On Saturday, March 16, the St. Mary’s Arboretum Association at St. Mary’s College will be sponsoring a workshop on the state of Maryland’s Bay-Wise Program. Participants are encouraged to come with questions specific to their properties and plans for future landscaping in order to walk away with all the tools needed to create a Bay-Wise certified landscape. The workshop will be held in the Cole Cinema, St. Mary’s College Campus Center, from 10 a.m. to noon. This event is free and open to the public. Weather and site conditions permitting, a field trip may ensue for the second hour at nearby Chancellor’s Point. For more information, contact Jackie Takacs at jutakacs@smcm.edu.
Jackie Takacs, Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program specialist and St. Mary’s College professor, along with Linda Crandall, UME master gardener and member of the St. Mary’s County Bay-Wise team, will walk participants through the process of doing a quick home landscape assessment and discuss easy adjustments that can be made to reduce stormwater runoff, and, as a result, improve the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to, the following: site analysis; best landscaping practices for improved water quality; making good plant choices; and pest management.
At the conclusion of the event, participants can take home free tree and shrub seedlings from the arboretum’s plant nursery. The seedlings are sponsored by the Chaney Foundation Beautification Fund, a component fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Maryland.
The St. Mary’s Arboretum Association was founded in 2010 at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. As the state’s public honors college, St. Mary’s is committed to exemplifying an honors commitment in all that it does, be it in the classroom or in its grounds practices and management. The St. Mary’s Arboretum Association holds public education sessions relevant to its waterside home in St. Mary’s County, and this year’s overall theme is “Seeing the Forest…and the Trees…Landscaping with a Sustainable Future in Mind.” All education sessions are free and open to the public. Upcoming events are listed on the arboretum’s website.