We recently connected with Marlene Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Marlene, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
My passion for native plants and sustainable landscaping practices led me to cofound and charter Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay, a local chapter of the national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization Wild Ones: Native Plants, Natural Landscapes. Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay is located in southern Maryland and serves Charles, Calvert, St. Mary’s, Prince Georges, and Anne Arundel counties. As a local chapter, we are deeply rooted in natives, connecting people and native plants for a healthy planet. We’re not just an organization; we’re a “boots-on-the-ground” movement, a community that celebrates the beauty and benefits of native plants to support a healthier planet. Our members play a crucial role in protecting native habitats, supporting public native garden projects, and providing valuable educational resources.
Our mission is to promote native landscapes through education, advocacy, and collaborative action. Core to our mission is the concept that a healthy planet starts with native plants. It’s really quite simple. Native plants are the foundation of a natural habitat, or ecosystem, that supports biodiversity. Biodiversity is all the different kinds of life you’ll find in one area—the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and even microorganisms that make up our natural world. Each of these species and organisms have evolved together over millions of years and work together in ecosystems, like an intricate web, to maintain balance and support life. Biodiversity supports everything in nature that we need to survive, including food, clean water, medicine, and shelter.
However, dwindling biodiversity is a threat to the foundation of life on earth. In the last century alone, we’ve lost millions of acres of diverse ecosystems to urbanization. Native plants help protect and restore biodiversity, improve air and water quality and provide wildlife with quality food and shelter. To help restore biodiversity, our vision is native plants and natural landscapes in every community. To fulfill our mission, we inspire change through shared core values:
• Respect is at the heart of Wild Ones. We have respect for each other, for nature and for the earth.
• We’re an inclusive community. Diverse voices and backgrounds make us stronger. That’s why we welcome everyone to join us.
• We provide evidence-based information, because the seeds of change spread most efficiently when grounded in data. We monitor and share the latest evidence-informed strategies.
• We’re action and growth oriented. Just dig in! We learn, grow, and share our knowledge.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have been a southern Maryland native since the age of 13. From an early age, I enjoyed gardening of all kinds, especially the peace and serenity that comes with being outdoors in the fresh air with my hands in the dirt. In preparation for retirement, I became a University of Maryland Extension Master Gardener/Bay-Wise Master Gardener in 2015, volunteering tirelessly on numerous projects for the past 10 years. One of my major accomplishments as a Master Gardener was co-founding NatureFest in 2021 with Georgia Bonney of the Neighborhood Creative Arts Center. This annual event connects local families with dozens of environmentally-conscious organizations to share the beauty of our natural world with children and their families. Then in 2022, I partnered with our local 4H educator on a youth pollinator project, at which time I met Esther Bonney, founder of Nurture Natives. Since 2022, I’ve been providing support and guidance to help Esther grow her local 4-H pollinator project into Nurture Natives, a nationally recognized, youth-led nonprofit. To fulfill the UME Master Gardener mission to educate residents about safe, effective and sustainable horticultural practices that build healthy gardens, landscapes, and communities, I give presentations and conduct workshops on two wildly popular topics: native seed collecting and winter sowing.
My passion for native plants and wildlife also led me to become a Xerces Ambassador in 2022, doing my part to protect “the little things that run the world”. Xerces is an international nonprofit organization that protects the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. As a Xerces Ambassador, I have worked with hundreds of youth to become X Kids, a program that takes them on an adventure with Blue the Butterfly to meet other invertebrates and learn about their superpowers; given presentations both virtually and in-person on the importance of protecting pollinators, including the iconic monarch butterfly; and staffed outreach tables at plant shares and Earth Day events to promote the Xerces message.
I enjoy my volunteer work as a Master Gardener and as a Xerces Ambassador, but I felt there was still more that I was meant to do. So when I received an email from a friend in October 2023 for someone to steward the growth of a local Wild Ones chapter that, lacking a volunteer leader or leaders, would close at the end of the month, I immediately decided to take on the challenge. As the newly appointed President, I successfully chartered Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay in December 2023, just two short months after relaunching the chapter.
Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay connects people with native plants in several core program areas: native gardens, outreach, workshops & presentations, plant propagation, plant shares, and youth empowerment.
Native Gardens: We have collaborated with several local organizations (Friends of St. Clements Bay, St. Mary’s Master Gardeners, St. Mary’s County Garden Club, and Forrest Career and Technology Center) to install and maintain native gardens at the St. Mary’s Public Library Front Yard in Leonardtown, the St. Mary’s Animal Adoption and Resource Center in Lexington Park, and the Parkette Pollinator Patch in Leonardtown.
