Dear Members,

This month we are delighted to announce the 2026 NPSNJ Fall Conference, which will take place online on Saturday, November 7, starting at 9am.

Our theme is “Myths, Mistakes, and Lessons Learned”; all of our speakers are Society board members, and they will concentrate on gardening myths: things that everyone knows that are nonetheless wrong.

What gardening or native plant “truth” have you heard repeated so often that nobody seems to question it? Which rule has failed in your own garden? What claim about insects, trees, plant selection, propagation, or maintenance would you like our speakers to investigate? Send your myths, misconceptions, and questions to myths@npsnj.org. We will share them with the speakers to include in their presentations.

Randi Eckel, Ph.D., NPSNJ entomologist, vice-president for chapters, and founder of Toadshade Wildflower Farm, will examine common misconceptions about plants and insects. Randi established Toadshade in 1996 to sustainably propagate native plants and reliable knowledge about them. She has since given hundreds of lectures on ecology, insect identification, native plants, and garden design, and is a past president of the Society.

Jean Epiphan, NPSNJ arborist, Agriculture and Natural Resources agent with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Morris County, will address myths and mistakes involving trees. Jean’s background spans forestry, ecology, landscape restoration, garden design, and land stewardship. She is an ISA Certified Arborist and a New Jersey Licensed Tree Expert whose work connects tree care with the long-term ecological health of our landscapes.

Jesse Connor, co-leader of NPSNJ’s Southeast Chapter, is a garden designer and educator who has spent more than thirty years transforming her property into one of southern New Jersey’s finest woodland native landscapes. Its canopy and understory trees, shrubs, woodland wildflowers, grasses, sedges, ferns, pond, and meadow reflect decades of knowledge, observation, and stewardship. Jesse, who is also one of Pat Sutton’s wildlife gardening mentors, will draw on that experience to discuss practical horticulture: what works, what does not, and how better information can save gardeners time, money, and aggravation. Look for a closer view of Jesse’s garden in Kim Correro’s article, “A Weekend Adventure in Cape May with Jack & Jesse Connor & Pat & Clay Sutton,” which you can read about in our Summer 2026 Newsletter.

Speaking of the Summer Newsletter, we’ll send out a separate e-mail to remind everyone about it next week, but it’s another great issue edited by Hara L. Rola and designed by Marissa Bauman. This issue includes article by Megan Stypulkoski on the Invasive Species Management Act and the environmental and financial benefits of going native; the NPSNJ Board’s statement on native plants and cultivars; Kim Correro’s tribute to conservationist John Landau; Hara L. Rola on invasive Tree of Heaven and, in the closing poem “English Ivy League,” invasive English ivy; Bobbie Herbs on interpreting plant labels; Jesse Connor’s summer gardening advice; Karen Walzer’s tour of Georgian Court University’s native gardens; and Monmouth Chapter News recognizing Jon Gibbons with the Above and Bee-Yond Award. Thank you to everyone who participated. Find it here.

This year, the Society is again helping fund work on the ground. Eighteen mini-grants, totaling $12,500, will help communities turn school grounds, library landscapes, municipal sites, pocket parks, and other public spaces into native habitat. The projects range from a demonstration garden in Brigantine and a pocket forest at Pershing Field Park in Jersey City to school gardens in Clinton, a rain garden and pollinator beds at Hopatcong State Park, and a public planting at the Waldwick Public Library. Three additional $2,000 conservation/science grants will support meadow restoration in Bergen and Essex counties and a Mercer County study of American ginseng populations. The forthcoming Summer newsletter will carry the complete list, or you can go to the NPSNJ site to read about the mini-grants. My thanks to everyone who proposed a project, assessed the applications, donated, or will help put plants into the ground. The list is in the newsletter and on our web site.

And one last thing: ANJEC (the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions) is accepting nominations for its 2026 Environmental Achievement Awards, which recognize exceptional projects carried out by environmental commissions, nonprofit organizations, and community groups. Maybe you know of one?

