Bergen-Passaic Chapter of Native Plant Society of New Jersey to Meet Nov. 20

The next meeting of the Bergen-Passaic chapter of the Native Plant Society of New Jersey (NPSNJ) will take place on Thursday, Nov. 20, at 7 p.m., in the Auditorium of the Bergen Regional Medical Center, located at 230 E. Ridgewood Avenue in Paramus.

The speaker will be Nancy Slowik, research associate at the Hudsonia Field Station at Bard College. She will speak about propagating native plants and autumn seed collection.

Nancy Slowik began her career in the National Park Service before working as a naturalist at High Rock Park on Staten Island. In 1985, she joined the New York City Parks Department, where she co-founded the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, a pilot program introducing native plant propagation and restoration to NYC parks. In 1989, Nancy became the first woman director/naturalist at Greenbrook Sanctuary, where she worked on a variety of cooperative natural history studies and published two books on the flora of the Palisades. In 2011, she joined the staff of the Hudsonia Field Station, where she works on biodiversity assessments in the Hudson Valley region. She also teaches field botany and native plant propagation classes at the New York Botanical Garden.

NPSNJ is a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to the appreciation, protection and study of the native flora of New Jersey. Founded in 1985, the group has hundreds of members across the state organized into county and regional chapters. Members include gardeners, horticulturists, naturalists, landscape designers, students, and native plant enthusiasts from all walks of life. For more information about NPSNJ, go to https://www.npsnj.org/.

NPSNJ conducts regular lectures and presentations with featured speakers on topics ranging from introduction to native plants, gardening with natives, identification and appreciation of the beautiful flora and ecosystems of New Jersey, ecological landscaping and more. The Bergen-Passaic chapter holds eight meetings per year. The next meeting will be on Thursday, Jan. 22, and the speaker will be Linda Rohleder, director of the Invasives Strike Force program at the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference.

Photo by Vincent Amesse.