NMB Wants YOU!
Robin Schachat and Jane Ellison
Summary of Activities from 2023 through April 2024
It has been more than a year since Jane Ellison, Robin Schachat, Kathryn Craig and Wendy Donkin began creating the program for homeowners that would become Nature in My Backyard, and which was launched as a pilot program at the 2023 Audubon Society of Greater Cleveland (ASGC) Centennial Celebration. The program has grown its volunteer base to include ASGC members, members of Shaker Lakes Garden Club, and Cuyahoga County Master Gardener Volunteers. An amazing amount of effort has been invested in creating a resource-rich program. Robin has written articles for the House Wren and the Shaker Lakes Garden Club monthly newsletters, Kathryn has written articles for The House Wren, and Wendy has developed a Facebook page.
Jane has connected with Village and Wilderness (Home - Village and Wilderness), a national resource for established and emerging microhabitat incubator programs, and NMB has been added to their directory. Jane was invited to participate in their Practitioners Circle, sharing ideas and learning what works in other parts of the country. Most Practitioners Circle members are paid staff of member organizations.
Jane and Robin have also addressed a number of neighborhood organizations, as well as the Northern Ohio chapter of Wild Ones and the Northern Ohio Perennial Society, about what NMB offers and how they can be of help to members and their friends. Harvey Webster, one of our initial and continuing partners in the project, has addressed garden clubs and Audubon gatherings across the state of Ohio.
An important development for NMB is the ability of Cuyahoga County Master Gardeners to receive volunteer credit hours toward their annual volunteer hours requirement, for both the time they spend volunteering with NMB and the time they spend training. There are currently 8 additional people signed up to help and countless hours have been spent developing the training materials for them. These new volunteers have the potential to increase NMB’s capacity for site visits. Jane and Robin visited 23 properties last summer and have 15 more visits scheduled so far for the month of May.
COMING UP:
NMB will be implementing a Facebook presence, adding ZOOM ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ presentations, and a monthly Zoom Q & A with Robin and Jane. They will continue writing articles, booking speaking engagements, and developing website content. And to be sure, they will continue creating positive personal impacts with each homeowner’s experience.
NMB hopes each of you will consider either signing up for help to make your landscape part of this grassroots movement to boost biodiversity, or joining the volunteer corps to help others figure out what non-native invasive plants to remove and what natives to plant.