Celebrate Native Plant Appreciation Week and please share our fund raising plant sales with your friends, neighbors and organization members. Spring Native Plant Sales by Washington Native Plant Society Chapters South Sound Chapter - May 7th, 10am - 3pm, 211 - 21st Ave. SW, Olympia WA, at the Coach House of the WA State Capitol Museum. www.southsoundwnps.org Central Puget Sound Chapter - May 7th, 10am -4pm, 12001 Main St., Bellevue WA, at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. www.wnps.org/cps Our sale will have over 150 species including ground covers, perennials, shrubs and trees that are ideal for our ecology. Botanical and gardening books will be for sale and WNPS experts will be available to answer questions. WNPS is a state wide non-profit organization that supports and provides educational lectures, classes, workshops and field trips, Stewardship training, restoration projects and research to conserve and sustain our local ecology through native plants. Find your closest chapter at www.wnps.org and look for free Native Plant Appreciation Week Events, May 1 - 7, all around our state. All the best. Lucy Sustain biodiversity; garden with native plants. laweinberg at comcast dot net P.S.: We humans are causing habitat destruction and the replacement of native plants with alien plants which drive species extinctions all around the world. We can share our environment with other species by protecting and restoring natural areas, but also by the simple act of gardening with native plants. We can use our urban, suburban and rural properties to provide diverse native plants that native insects eat, which, are in turn, eaten and that provide the foundation for a healthy ecosystem. Native plants convert solar energy to growth, native insects transfer the energy by eating native plants and then by being food themselves for birds, mammals, other insects and creatures. Alien plants do not provide the level of energy transfer possible by a native co-evolved food web because very few, if any, native insects can eat them. Alien plants may provide ornamental value but they "support 29 times less biodiversity than do native ornamentals." (Prof. Douglas W. Tallamy author of "Bringing Nature Home" <http://bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardeningforlife> http://bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardeningforlife ). So, as just a humble gardener rooting around in my little patch of earth, I can make a difference by the choices I make in my yard and by passing the message on. Sustain biodiversity; garden with native plants. All the best.