Reviewed by: Callie Puryear
This new group is growing native plants in Highland Park
Reading time: 4 minutes
Homegrown Habitat, AKA Birmingham Area Native Plant Club, formed to raise awareness and share tips for growing native plants in the area. Happening in Birmingham’s Highland Park neighborhood, keep reading for the details on this new group.
Homegrown Habitat
While not affiliated with the site, Homegrown Habitat is using the resources from Homegrown National Park, where users can log their process in planting native plants in their own yards and communities.
We spoke to Laney Clark about how Homegrown Habitat came to be.
“I saw Doug Tallamy of Homegrown National Park speak at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and he was talking about the importance of native plants. I had heard of them, but never knew how crucial they were to the ecosystem.
My friend Stanley Robinson [formerly employed by the City of Birmingham Parks and Recreation department] and I had talked for a long time about creating more gardens in the area, but Doug opened my eyes to the importance of native plants and eventually, we started Homegrown Habitat.”
Laney Clark
Highland Park’s chapter of Homegrown Habitat is called the Goldenrod Group, and Laney let us know that they will be presenting the final median plans to the Highland Park Neighborhood Association next Tuesday.
What is being planted in Highland Park?
Lea Ann Macknally from Macknally Land Designs is doing the landscaping plans for the Highland Park medians, and she let us in on a few of the native plants coming to the area:
- Common Cup-Plant (Silphium perfoliatum)
- Black-Eyed Susan (Pudbeckia hirta)
- Wild Bergamont (Monarda fistulosa)
- Wild Blue Indigo (Baptisia australis)
- Purple Lovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)
- Threadleaf Coreopsis (Coresopsis verticillate)
- Tickseed Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata)
- American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
- Upland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium)
Lea Ann also let us know that these planting mixes were carefully considered due to the amount of sunlight or shade the area will get.
“A lot of this pilot project is educational, to let people see the beauty of our native landscape.”
Lea Ann Macknally, Macknally Land Design
The City of Birmingham has been preparing the soil in medians from Rojo to Independent Presbyterian Church in Highland Park (the plants in these medians are 40-50 years old), and native plants will be here by early 2024.
“These plants should be heartier to droughts and other climate conditions. They will use less water once established. And they will provide a food source for birds, bees, caterpillars and other pollinators.”
Laney Clark via Facebook
Once the plants are here, it’s all hands on deck—the Goldenrod Group will have volunteers come out to help plant these new additions.
Log your native plant-growing process in your community
Homegrown Habitat is encouraging people to sign up for Homegrown National Park and log your journey with native plants.
The mission of the site is to plant 20,000,000 acres with native plants in the U.S. by 2030, which would represent half of the privately owned land in the country.
“Basically, if everyone made a section in their yards to grow native plants, we could create a natural preserve that’s bigger than all national parks combined.”
Laney Clark
Homegrown Habitat is not an official organization, rather a group urging other neighborhoods to join the movement in planting native plants. The Goldenrod Group is planting 2,023 native plants in the Highland Park neighborhood and are eager to support the surrounding areas as well.
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