stewards Certification Program, the Federation, in collaboration with the Alamo Area Monarch Collaborative, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Native Plant Society of Texas, San Antonio River Authority, and Texas Master Naturalists Galveston Bay Area Chapter, is offering the Monarch Stewards’ third level of training, Gardening for Monarchs & Other Wildlife with Native Plants in Texas.

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 ecotype, 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 in Texas, 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
• Other resources and tools that will help you with your native gardening projects
• Virtual Tour to a recently installed native garden

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 (on notes format) of most of this workshop presentations

Futher details:

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

Previous to the workshop, a test run session will be available to help you get familiar with the Zoom platform, and to ensure you are able to connect and stay connected on the days of the workshop.

The Trainers

David Mizejewski is a naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation. He holds a degree in Human and Natural Ecology from Emory University and has hosted television series on both Animal Planet and NatGeo WILD. David regularly appears on NBC’s Today Show and does dozens of other media appearances each year to promote wildlife conservation. He specializes in urban ecology, the role that native plants have on wildlife populations, and helping people restore wildlife habitat in their cities, towns, neighborhoods, backyards, and gardens—which is the subject of his bestselling garden how-to book “Attracting Birds, Butterflies and Other Backyard Wildlife.”

Christine Anastas is a Texas Master Naturalist, Master Gardener and active member of the Native Plant Society of Texas. She has been involved with growing native milkweed plants and monarch citizen science projects since 2012. Her current citizen projects include MLMP, Journey North, Monarch Health, IMMP, Monarch Watch, and is part of the beta testing for the University of Michigan M3 Monarch Migration Project. She has developed and conducted workshops for MLMP training and community presentations on Monarch and Milkweed conservation.

Judit Green, an Urban Wildlife Biologist with Texas Parks & Wildlife for the past 26 years, conducts outreach and offers technical guidance on natural resource projects that benefit wildlife, landscapes, water, and people. She helped co-found the first chapter of Texas Master Naturalists™ in San Antonio in 1996 and still serves as their advisor, was a contributing author to the Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife book, supports Texas Children in Nature (NatureRocksTexas.org) connecting families to nature and the Alamo Area Monarch Collaborative promoting pollinator plants that benefits all wildlife.

Craig Hensley is a Texas Nature Trackers Biologist with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Craig is a lifelong naturalist and educator, now training community scientists across Texas about iNaturalist and helping document the flora and fauna of Texas. Craig has been educating children and adults about the natural world including monarchs for more than thirty years, as well as native plants and their use in gardens. Craig holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Management from Arkansas Tech University and a Master’s in Zoology from the University of Arkansas.

Lee Marlowe is the Sustainable Landscape Ecologist for the San Antonio River Authority and a restoration ecologist with over 20 years of professional experience working in the field of ecological restoration and natural resource management including sustainable landscape practices and applications for improved ecological functions. Her expertise includes the use of native plants to provide wildlife habitat, water quality benefits, bank/site stabilization and aesthetic beauty in landscapes of all sizes.

Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñón is the Monarch Outreach Coordinator for NWF. Her goal is to ensure that Texas cities within the monarch butterfly central flyway take appropriate, effective conservation actions that will increase the monarch population. She works closely with people at different levels and backgrounds to define the best strategies to implement monarch conservation programs. She is facilitating the integration of the Texas Monarch Conservation Plan, an effort initiated by TPWD.