Bexley Recreation & Parks Department
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Love Your Alley SU 22

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LYALove Your Alley is about collaboration, sustainability, creativity and beauty. It is transforming our underutilized alleys into extended living space for everyone to enjoy, while creating our own Homegrown National Park in 43209 with native plants supporting our pollinators and assisting in flood prevention. These events and speakers are scheduled throughout the month of May to help participants learn about native plants, enhancing gardens for pollinators and much more! Thank you to the Bexley Community Foundation for funding this initiative!

Love Your Alley Festival 
5/14 Saturday, 12:00-4:00pm
Clifton Shelter, 2100 Clifton Avenue
Registration is not required, please stop by at your convenience!

Join Green Bexley for the Love Your Alley Festival on Saturday, May 14th. There will be super fun music and delicious food! Swing by to pick up free native seedlings from Natives in Harmony and Scioto Gardens, enjoy kids activities and learn all about native plants and beneficial insects. The Strange Lab will offer a Pet a Bee and an OSU Lab will offer a beneficial insects table with spiders, lady beetles and more! Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative will be on hand to answer all your questions about pollinators. If you have native plants to share or swap, bring them by! First 20 attendees will receive a gorgeous wooden sign for their pollinator garden!

Fun Friday at the Bexley Public Library
4/29 and 5/20; 5:00-7:00pm
Registration is not required, please stop by at your convenience on either date!

Stop by the Bexley Public Library parking lot for some delicious food, live music 
and visit the Love Your Alley table for native seeds, native plants, and a super fun kid’s activity! 
*seeds are available on 4/29, seeds and plants are available 5/20.

Love Your Alley Activities that require registration:
Registration is required and ends 3 hours prior to the start of the event. For more information about this initiative visit: www.bexley.org/loveyouralley.

Nature’s Best Hope with Doug Tallamy
5/1 Sunday; 7:00-8:30pm
Zoom with the Bexley Public library
Registration is through the Bexley Public Library. Register Here.
 
Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us.  Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can- and must- take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.  
 
About Doug Tallamy: Doug is the T.A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 104 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 40 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book Bringing Nature Home was published by Timber Press in 2007 and was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers’ Association. The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014; Nature’s Best Hope, a New York Times Best Seller, was released in February 2020, and his latest book The Nature of Oaks was released by Timber Press in March 2021. Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation and the Tom Dodd, Jr. Award of Excellence, the 2018 AHS B.Y. Morrison Communication Award and the 2019 Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award.

Using Native Plants in Nooks and Crannies with Debra Knapke
5/4 Wednesday; 7:00pm
In-person and via Zoom with the Bexley Public Library
Registration is through the Bexley Public Library. Register Here.

We often think of gardens as spaces that are larger areas filled with plants. But the truth for many of us is that we have more small places to fill: 2’ out from a fence, 3-4’ from the side of your home to the property line, a tree lawn or a forgotten space in an overgrown corner of your yard. While small spaces can be challenging to plant, design principles and awareness of nature work the same way as for large expansive gardens. Join Debra as she helps you explore your options.

About Debra Knapke: After two other careers, in 1992 Debra turned her avocation of plant study and gardening into her full-time career.  Known as “The Garden Sage”, Debra is passionate about gardening, sustainable garden design and the natural world, and enjoys sharing knowledge through her writing, public speaking, and garden consulting in the private and public sectors. She has served on various local and national committees and boards that focus on education, the environment, and sustainability. She has championed those passions during her two-year term (2014-2016) as Honorary President of the Herb Society of America and currently as the Chair of the Sustainability Committee of GardenComm. In addition, she has mentored the future of the landscape industry at Columbus State Community College for 24 years. She loves being a gardener and has packed an amazing variety of perennials, trees, shrubs, and edibles onto the 2/3-acre lot surrounding her home.

Hometown Habitat with Catherine Zimmerman
5/11 Wednesday; 7:00pm
Drexel Theater Film Screening followed by Q&A with the Author/Director
Registration is required and is through Bexley Rec. See activity registration below.

Award winning director, Catherine Zimmerman, and film crew traveled across the country to visit Hometown Habitat heroes, who are reversing detrimental impacts on the land and in the water of major U.S. watersheds, one garden at a time. They wound their way through the watersheds of Florida, the prairies of the Mississippi River Basin, the streams and rivers of the Rocky Mountains, the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and Columbia River to share success stories and works-in-progress that celebrate conservation landscaping that re-awakens and redefines our relationship with Nature. Along with the everyday habitat heroes, Catherine and crew introduce us to ecologists, entomologists and other experts who share the science behind how today’s ‘native-plants-know- best’ enthusiasts, landscape architects and conservation groups are helping 20th century-minded city planners, businesses and developers appreciate the myriad 21st century benefits of low-maintenance, seasonally-dynamic and eco-healthy landscapes.
The stories they traveled to tell touch on all aspects of the benefits of native plants and brings to light a sense of community that makes conservation landscaping possible. These are the stories.

About Catherine Zimmerman: Catherine Zimmerman, an award-winning director of photography, celebrates her 43rd year as a documentary filmmaker, working primarily on education and environmental issues. Environmental videos of hers include global warming documentaries for CNN Presents and New York Times Television; Save Rainforests/Save Lives, Freshfarm Markets, Wildlife Without Borders: Connecting People and Nature in the Americas, and America’s Sustainable Garden: United States Botanic Garden. Catherine is also a certified horticulturist and landscape designer based in Southwest Ohio. She is an Accredited Organic Land Care Professional (AOLCP) from the NOFA Organic Land Care Program and has designed and taught a course in organic landscaping for the USDA Graduate School Horticulture program.


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