Events

Garlic Mustard Pull and creative ways to use it Plus a Native Plant Exchange Field trip led by Barbara Zvirzdinis, Wild Ones River City (WORC) Programs Committee Co-Chair with support from Kent County Parks and Recreation Rogue River Park Trailhead parking address: 6240 Belmont Ave. NE, Belmont, MI 49306 We will meet at the West end of the parking lot and head out to pull invasive garlic mustard in the park. You will likely see Spring ephemerals in the park! Pot up some of your native plants and bring for our Native Plant Exchange. Leave plants in your car or next to your car during the garlic mustard pull. (See plant exchange instructions below.) Closed-toe shoes with socks recommended. Gloves and bags for garlic mustard will be provided by Kent County Parks. Download recipes for using garlic mustard in the kitchen. Barbara will be giving away 2 eco-printed, garlic mustard dyed scarves! BIOGRAPHY: Barbara Zvirzdinis is the WORC Programs Co-Chair for 2022 and Program Chair 2023. She has been using native and non-native plants for dyeing and eco-printing fabrics, bookmaking and making clothes since 2016. She has taught a variety of mixed media art classes along with dyeing fabric using plants and indigo. Barbara had a alternative health practice for many years in the Cherry Hill district, where she used her talents as a Certified Wholistic Kinesiologist, Certified Matrix Energetics Practitioner, Certified Massage Therapist, Reconnection Healing Practitioner, Certified Herbalist and Certified Acutonics Practitioner to help her clients achieve balance in their lives. She has taught workshops on Manifesting Your Hearts Desires, Healing Sound Mantras, Know Your Parasites, Herbal Remedies for the cold and flu season, Herbal Home skin care. Barbara is semi-retired and maintains a small practice in her home. NATIVE PLANT EXCHANGE Bring some native plants from your yard to share with your fellow Wild Ones and take some home for yourself. All plants are FREE! Plant Exchange Rules of Etiquette:  The purpose of the Plant Exchange is to foster natural landscaping with native plants. Please bring plants to share from your garden that you know to be true native species, please no invasive exotics! Respect Plants - Plants may not get planted immediately, pot them up well so they can survive. Please provide species labels for the transplants and label them with moisture/sun requirements. Respect Yourself - Just starting out? Don’t have plants to bring? Of course you may still take plants! In fact, that is one of the main purposes of the Plant Exchange. We all had to get started somehow, and when native plants start doing really well in your yard, bring some back to share. It is the “Plant It Forward” concept! Respect Others - If there are only a few pots of a particular species, please take only one so that others may have a chance to get one too. " Garlic Mustard Photo: Chris Evans, University of Illinois, Bugwood.org Pulled plants should be bagged and placed in trash — do NOT compost or leave pulled plants on site. MAY 2022 PROGRAM ENHANCEMENTS By the WORC Education Committee We have an alien plant intruder in the Midwest and Northeast, and spreading across the country called Garlic Mustard. Our country’s own settlers introduced this culinary and medicinal herb native to Europe and Asia by planting it in their gardens in the Northeastern U.S. in the late 1800s. Our early settlers called this plant a potherb meaning any plant used as seasoning by cooking in a pot. However, these plants jumped their gardens and have been spreading westward ever since! The plant lacks sufficient predators to keep it in check that enhances its dominance. Learn more about garlic mustard and 10 more invasive species in West Michigan by reviewing this comprehensive brochure issued by the West Michigan Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA). This brochure will be available free to all attendees.