Grant Reports

Urban Remediation Project in Charlottesville, Virginia
By Kathleen Maier

Five years ago, I made the move from rural, Rappahannock Co., Virginia where I had been stewarding a 25 acre blend of meadow and woodlands to downtown Charlottesville where the city property that acquired me had only a large house and under ¼ acre. The adjacent lot was a 2-acre woodland with an abandoned field, which I thought, was owned by the city, but the day I closed on the property, bulldozers appeared on the lot next door and began construction for a condominium project called the Belmont Lofts. Needless to say, soon there was great “re-arrangement” of the landscape.

California School of Herbal Studies Medicine Trail
By Bryan Bowen

When you find yourself being led up the drive of Emerald Valley, home to the California School of Herbal Studies, you know you are in a sacred place. The road opens into a green corridor held by two forested hillsides. We are on the edge of the wild where life collides in harmony. The magic runs deep here. People come to CSHS from all over the world and from spring to fall the school is alive with herbal students. Some say that the school led them here and others say that something less tangible guided them to Emerald Valley. Maybe there was a calling from the land, plants and gardens.  No matter how people found their way to this herb school, there is no doubt that the Plant Energy is vibrant and ever-present here.

Cedar Spring Herb Farm Botanical Sanctuary
Harwich, MA
By Donna Wood Eaton

It has been 7 years since Cedar Spring Herb Farm joined the UpS Sanctuary Network.  At that time the dream of a UpS Medicine Trail was conceived.  Part of the farm’s 7 acres includes a vernal pool, which had been ‘mistakenly’ disturbed by neighboring development.  A plan to rehabilitate the wetland, which included a native medicinal plant trail, was proposed and sent for approval on the local and state level.  Rehabilitation included natural berming of the land to protect from runoff, replanting native vegetation and clearing of the warrior plants (poison ivy and bull briar) that had been protecting the vernal pool. Planting beds were marked and amended each year and native species were documented and encouraged.

By Robin Rose Bennett
West Milford, NJ

     This project began after I joined a local sustainability group that had been meeting for less than a year, educating themselves on the issues that called them. I quickly realized I had come to the right place to deepen my involvement with the community. We had just been approved for the town’s “Adopt-a-Spot” program, and had adopted an overgrown triangle in an intersection, and were exploring possibilities of how to use it for education. Our projects are member-generated and led so when I suggested that we might be able to procure a UPS grant to get us started and we could create a native plants garden, I soon was heading up a project!

Williamsville, VT
By Marli Rabinowitz

The Manitou Project is a non-profit that stewards a beautiful tract of forest in Williamsville, Vermont.  Its mission is to celebrate the sacred interdependence of humans and nature.  We are learning to manage the forest as active and respectful partners in its growth and healing as it changes from a re-grown sheep pasture to a mature and evolving hardwood forest.

Earth Scouts Rhode Island ~ Charlestown, RI
By Aimee Fontaine & Dixie Hill

“This was so much fun!”, “Aren’t there any more plants?” These were the sentiments expressed by the children of Earth Scouts Rhode Island as they completed their native plant restoration project at Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. Thanks to a community grant from United Plant Savers, ten Rhode Island children participated in the project, restoring two trailhead areas at the refuge. This group of children aged 3-14, along with their parents and volunteers, partnered with US Fish & Wildlife and the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge in a project to help protect the state’s only undeveloped salt pond. With the guidance of Janna Greenhalgh, wildlife biologist at Trustom, the children chose two areas at the trailheads to provide maximum visibility for the beautiful native plants and grasses that will come next spring. The property hosts more than 50,000 visitors annually who will see this restoration project.

Monica Skye of Standing Rock Botanical Sanctuary, ND

Wopila tanka (big thank you) to United Plant Savers’ generous community grant. The funding of our multigenerational planting project last Mother’s Day helped to restore land that was previously scarred by a bulldozer. Cattle also caused damage to the area before it was established as an UpS Botanical Sanctuary.
Planting indigenous and ceremonial plants along a dry stream was rewarding for everyone involved. Young children and elders together planted eastern red cedar, red osier dogwood also called red willow, buffalo berry, ash trees, native plum, sumac, chokecherry, June berry, bur oak, and echinacea plants in the area of a sacred inipi (sweat lodge), one of the seven rites of the Lakota people. We also planted Horizon Herb’s “Earth Healer’s Seed Mix” over the surface of earth that was disturbed by cattle and the noxious weed called leafy spurge. After planting we ate an organic picnic lunch together among the new plants that blended beautifully into the natural landscape.