Outreach: We’ve staffed outreach tables to share our mission and to educate the community on the importance of native plants at Earth Day events, NatureFest, University Park Meadow Day, National Night Out, Chesapeake Natives Spring and Fall festivals, Patuxent Research Refuge Pollinator Festival, and North Beach BugFest.
Workshops & Presentations: From Spring Ephemerals, Understory Trees, and Community Gardens, to our most recent Berries for Birds, our chapter provides presentations (either by chapter members or invited guests) at our bimonthly meetings that are open to the public. We have also partnered with our local libraries to host workshops and presentations on Biodiversity and Native Gardening 101, Native Seed Collecting, and Winter Sowing.
Plant propagation: Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay propagated over 2000 native plants at the USGS Bee Lab this year to distribute to community members at our outreach events and workshops. We also volunteered at Bona Terra LLC nursery to help sow native seeds in quart pots to be distributed in their philanthropic seedling giveaways.
Plant shares: Our chapter holds native plant shares twice a year (spring and fall) that are free and open to the public. To reach a broader audience, we rotate the shares around the counties that we serve (Charles, Calvert, St. Mary’s, Prince Georges, and Anne Arundel).
Youth empowerment: As I mentioned earlier, I’ve provided support and guidance to Esther Bonney to grow her local 4-H pollinator project into Nurture Natives, a nationally recognized, youth-led nonprofit. Together, we trained at Bona Terra LLC to host the first Community-Led Bona Terra Satellite Native Seedling Giveaway in October 2023 in which participants can receive local-ecotype native seedlings grown from seed at Bona Terra. By the end of October 2024, we will have hosted a total of seven. And in 2025, we will participate with Bona Terra to train additional organizations interested in leading community seedling giveaways.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Gardening is not just art—it’s a mission to make small but meaningful changes that support wildlife and reconnect us to the environment. The most rewarding aspect of connecting people with native plants involves the personal connections I’m making along the way. I like to describe the success of Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay in two simple phrases: “Find your passion. Find your partners.” Without a doubt, finding the right partners (my husband, Bill, and three friends, Emily Hansroth, Lynne Wheeler, and Sue Williams) to relaunch the chapter as founding officers/directors ensured our chapter hit the ground running, being recognized in our region as a fast-moving chapter that others want to emulate. We’ve forged numerous partnerships and relationships with like-minded native plant enthusiasts, including individuals, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. Another rewarding aspect of being the President of Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay is seeing the change we are bringing to our region. From a community member who attends an event, experiences our enthusiasm, and understands our message who then either joins our chapter or simply follows us from event to event to learn more, to a chapter member who attends one of our meetings and makes the decision to become a land steward for a community garden. These simple connections are having a significant impact in restoring the biodiversity in our local communities, one person, one plant, one habitat at a time.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t share with you how rewarding it has been to have my husband, Bill, beside me on this journey. Bill has been my biggest supporter for over 40 years. He has supported me in all my volunteer endeavors over the past few years, including becoming a Master Gardener in 2020 and partnering with me as Vice-President of Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay last year. He is an amateur videographer, shooting and editing videos for not only Wild Ones events, but also for Master Gardener and Xerces events. We met when we were students at Charles County Community College in the late 1970s, and our volunteer work with Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay has reconnected us with the college, which is now the College of Southern Maryland. Earlier this month, the College of Southern Maryland hosted our Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay/Nurture Natives free native tree giveaway. It seems appropriate that the place where we first fell in love is now a partner organization for our passion for native plants.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
For me, the inspiration to focus my attention on native plants came when I listened to a presentation by Doug Tallamy in 2021 titled “Nature’s Best Hope,” Based on his book by the same name, Tallamy’s presentation enlightened me on the urgency of declining wildlife populations because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. Tallamy’s solution? Plant more natives. In the presentation, Tallamy outlined his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation. “Nature’s Best Hope” shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats, which is the message that Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay delivers. I’ve also been inspired by Tallamy’s other presentations based on his books “Bringing Nature Home” and “The Nature of Oaks”,
In addition to Tallamy, I’ve sought out presentations and books by other nationally known names in the native plant community, including Heather Holmes, Nancy Lawson, Benjamin Vogt, Rachel Carson, and Larry Weaner. And most recently, I’ve been inspired by Rebecca McMackin’s Ted Talk titled “Let your garden grow wild”.
“The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.” – Claude Monet
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” — Claude Monet
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chesapeakebay.wildones.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildoneschesapeakebaymd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildoneschesapeakebay
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WildOnesChesapeakeBay
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1798973853874681
Image Credits
Bill Smith