Eligible projects must have begun after January 1, 2024, and been completed by August 1, 2026; projects funded through ANJEC grants are not eligible. Categories include Environmental Commission Project, New Environmental Commission Project, Nonprofit or Community Organization Project, and Recurring Project. ANJEC is also accepting nominations for its Municipal Official Leadership Award. Nominations are due by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 1, and the awards will be presented at ANJEC’s Environmental Congress on September 25. Submit an Environmental Achievement Award nomination or a Municipal Official Leadership Award nomination.

See you in the garden,

Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.
President, the Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Dear Members,

First, some sad news. John E. Landau died on May 22. Many of you knew him through Friends of Foote’s Pond Wood, Rutgers Environmental Stewards, the Great Swamp Watershed Association’s native plant sale, the Going Native for Northern New Jersey guide, or the steady stream of articles and encouragement he sent to anyone working on behalf of native plants. John and Susan Landau received the inaugural Bob Swain Native Plant Leadership Award at our March Annual Meeting, and we will print Kim Correro’s tribute to them, delivered at that event, in our next newsletter.

Foote’s Pond Wood shows why John’s work matters. It was restored by people showing up, removing invasives, planting natives, teaching neighbors, mentoring volunteers, and returning until a neglected Morristown park became a living civic landscape. John understood that restoration is not only about plants. It is about building the human capacity to care for a place. Foote’s Pond Wood received one of our conservation grants in 2025, the first year NPSNJ offered that category. John’s work helped define what such a grant should support: sustained ecological restoration rooted in place, science, volunteers, and public education. To learn more or donate, visit fofpw.org. Morristown Green has published a remembrance of John here.

John’s example is the sort of work we are trying to support statewide. This month, the Society expanded our 2026 grants program from $16,000 to $18,500, allowing us to fund eighteen mini-grants totaling $12,500 and three science/conservation grants totaling $6,000. The mini-grants will support public demonstration gardens, pocket forests, school gardens, municipal plantings, rain gardens, pollinator beds, library gardens, youth stewardship projects, and restoration work from Atlantic County to Sussex County.

The science/conservation grants matter even more. Mini-grants change a schoolyard, library, pocket park, or municipal site. Conservation grants work at the level of habitat, rare species, and restoration strategy.

We will publish the full list of 2026 grant recipients soon. For now, I want to thank everyone who applied, everyone who reviewed applications, and everyone whose membership makes this program possible. Membership dues alone do not cover the cost of this program, so if you want to help us fund more work like this, please consider making a donation at npsnj.org/make-a-donation

I also want to point you to a film: WILD in the Garden State, by Sarah Galloway. Shot over ten years, it follows Sarah and her husband Dave—neither of them gardeners when they began—as they turn a conventional suburban lawn into living habitat. It is honest about its missteps: proof that caring for a place is something you learn by doing, not a skill you need before you begin. You can watch it now on our YouTube channel. Share it with a neighbor who thinks native gardening is beyond them.

Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.
President, the Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Dear Members and Friends,

As I write this, it is raining, with more rain in the forecast for the next few days and more seasonable temperatures after the 90s earlier this week. But New Jersey is back in a drought, severe drought in places. Native plants are better than exotic ornamentals and lawns at surviving dry spells, but they are not invulnerable, especially when newly planted. The kind of long-term drought we have been having can kill new plantings and stress established ones as well. Don’t neglect them!

On a brighter note, it is late May, and my woodland garden is at its peak again. Every year, in the seemingly empty days of winter, it seems an absurd leap of faith to believe that the ground layer will return. But it does. Now thousands of woodland ephemerals and ferns fill the slope under my trees, reminding me why I made this garden in the first place. Only a decade ago, the same spaces were filled with invasive plants like garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and periwinkle (Vinca minor) or just bare, compacted soil. A quarter acre of steeply sloped hillside is not an easy place to plant or manage. But I’m getting there, one plant at a time—or, more honestly, one carload of plants at a time. My wife and kids may quietly suggest to their friends that I have gone a little overboard, that maybe I have a plant problem, but my garden would not be the same without that excess.

