People and Nature (Dec 2022)
Connecting people, plants and place: A native plant society's journey towards a community of practice
Abstract
Abstract Native plants are often promoted for gardening, biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. Native plant gardening can contribute to environmental sustainability by conserving water and creating biologically diverse habitat. Despite the many virtues of native plants, there are challenges to building relationships between people and plants, including limited plant availability and low level of general plant appreciation and literacy. Activities that foster people–plant connections can help to alleviate Plant Awareness Disparity, foster plant conservation and produce more native plants. We describe how our environmental non‐profit organization, the Kootenay Native Plant Society, has worked to encourage people–plant connections in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada, over a 10‐year period. We borrowed from different disciplines, practices and theories to inform our work—from organic gardening and ecological restoration to sustainable development. Our programmes developed from outreach and educational activities to more place‐based and interactive initiatives. Initial activities, including wildflower walks and school programmes, offered plant information but more meaningful plant engagement was needed. We provided deeper knowledge through a flagship species approach showcasing a native plant, camas Camassia quamash, itxwa, resulting in greater appreciation for camas, although this strategy rarely translated to broader plant conservation by residents. We developed more specialized programmes that trained participants in native plant propagation and gardening, where they gained competence and contributed to a social group linked by community‐based conservation efforts and a passion for native plants. We learned our journey to connect more people with native species and get plants into gardens was a pathway towards a community of practice. Building lasting people–plant connections is not straightforward; it is an adaptive integrative process requiring delivery of dynamic and complementary activities developed over time from cumulative insights and organizational reflection. What we thought was simply an unavailability of native plants paired with people's lack of native plant appreciation was more complex, requiring a shift in social understanding of people's relationships with plants. The cultivation of a community of practice is an act of socio‐ecological restoration, a shared pathway that supports a self‐sustaining community practicing good stewardship and empowered to grow native plants. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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