A Visit to Coastal Maine Botanical Garden

I had the honor last week of joining the faculty at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden to give a two day workshop on Gardening for Wildlife as part of the Certificate Program in Native Plants and Ecological Horticulture.

As a general rule I don’t tend to spend much time in botanical gardens because I don’t enjoy the “Plant Zoo” mentality, which is a collection of specimen plants from around the world that have no ecological connection to each other. Just one of this, one of that, like animals in a zoo but with plants.

A wildlife garden is dependent on specific native plant communities which work together with the wildlife to form an ecosystem.

However, the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden has adopted a different mission: to showcase the native plants of coastal Maine.