What are your gardening plans this year? Join our spring online series, "Growing Ideas: Inspiration from Novel Area Gardens," featuring local garden innovators, and learn about new ideas happening here on the Blue Hill Peninsula. Want to build a thriving backyard ecosystem? Include beautiful native plants in your borders? Grow nutrient-packed vegetables and fruits in the healthiest Maine soil ever? Or find fun opportunities to learn or volunteer with other gardeners, and share your skills and bounty with the community? This series highlights some of the exciting garden trends that are happening right here, right now, and offers practical ideas for every gardener.

On Thursday, April 8 at 7 PM, Avy Claire and Cathy Rees will give a presentation on Native Gardens of Blue Hill. Native plants play a critical role in sustaining and enhancing the places where we live and work. Learn how you can incorporate more native plants into your garden designs, maximize beauty and value, and enrich your enjoyment by attracting birds and pollinators. Get ideas about seed saving, propagation, and native plant resources. Preview what you might experience when you come tour or volunteer at the beautiful public garden in the town of Blue Hill.

Avy Claire has been designing and maintaining garden landscapes for the past 30 years. As an employer, she has trained dozens of young gardeners. In 2015, she co-founded Native Gardens of Blue Hill to demonstrate sustainable gardening practices to the wider community. Avy also holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and has exhibited her art widely throughout the country, with pieces in numerous private and corporate collections. A conceptual theme in her studio practice illustrates the intersection of human activity and nature. This theme has informed Avy’s garden practice, where she focuses on solutions that weave her client’s program with nature’s systems.

Cathy Rees has worked for over 25 years creating and maintaining gardens, while also doing ecological consulting for parks, forests, land trusts, and private individuals.  Her familiarity with native flora has inspired her creative use of natives in both gardens and uncultivated landscapes. The desire to educate others about their native flora—including its beauty, mystery, and benefit to the ecosystem—led her to co-found Native Gardens of Blue Hill. Having worked as an educator, researcher, and gardener, Cathy combines these interests to advocate for gardening as though the future depends on it! She majored in environmental design and planning, and earned an MS in ecology.

This online program is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Blue Hill Garden Club. It is free of charge and everyone is welcome. Register by calling 374-5515 or using the library's online calendar at www.bhpl.net to receive the Zoom link to join.