Heather McCargo
Director of Wild Seed Project
PRESENTING
Saturday March 2nd, 10:35 am
Understanding the Fascinating Life Cycle of Native Plants: Flowering, pollinators and seed dispersal
In this slide talk, Heather will show you the fascinating reproductive life cycle of different types of New England native plants and explains how we can change our landscape practices to support wild plant reproduction, pollinators, and other wildlife. Heather will explain simple outdoor seed sowing that anyone can do to help increase native plant populations. Growing native plants from seed is a great way to protect the genetic diversity of our native flora and to produce an abundance of plants inexpensively. Be part of a grassroots movement to sow native seeds!
PRESENTING
Friday March 1st, 8:45 am
Why Going Native Matters: Beauty, biodiversity and resilience
In this slide presentation, Heather will cover the many reasons we all should care about our regions native flora and bring these native plants back into our developed landscapes. Native plants are beautiful (many examples shown), they are important for our regions ecosystem functioning, and they do not need the high inputs of water and nutrients of commonly cultivated plants making them excellent additions to our gardens. She will then explain what is going on in the nursery trade with native plants including loss of genetic diversity and cloning, and how we can all support our native flora with by planting seed grown native plants.
About Heather
Heather McCargo, founder and executive director of Wild Seed Project, is an educator with 30 years of expertise in plant propagation, landscape design, and conservation. She was the head plant propagator at the New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods during the 1990s, worked at several landscape architecture/planning firms specializing in ecological design, and has been a contributor to several research projects with USAID, the National Gardening Association, and MOFGA. She has lectured nationally and is widely published in journals and magazines such as Horticulture and American Nurseryman. More locally, Heather designed the master plan for the medicinal gardens at Avena Botanicals in Rockland and was the creator and lead teacher for the Bay School’s Agricultural Arts program. Heather has a B.A. in plant ecology from Hampshire College, and an M.A. from the Conway School of Landscape Design.