Wild Ones North Alabama

03/28/2026

Come learn about native plants and their ecosystem interactions at the downtown library on Tuesday April 7th from NALT ecologist Sara A Johnson.

WONA meets on the Third Thursday of each month at the South Huntsville public library, and our next seminar in April will be a panel discussion on what grows in clay mineral soils by local residents and garden designers. WONA's seminars and talks are free and open to the public. More info can be found on our events calendar here:
northalabama.wildones.org/events/

Many thanks to Quinn Wildlife Sanctuary for promoting the use of native plants, sponsoring this year's Symposium and educating the North Alabama community on the critical importance of native plants to sustain and benefit local wildlife!

03/27/2026

The 2nd consecutive Annual North Alabama Native Plant Symposium is coming up on May 30 and 31, 2026 in Huntsville, AL! This year's event will include a series of educational talks about native plants from luminaries in the field on day 1 and optional excursions to project sites and wildflower hikes on day 2. Native plant vendors will be present during the event. This year's Symposium will take place at UAH, and tickets are intentionally affordable for all at $35 each. The Symposium is a great opportunity to network with scholars and practitioners promoting native plants. If you or your business would like to sponsor the Symposium (beyond the ticket price) to help it grow in future years, please reach out to Holt Akers-Campbell at Extension at [email protected] for details.

Tickets for the event can be purchased on Extension's website:
https://www.aces.edu/event/2026-north-alabama-native-plant-symposium/

Picture below from the keynote speech at the 2025 Symposium at Monte Sano.

03/21/2026

WONA initiated the Spring season with an ephemeral garden tour in Madison, AL. Most of the plants featured in this tour were rescued from development in the neighborhood over many decades, and the garden was abuzz and aflutter with native pollinators. This is one of the only properties in this neighborhood growing native ephemerals, and we were grateful for the opportunity to spread these local ecotype plants to new backyard refugia. Garden tours are a member perk, and we are grateful to the homeowners for sharing their labor of love with our members.

02/24/2026

Sunday's W**d Wrangle was a smashing success. Our volunteers made 2 small hills of privet (with some bush honeysuckle and Nandina for good measure), removed a garbage bag of privet berries and released a lot of native understory trees and shrubs, including a small collection of spice bush. Thanks to our volunteers and organizers for their efforts, and if you missed this one, please join us for the citywide W**d Wrangle on March 7th (the last one until the Fall)! The Land Trust of North Alabama will be doing more work at Chapman Mountain, the Green Team will be doing work at Southside Park and WONA will be at Monte Sano (participants MUST sign up on our website to participate). You can also make a huge difference in your own yard or neighborhood if you aren't near Huntsville. Many thanks to LTNA for supporting this event.

02/22/2026

Pewterfork Nature Guild is a group you will want to follow, especially if you are in or near Cullman. This looks like it was a fantastic workshop on native ramps (a spring ephemeral). The guild is focused on education, foraging and inculcating curiosity about the natural world, and we're excited to see where they go from here. Thanks to this group of dedicated foragers and educators for connecting more folks in North Alabama with plants and our amazing biodiversity.

02/04/2026

WONA is partnering with several organizations this year to remove invasive plants from our public parks and preserves. We are focused on 3 strategic locations in 2026: Hays Farm, Chapman Mountain Preserve and Monte Sano State Park. Join us as we restore habitat and re-awaken the native seed banks in these beautiful places. Check out our calendar for full details. This weekend we will wrangle privet and Japanese honeysuckle from Hays Farm Preserve. Please register to let us know you are coming, and please do your part in your own landscape. Stay posted for more educational content from AL Extension regarding "the Year of the Invasives."

Excited to be joining with Land Trust of North Alabama and Wild Ones North Alabama to participate in a City-Wide W**d Wrangle on Saturday, March 7 from 9am-Noon.

Volunteers are needed to take part in invasive plant removal event aimed at protecting some of Huntsville’s most valued natural spaces. Learn more about how you can take part ➡ https://www.huntsvilleal.gov/volunteers-needed-for-city-wide-w**d-wrangle/

02/01/2026

WONA was incredibly fortunate to team up with Sara Johnson and Extension yesterday for our first workshop on winter sowing, inspired by Homegrown National Park. It must be a popular topic, because we packed the room.

Thanks to all who contributed to this effort, and we hope you have fun applying what you learned to create more native backyard habitat in North Alabama! Many thanks for the seed donations from our members.

Please read more about the workshop on our website:
https://northalabama.wildones.org/winter-sowing-workshop/

Huntsville Environmental Coalition
North American Land Trust

12/07/2025

I found this out of print book by Elsie Quarterman and Richard Powell on the "Potential Ecological/geological Natural Landmarks on the Interior Low Plateaus."

It's a good primer for the inferred plant communities and their underlying geology throughout the Highland Rim, including our section of the Southern Highland Rim. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of documentation before the original plant communities of our region were plowed under and clear cut, but this book is an honest attempt to reconstruct the dominant forest and vegetation types. There do not seem to be any print copies for sale, but for now, the entire book is available from google.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_WiwoTfSb2QC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=potential+ecological/geological+natural+landmarks+on+the+interior+low+plateau&ots=-7rVkstVZm&sig=NgcZzCHAbdg9ZsdLVHYzOpXSdvA =onepage&q=potential%20ecological%2Fgeological%20natural%20landmarks%20on%20the%20interior%20low%20plateau&f=false

12/06/2025

Are you getting excited about winter W**d Wrangles? They will start in January. The city Green Team is also planning a Huntsville-wide W**d Wrangle on March 7th. Get ready to tackle the Year of the Invasives in 2026!

Here's an Elaeagnus found on a recent neighborhood walk. Winter is a great time to tackle invasive plants in your yard without much hassle from ticks, mosquitoes, snakes or humidity.

11/09/2025

WONA and the Land Trust of North Alabama had a great time teaming up yesterday for a public panel discussion titled "Why Does an Invasive Plant Matter." Aside from the excellent questions and community participation, we also had a chance to revisit some of the w**d wrangle sites from March where bush honeysuckle and privet were removed from the understory and from a Chickasaw plum thicket. Our cut stump methods with buckthorn blasters were very effective (very little regrowth), and Polymnia is already colonizing the understory. Stay tuned for more as we work together to develop the LTNA's W**d Wrangle volunteer corps. Bonus content: a few pics from the city Green Team's recent privet wrangle at Hays Preserve.

Let's all do what we can to remove invasive plants from our landscapes this winter, so we can protect the native plant populations in our parks and preserves.

05/17/2025

Today's garden tour at Denise Woodring's HOA-approved native landscape was spectacular! Denise was generous enough to share some of her plants and plant list with our garden tourists. Check out Denise's full landscape design portfolio at Green Thumb Design (Huntsville, AL). Thank you Denise for opening your garden to us and sharing your wisdom with all of us who are trying to hack native gardens in Alabama! Denise will host a second tour in the Fall, but you must be a WildOnes member to join our garden tours. Next garden tour is coming up June 1st.