If there is one place where buying too much can become a virtue, it is in native plant gardening. I often think of something that one of my favorite podcasters, the botanist Matt Candeias, said on In Defense of Plants: we live in a culture that rightly tells us to consume less, buy less, accumulate less, and stop treating the world as an endless warehouse of things. We are told to declutter, downsize, even start “death cleaning,” a term that makes heading to my basement more depressing than it already is. But native plants are different. A plant is not another object on a shelf. Plants are life and, in the right place, they become infrastructure for life.

Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis), Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), marginal wood fern (Dryopteris marginalis), and jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) forming a dense, green mulch.

We are all at different stages in our native plant journey. If you are just starting out, lists of “ten great native plants” are genuinely useful. They give you a foothold: milkweed, Joe-Pye weed, mountain mint, goldenrod, asters, coneflowers, bee balm, maybe a serviceberry or an oak if you have room. These plants matter, and many of them are keystone species. But don’t stop there. The real fun begins when we move past the general recommendations and start asking what belongs to a particular place. Start by learning the site in which you are planting. Look up your Level III and Level IV ecoregion, then check the USDA NRCS Web Soil Survey to see what soil series is actually under your feet. These tools will not design the garden for you, but they help you stop thinking of your yard as generic “sun” or “shade” and start seeing it as a particular site with a particular history, geology, drainage, and plant community. What grows in dry shade, under shallow-rooted trees, along a wet edge, on a slope, in compacted soil, or in the narrow spring window before the canopy closes? Those questions lead away from the obvious plants and toward the specialists: sedges, ferns, spring ephemerals, groundcovers, shrubs for wet feet, plants for poor soil, plants that feed particular insects, plants that knit a community together.

This matters because biodiversity is not produced by good intentions alone. At our Annual Meeting in March, Dr. James Shepherd spoke about how loss of biodiversity contributes to the rise of infectious diseases; you can watch his NPSNJ talk on YouTube, and he also discusses the same subject with Matt in Episode 529 of In Defense of Plants, “Native Plants, Habitat, & Infectious Diseases”. The lesson for our gardens is direct: ten charismatic native plants are not enough. We need layers, seasons, niches, and redundancies. We need plants that bloom in March and plants that bloom in November, plants for bees and plants for moth caterpillars, plants that hold soil, plants that shelter overwintering insects, plants that fill the bare places where invasives otherwise return. That kind of planting means getting past the ordinary garden center native section and going to specialist nurseries. To find these plants, use NPSNJ’s newly revised Spring 2026 Where to Buy Natives list, which includes native-only nurseries. You may have to order online or take a drive to one of them, but the drive is well worth it. Most of them are in beautiful parts of New Jersey or just across the border in Pennsylvania. Make a day of it. Visit a nursery, then visit a natural area nearby and look at how plants actually grow together: not as isolated specimens, but as populations. The more you see plants in real communities, the better you will understand what to buy and what to plant it with.

The vast overpopulation of deer in our state is a challenge, of course, but lists of “deer-resistant plants” can become their own trap. If we only plant the handful of species deer are least likely to eat, we let deer determine the biodiversity of our gardens. The result is a narrow palette of plants rather than a richer community of plants that belong on the site. Deer pressure is real—I know it too well—but the answer cannot be to give up on ephemerals or young trees and shrubs, and everything else deer eat (which, honestly, is everything eventually—the overpopulation means they are constantly starving). If you can't build an exclusion fence around your property, try fencing individual plants, especially until trees and shrubs get tall enough that they can resist browsing. I have had good luck using motion-activated sprinklers such as the Orbit Yard Enforcer to protect vulnerable areas during the growing season. It is not perfect, and you will occasionally get sprayed, but it lets you plant for biodiversity rather than surrendering to deer.

