|
N.E. Wild Flower Society to Receive National Award
By Lucy Browne
 The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts (GCFM) has announced that the New England Wild Flower Society (NEWFS) will receive the National Garden Club's "2006 Award of Excellence for Organizations." The award will be presented at the upcoming National Garden Clubs (NGC) National Convention in Orlando, Florida.
Kathleen Thomas, GCFM president, sponsored NEWFS for the award. She said, "I enthusiastically nominated NEWFS for this recognition, and I look forward to working with this worthy organization in the coming years. Our current GCFM theme is 'Teamwork Achieves Dreams,' and NEWFS, with its outstanding work in conservation, horticulture, education, and preservation, is a highly desirable teammate."
The Wild Flower Society is currently celebrating 105 years of commitment to North American native plants and their habitats. Founded in 1900 by women to preserve native plants threatened by wild collection for use in the florist trade, the New England Wild Flower Society is now the leader in native plant and plant habitat conservation and education in the North Eastern United States.
NEWFS is a leading regional advocate and steward of Massachusetts’s floral heritage; and its membership includes thousands of native plant enthusiasts across North America. The society promotes the conservation of temperate North American plants through education, research, horticulture, habitat preservation, and advocacy.
The Society founded and administers the New England Plant Conservation Program (NEPCoP), collaboration among botanists, federal and state agencies, and conservation organizations throughout the New England states. NEPCoP is the leading plant conservation collaboration in the United States. In 1998, the Society began a Plant Conservation Volunteer Corps to survey, monitor, and preserve New England's native plant communities.
GCFM is a service organization made up of 194 clubs throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with a membership of 12,000 dedicated to education in, and appreciation of, horticulture, landscape and floral design, gardening, and environmental concerns. In many, if not most, communities, garden clubs are the principal force behind beautifying and improving pubic spaces and decorating public buildings for the holidays and summertime. GCFM is a member of NGC.
For more information, please visit www.gardenclub.org or www.newfs.org.
Editor's note:
The Society recently hosted an important presentation at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA, by Peter Galvin, Conservation Director of The Center for Biological Diversity, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Galvin presented the findings of the center's comprehensive study of the results of the Act in the northeastern United States.
Find the link to the full report at www.newfs.org/fesa.htm.
|
