Nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home owner’s associations are starting to plant native. As all the tree huggers of the 60’s and 70’s continue to age, increasingly they prefer Nature to the antiseptic plastic yards of suburbia.
Nonetheless, I was in stunned surprise when I learned that the Good Samaritan Nursing Home, which stands adjacent to my childhood home, agreed to play host to a native planting, a Girl Scout Gold Award Project! The local Girl Scout, Adria Vargas, had emailed The Long Island Conservancy to ask for guidance on what to plant.
Turned out she passed by my yard with all the native plants each day while walking her dog.
The Long Island Conservancy, Spadefoot Design and Construction, and Long Island Natives are proud to support Adria with her Gold Award Project at Good Samaritan Nursing Home.
With over three thousand native plants on less than half an acre, the Suffolk County Girl Scouts and Sayville High School will now have a ready source of native wildflower seeds — New York Ironweed, Summersweet, White Boneset, Seaside Goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed, Swamp Milkweed pictured above — to harvest and to grow in their greenhouses, and to plant in turn at other nursing homes, at schools, in parks, and in our yards.
Wildflower harvesting will bring more native plants to Sayville and beyond. Let’s help Long Island go Native. There are so many nursing homes and neighborhoods we can make beautiful. So much we can do to make our communities more friendly to wildlife. They are depending on us.
“Bravo to all those involved with this inspirational and kind hearted project. It’s great to see the next generation immersing itself in ecologically mindful gardens.”
Matt Gettinger, Long Island Natives