One more thing. I mentioned looking to plant communities for a cue, but unless you are building a restoration, you probably want to increase natural density rather than reproduce it exactly. In a garden, dense planting can help crowd out invasive weeds. That means planting more closely than usual to create a green mulch—the new term for groundcovers, which always sounded to me like a cheap rug—that gives invasives fewer chances to get established. Of course, that means still more plants. To me, at least, that is an opportunity.

Finally, growing your own is a fabulous alternative to buying plants. We have lots of resources on how to do that in our Wednesday Webinar series.

Enjoy planting season—and don’t be afraid to bring home a few more plants than you planned.

Happy gardening,

Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.

President, the Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Dear Members,

When I last wrote to you, my garden seemed dead. A few Hepatica acutiloba (sharp-lobed hepatica) flowers were coming up, but little else was happening. I had hoped the cold, snowy winter—like the ones I remember from my youth, before the climate seemed to go haywire—would have been good for the garden, but the herds of deer that roam our town were ravenous and devoured my Rhododendron maximum (rosebay rhododendron) and Kalmia latifolia (mountain laurel), plants that are toxic to them. The nets I hurriedly threw over the plants didn’t help once the snow weighed them down and the deer could reach the leaves again.

Today, the shrubs still look butchered, and some are bound to die, but at ground level, the garden is in full bloom. Thousands of spring ephemerals and ferns are reminding me that life comes back, so long as it is tended and protected. Mertensia virginica (Virginia bluebells) are spreading into blue drifts across my forest floor alongside Podophyllum peltatum (mayapple). Trillium spp. (trilliums) are blooming everywhere, while Sanguinaria canadensis (bloodroot) and Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf) have already had their brief blooms. Matteuccia struthiopteris (ostrich fern) is nearly full size, while Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas fern) and Osmundastrum cinnamomeum (cinnamon fern) are beginning to unfurl. This is the narrow window before the trees leaf out, when sunlight still reaches the ground, and the forest floor can flower—one of the most beautiful times in the native plant year.

The tragedy is that it would be hard to find anything like this in most forests and parks in our state. In too many places, the spring flora has been browsed down by deer and eradicated. Deer browse is a huge problem for native plants in our state, more immediately destructive to the forest understory than climate change. Climate change alters the conditions under which forests grow, but deer can turn the next forest into a veritable biodiversity desert, browsing down native plants while leaving invasive species behind. Due to the topography of my yard, I can’t build a deer-exclusion fence, but a maze of Orbit Garden Enforcer motion-activated sprinklers protects most of my plants during the growing season, allowing my garden to function as a small refugium in a state that now has more deer than at any time before European colonization. Without that protection, much of what is flowering here would simply be gone.

Sadly, the problem isn’t limited to New Jersey. On a recent trip to Japan, I saw how sika deer—native there, just as white-tailed deer are native here—have damaged forests and wetlands when their numbers rise beyond what the land can bear. In parts of Nikkō, deer browse has helped turn the understory over to Sasa nipponica (dwarf bamboo), a native plant that can form dense, persistent carpets and suppress much of the rest of the forest flora. The lesson is not simply that deer are a problem. It is that a species does not have to be non-native to become ecologically overwhelming. We have smaller warnings here—Dennstaedtia punctilobula (hay-scented fern), for example, can expand after heavy deer browse and disturbance—but Japan shows how severe native super-abundance can become when the checks on abundance disappear. I won’t usually promote my own website in these letters, but if you are interested in this topic, I wrote about it in greater depth on my blog.

Humans are part of this story, too. We are not outside nature looking in; we are a native species almost everywhere we live, and the most super-abundant native species of all. Super-abundance of deer is a crisis we created by exterminating predators and then avoiding difficult management questions for decades. If we care about spring ephemerals, birds, forests, and the future of native plants, we have to talk honestly about native super-abundance—and our role in creating it. Until then, all we can do is build refugia.

I also want to offer an apology about this year’s Native Plant Month BioBlitz. I had not realized that the project was set to exclude non-native and cultivated species. That was my mistake. Native-only data is valuable, but so is the broader record of what is actually growing in New Jersey—native, introduced, invasive, and cultivated. Next year, we will plan for two concurrent BioBlitzes: one focused on native species, and one open to all plant observations. Both kinds of data matter.

