
{"id":2260,"date":"2008-04-03T07:28:11","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T15:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/04\/03\/recently-natives-grow-natives-in-the-garden\/"},"modified":"2008-04-03T07:28:11","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T15:28:11","slug":"recently-natives-grow-natives-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/04\/03\/recently-natives-grow-natives-in-the-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Recently: Natives grow natives in the garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/prather-owner-and-pond.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/prather-owner-and-pond.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Prather at the pond in his backyard of mostly native plants. Contributed photo.\" align=\"left\" height=\"242\" width=\"161\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>By Valarie Schwartz<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The rain Tuesday morning didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deter Jeff and Cheryl Prather. It had kept them inside on Monday, but they had a freshly painted bench to park and no doubt a list of other things to accomplish in their native woodland garden that will be one of 10 gardens featured on the Chapel Hill Spring Garden Tour 2008 being held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., April 12, and noon to 4 p.m., April 13, in the communities of Meadowmont and The Oaks.<\/p>\n<p>Both natives of North Carolina themselves, the Prathers settled in Chapel Hill in 1990 after 21 years of travel with Jeff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career in the U.S. Air Force.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Their appreciation of wooded areas grew over years of visiting parks and gardens around the world, though their own gardening had been limited to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yard work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d until buying their home in The Oaks in 1996. They enlisted the help of landscape architect Alicia Berry, who encouraged them to work in other gardens to learn what they liked and wanted in the 3\/4-acre lot they had chosen, which \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sloped steeply to a degraded deciduous woodland edge,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Cheryl described it.<\/p>\n<p>Cheryl volunteers at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, where she has worked in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants every Wednesday morning for a dozen years. They volunteer weekly at Battle Park removing exotic invasives, and are members of the Triangle Land Conservancy and the N.C. Native Plant Society (www.ncwildflower.org), where they have participated in numerous plant rescues from about-to-be-developed land sites.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sometimes the very best things are in our very own back yard,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cheryl said. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly true in their yard, as some of the rescued plants went to local public gardens and some landed here.<\/p>\n<p>Their property with two bridges across the creek that runs through it, and the rock steps built by Jeff, punctuates the serenity below the trees, where trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpits and arrow-leaf ginger among a vast variety of wildflowers, ferns and groundcovers delight even those who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t name a single plant \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as was practically their case when they first started. Pots filled with English ivy and impatiens that they started out with attest to their initial ignorance of native plants.<\/p>\n<p>Even still, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we have some things that would be technically on the invasive plant list,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cheryl said. Like the hellebores she loves. But even before the drought, they had learned the importance of preserving native plants and restoring endangered species of plants.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t save everything, but everybody can do something,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cheryl said.<\/p>\n<p>Buying a ticket to the tour, and buying raffle tickets (for 90 prizes worth over $7,000), makes a difference because the funds raised by the Chapel Hill Garden Club go to support the building of the new education center at the N.C. Botanical Garden here in Chapel Hill, where even more people will learn about native plants.<\/p>\n<p>Peter White, director of the botanical garden, told club members last week, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have been so impressed with the professionalism of your club . . . . It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really amazing what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all able to imagine and put together.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be impressed too.<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"http:\/\/chapelhillgardentour.net\">chapelhillgardentour.net<\/a> to take a virtual tour, learn where to purchase $15 advance tickets and buy raffle tickets. Tour tickets may also be bought on tour days at the N.C. Botanical Garden or at any tour garden for $20 ($5 for children 7-18). Call 962-0522. .<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/recentlyprather-hellebore.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/recentlyprather-hellebore.jpg\" alt=\"Hellebores in the Prathers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 garden. Photo courtesy of Chapel Hill Garden Club.\" align=\"left\" height=\"230\" width=\"156\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Valarie Schwartz The rain Tuesday morning didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deter Jeff and Cheryl Prather. It had kept them inside on Monday, but they had a freshly painted bench to park and no doubt a list of other things to accomplish in their native woodland garden that will be one of 10 gardens featured on the Chapel&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}