By Monica Skye

Thanks to United Plant Savers for awarding us a grant to help cover the costs of establishing a Botanical Sanctuary in the Porcupine District of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation. We made good use of the UpS Video and the Slide Show in PowerPoint format by making a presentation to fifth graders on the Standing Rock Indian reservation who later came to the sanctuary to hike and learn about native plants.  We also presented to the Tribal Council of the Porcupine, North Dakota local planning district who gave their full support for establishing the sanctuary on Tribal lands and expanded it to 85 acres!

Steward: Sandi Arseth
Minneapolis, MN

This season was very busy for the gardens and medicinal beds located here in the heart of Minneapolis on 31st and Minnehaha Ave. Thanks to the United Plant Savers grant we were able to increase our plant species and get labels for the garden’s plants, an important tool when utilizing the beds for educational purposes and self-guided tours. Here is a synopsis of what happened this season at our inner city gardens:

Gigi Stafne, Director
Long Lake-New Auburn, Wisconsin

At the Center for Healing Arts Herb & Eco School and Botanical Sanctuary in northern Wisconsin, we are happy to describe some of the exciting ways that we have been utilizing your gracious grant gift for native medicinal plant preservation and education projects.

Creating Bioregional Relationships: Learning and Healing on a Pacific Northwest Medicine Trail
By Megan Kupko
 

A fertile meadow, surrounded in forest, sprinkled with springs, and touched by a meandering creek, JEAN’s Urban Forest Farm is an emerald jewel nestled in a small hip pocket of the urban landscape of Portland, OR.  Owned by the Johnson Family for the last 130 years, this 10-acres of land has survived a century of development and rests as an oasis and learning site for many in the city who are striving to learn, know and care for this bioregion. JEAN’s (Johnson Environmental and Nutrition) Urban Forest Farm is an educational farm that was initiated by Portland State University’s PIIECL  (Portland International Initiative for Ecology, Culture and Learning) program in January of 2005.  The mission of the farm is to partner with Portland Public Schools to help improve academic achievement and cultural competency that enhances sustainable life choices through hands-on experiences of urban farming. 

Stewards: Chin Velasquez and Raleigh Mason

We are deeply grateful to United Plant Savers for giving us the opportunity to create a medicine trail on our recently established botanical sanctuary in Goshen, VA.  It’s been an inspiring and amazing experience so far, and we are excited for it to keep on growing. 
We received $250 this past summer, and bought blue cohosh, American ginseng, goldenseal, wild yam and wild ginger from Jeff McCormick’s Garden Medicinals in Earlysville, VA. We also drove 2 hours to Peter Heus’ Enchanter’s Garden in Hinton, WV and purchased helonias root, sundew, trillium, true unicorn, venus fly trap, gentian, partridge berry, pink root, spikenard, stone root, turkey corn, Jack in the pulpit, wild indigo and Solomon’s seal.

by Corinne Martin

The University of Southern Maine in Portland hosts the College of Nursing and Health Professions - a multidisciplinary healing college offering training in nursing, sports medicine, and therapeutic recreation. Committed to whole health education, the college has supported courses in holistic health for decades, and in September of 2003 began offering a Botanical Therapies course for students interested in pursuing an exploration of this healing modality. CONHP faculty member and clinical herbalist, Corinne Martin, feels that students learn best when they can participate in a “hands-on” fashion in identifying and preserving medicinal plants, and in making herbal preparations in class. In the spring of 2004, an application was made to United Plant Savers for funding to help start a medicinal herb garden at Masterton Hall (home of the college of nursing) on the Portland campus. Plans for the garden were to include many of the medicinal herbs students are learning about in the classroom, and to explore the possibility of including some plants that might be at risk - either in the Northeast, or in the country.