Thank you to everyone who observed, planted, taught, volunteered, and paid attention during this National Native Plant Month.

Happy gardening, 



Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.

President, 
the Native Plant Society of New Jersey


Dear Members,

It’s still March for a few hours, so it’s time for my much belated President’s Letter. I had hoped to write to you after the Annual Meeting, but as those of you who watched may recall, I caught the flu and that knocked me out for a while. This was a meeting and conference I worked hard on and was proud of, so it was a real disappointment, but such things happen. I am so grateful to everyone who volunteered to help and to our speakers, who were just fabulous. Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who attended.

James and Kathy’s talk will be on YouTube by the end of April. For now, you can see them (together with Larry’s talk which is only up for ticket purchasers and only for 3 more weeks) on the meeting portal if you bought tickets (if there is demand for folks to see Larry’s talk or you really want to see the other two, drop me a line and we can create a ticket for you).

After we recovered, we embarked on a long trip to Japan to visit our kid, who is studying at college in Tokyo. It’s my fourth trip to Japan, and my wife Jennifer and I visited gardens in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nikko. It was a fabulous trip, though also mixed with some concerns that the problems we have with biodiversity loss are common there, too. More on that next month. 

But I’m back in New Jersey now, and in these last hours of March, when my Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and Toadshade Trillium (Trillium sessile) are coming up in my garden, and my Sharped-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) are blooming, I am looking forward to April, which is once again Native Plant Month in the United States.

So, I have two announcements.

First, our third annual BioBlitz is underway. Throughout April, we’re asking you to photograph plants across New Jersey—in parks, backyards, roadsides, anywhere—and upload your observations to iNaturalist, a fantastic citizen science program. Search for “Native Plant Month – April 2026 – NJ” on iNaturalist or go directly to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/native-plant-month-april-2026-nj.

Last year, 32 observers recorded 2,041 observations of 401 native species. Let’s beat that. Every observation contributes to our understanding of plant distribution and biodiversity in the state. iNaturalist runs on both iOS and Android. Don’t worry if you can’t identify a plant! iNaturalist has the best machine learning around, and you can use it to identify plants (a tip: I prefer the interface on iNaturalist Classic on iOS to the new one). If you’re documenting endangered species or private locations, use iNaturalist’s “obscure” feature to protect their exact locations, and mark if it’s captive or cultivated. If you’re new to iNaturalist, these two short Youtube videos will get you started: How to Make an Observation on iNaturalist using our Mobile App and How to prepare for a bioblitz: iNaturalist tutorial.

Second, I wanted to remind you that grant applications are due by 11:59 PM on April 15. We’re offering mini-grants of $500 or $750 for native plant gardens, conservation, and education projects, as well as two conservation/science grants of $2,000 each for large-scale projects led by scientists.

Details on our website at npsnj.org.

Happy observing, happy planting, and I’ll write you again soon!

Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.



President, the Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Dear Members,

Happy Groundhog Day! I have two bits of good news for you. 
First, tickets for our Annual Meeting go on sale this Friday, February 6, at 10 am. The meeting is Saturday, March 7, at Ocean County College in Toms River, sponsored by Ocean County College, Jersey Friendly Yards, and Barnegat Bay Partnership, or online via Zoom.

This year’s theme is resilience—how we adapt to environmental uncertainty. Three speakers bring complementary perspectives from design, ecology, and hands-on horticulture: renowned landscape designer Larry Weaner, FAPLD, on ecological landscape design; Dr. James Shepherd of Yale on how biodiversity loss affects human health; and former NPSNJ president Kathleen Salisbury on the Ambler Arboretum’s recovery from a catastrophic 2021 tornado.

