About Plant Virginia Natives
Plant Virginia Natives is a collaborative initiative that has engaged over 250 organizations in state-wide and regional marketing strategies to increase the use and availability of native plants. The initiative is a forum to collaborate and coordinate on native plant communication, education and marketing, and advances the shared goals of the partners outlined in an Action Plan.
One of the actions of the initiative is regional native plant marketing campaigns throughout the coastal zone, across the Piedmont and into the mountains.
There are now ten regional campaigns in Virginia. These campaigns help meet the goals of the Plant Virginia Natives Initiative by focusing on helping landowners learn more about their property and the ecological benefits of a native plant landscape; and recruiting local garden centers and other providers to promote and increase the supply and variety of the native plants they carry. The campaigns also work with local jurisdictions to strengthen policies that favor native plants.
In spring 2009, the Virginia Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Program and its partners launched the first regional campaign, Plant ES Natives, campaign using proven Community-Based Social Marketing tools and techniques with a focus on making planting natives fun, easy and popular.
Improving habitats is an important goal of the Virginia CZM Program, a network of state agencies and coastal localities led by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The program has invested significant resources over its 35-year history on land and water-based habitat restoration and protection. The program emphasizes the importance of maintaining and increasing valuable native vegetative cover to help protect water quality and quantity, support more wildlife, increase absorption of carbon dioxide and beautify the landscape.
Over the next decade, the Plant ES Natives campaign became a model for development of five regional campaigns funded by the Virginia CZM Program in the Virginia's coastal zone.
In 2019, Plant Virginia Natives coordinator, Virginia Witmer, Virginia CZM Program, and Carol Heiser, Virginia Department of Department of Game and Inland Fisheries** (now retired) partnered to conduct workshops to build the capacity of regional and local partners to apply the regional native plant marketing model beyond Virginia’s coastal zone. As a result, three campaigns have been launched in Virginia's Northern Piedmont, Southern Piedmont, Southwest Virginia and Ridge and Valley regions.
**Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is now the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
Current Regional Native Plant Marketing Campaigns in Virginia -
Components of the Plant ES Natives Campaign strategy, such as a regional plant guide, have been easily transferrable to address barriers common in all the regions to planting natives. Each region however is unique and the planning teams are continuously evaluating which place-based approaches are most effective in reaching their gardening population.
The Plant Virginia Natives website hosts all the regional campaigns, with the exception of the Plant NOVA Natives campaign and the Plant NNK Natives campaign. All regional native plant guides are downloadable. Guides are currently available for the Eastern Shore, Northern Neck, Northern Virginia, Central Rappahannock, Virginia Capital region, Southeast Virginia and Northern Piedmont and Ridge and Valley (upper Shenandoah). Guides for the Southern Piedmont and Southwest Virginia are currently in production.
The regional native plant marketing model leverages partner resources, creates consistent messaging and provides a rallying point for partners. In 2019-2020, the Virginia Native Plant Society fundraised over $30,000 to help produce new regional native plant guides and to help fund reprints of existing guides.
Together with its many partners, the Virginia CZM Program has been helping grow public demand for, and a social norm in favor of, native plants. In 2009, prior to the Plant ES Natives campaign, the program heard natives still described as scraggly and weedy. Fourteen years later in 2022, with campaigns spreading state-wide, that perception is fading away garden by garden.
Current coordination of the Plant Virginia Natives Initiative and this website is made possible by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to the Virginia Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Program. Virginia CZM is a network of state agencies and coastal localities, led by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“Virginia Natives Initiative Grounded in Collaboration”
By Virginia Witmer
Article providing an overview of the Plant Virginia Natives regional native plant marketing campaign effort in the Winter 2023 issue of Sempervirens published by the Virginia Native Plant Society.
Contact
Virginia Witmer
Coordinator,
Plant Virginia Natives Marketing Partnership
Outreach Coordinator, Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program
Virginia.Witmer@
deq.virginia.gov
(804) 659-1912