Whether you’re new to the movement, a seasoned practitioner, or a landscape professional, there will be something for you here: why ticks and Lyme disease are spreading (and why we need to plant more native plants), what catastrophic storms do to landscapes, and how to design native plant landscapes, big or small, for change rather than against it. In-person attendees will find informative tabling, the Nature of Reading Bookstore (including book signings with Larry Weaner and Wildstory co-host Ann Wallace), and time at lunch to meet others in the Society. We are trying a new caterer this year, so we hope the lunch options will be better.

Full details and tickets on our website. 

In-person tickets are $60 (members only); Zoom tickets are $30 for non-members, $20 for members. Membership is only $25, so be sure to sign up today.

We will have a large number of Continuing Education Units available for those who need them: Details and tickets at npsnj.org/event/2026-annual-meeting. In-person tickets are $60 (members only); Zoom tickets are $30 for non-members, $20 for members. Membership is $25. CEUs available for those who need them: 3 NJLTE/LTCO, 3 ISA, 3 NOFA OLC, 3 SER CERP, 2 Urban Forestry

Second, Governor Phil Murphy signed the Invasive Species Management Act on his final day in office, giving New Jersey its first law regulating invasive plants. I want to thank everyone who called or wrote—our continued pressure was essential.We were one of the only states without a list of prohibited species. Now we have one: 31 invasive plants to start, including familiar villains like Callery pear, Norway maple, Japanese barberry, winged euonymus, tree-of-heaven, and autumn olive. Pinelands Nursery made this excellent visual guide to the now-prohibited plants.

Critically, the New Jersey Invasive Species Council, originally created under Governor McGreevey in 2004, will also be reestablished. That Council produced a 220-page Strategic Management Plan, which documented a $290 million annual economic impact on agriculture and found that 30% of the state’s flora were nonnative. Governor Christie disbanded it in 2010, supposedly because of the financial crisis. The council will now have the authority to review the species list every three years and add emergent threats before they become the next barberry. Under the law, Acting Commissioner Ed Potosnak must convene the Invasive Species Council within 60 days, and the DEP must adopt implementing regulations within 12 months. He’s the former executive director of the NJ League of Conservation Voters and widely respected—so we have high hopes he will continue to advocate for the environment in his new role.

This victory was years in the making. In 2022, when Laura Bush and I were co-chairs of Advocacy, we worked with partners including John Landau of Foote’s Pond Wood, Mike Van Clef (Program Director of the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space Invasive Species Strike Team), and the New Jersey Nursery & Landscape Association—whose president, Tom Knezick of Pinelands Nursery, helped bridge conservation and industry interests. The bill won bipartisan support, only to be vetoed by Governor Murphy. It again passed with bipartisan support, but Murphy only signed it on his last day in office, and the announcement came only after Governor Mikie Sherrill—a supporter of native plants during her time in Congress—was inaugurated.

Special thanks to our Advocacy Committee, former co-chair Laura Bush and current co-chair Russ Furnari, who represented NPSNJ throughout the legislative process and provided testimony in Trenton, and, once again, to all of you who reached out. 

One last thing. Larry Weaner will be speaking on the next episode of the Wildstory podcast. And if you haven’t taken the Rutgers Environmental Stewards Survey, please do. The team will be very grateful for more responses.

See you at the meeting,




Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D
President, Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Join us Saturday, March 7, at Ocean County College (or online via Zoom) for our annual symposium exploring restoration, resilience, and disease in a changing landscape.

This year’s speakers bring perspectives from ecological design, infectious disease ecology, and arboretum management: Larry Weaner, FAPLD, on integrating ecological restoration with landscape design; Dr. James Shepherd of Yale on biodiversity loss and tick-borne disease; and Kathleen Salisbury on the Ambler Arboretum’s recovery from an EF2 tornado. Go to the 2026 annual meeting page for more.

Tickets go on sale soon. In-person tickets include lunch, a Zoom link, and early access to conference videos. Zoom tickets will also include early access to conference videos. In-person tickets are for members only.

Participants (in person or online) who need Continuing Education credits can earn 3 NOFA OLC CEUs, 3 ISA Credits, 3 JLTE/LTCO CEUs, and 2 Urban Forestry CEUs by attending.