4/10/10

GPLT Spring Program A Success

Thank You...Walter Reeves..Tara Dillard ..Laurie Fisher...Monarchs Across Georgia..

for making our event "Grow Your Garden Beautifully with Native Plants" a huge success on Saturday, April 10, 2010!

Thank You Whole Foods Market...

for spotlighting the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT), a local nonprofit land conservation organization on Tuesday, April 6, during regular business hours, at your Johns Creek location. We appreciate your donation of 5% of the day's proceeds to help us further our greenspace conservation efforts!

Thank You Steve Logan...

for your support of the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT), by donating the 30" x 40" painting of "Across The Meadow" depicting one view at the Mary Kistner Nature Center. We will display it proudly and plan to have it travel to prominant locations around Gwinnett County so it can be enjoyed by a wider audience.

Thank You Chocolate Perks...

for hosting the presentation of "Across the Meadow" by Steve Logan to the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust. More...

3/22/10

Shop for Good Food and Greenspace
Tuesday, April 6

Whole Foods Market spotlights the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT), a local nonprofit land conservation organization. Tuesday, April 6, during regular business hours, come shop for all the healthy food you expect at Whole Foods Market in Johns Creek. Check out how GPLT ensures that trees and streams in our area will be protected forever. Activities for the kids and displays to help you draw birds and butterflies to your yard will be featured from  11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Whole Foods Market will donate 5 percent of the day’s proceeds to GPLT to further their greenspace conservation efforts. Join us and spread the word!

2/11/10

Coming Saturday, April 10, 2010

Grow Your Garden Beautifully with Native Plants

Join us at the Kistner Center in Snellville for an entertaining day featuring:

• Walter Reeves, the Georgia Gardener, of WSB radio and HGTV
• Tara Dillard, well known garden and landscape designer and author
• Laurie Fisher, CEO of Buck Jones Nursery

They’ll talk about how to create a beautiful landscape around your home using native plants, why that’s important, and where to purchase native plants.

In a special session, Monarchs Across Georgia (MAG) volunteers will help you create your own butterfly garden in a container to take home for your porch or garden.

Mark your calendar.  Click here for more details

10/5/09

1010/

Invasive Plant Removal Project at GPLT’s Kistner Center Called A Big Success Thanks To Gwinnett Great Days Of Service Volunteers

Volunteers pitched in eagerly on Saturday, October 3, during Gwinnett’s Great Day Of Service in the woodland gardens at GPLT’s Kistner Center in Snellville, tackling invasive plants and adding much-needed mulch.  Participants included a number of Rotary Club of Gwinnett County members, their spouses and children.  Two teenagers were fulfilling high school service club commitments.

The morning’s work resulted in the removal of countless wheelbarrows of Nepalese browntop, an invasive annual grass, from an herb garden and a Hellebore (Lenten rose) bed; and the addition of mulch to help cut down on weed germination.  Elsewhere in a woodland garden area, other volunteers pulled out an entire pickup truck full of invasive mahonia.

The gardens and surrounding woodlands are the centerpiece of a GPLT project to demonstrate the need for thoughtful – as well as beautiful – suburban and urban residential landscaping to provide key habitat for wildlife species, including migratory songbirds, butterflies and other beneficial pollinators.  Without rethinking the approach to residential landscapes, such species may one day find it tough to survive.  First step in the project: removing the non-native invasive plant species that are a big part of the problem.

GPLT Offers 2009 Hay

The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT) announced it has 2009 fescue hay, fertilized, in square bales available for sale at $4 per bale.  Board member Jeremy Means notes that the hay is available from either of two pickup points, at the Center in Snellville or at a Loganville storage location.

The organization has developed a haying program at the Kistner Center, south of Snellville, in Gwinnett County, both to revive the Center’s long heritage of haying and farming, and to generate revenue. Proceeds from the sale help GPLT, a nonprofit land conservation organization, accomplish part of its mission: Permanently preserving land in the Piedmont region of Georgia to save farmland for communities to enjoy now and for generations to come.

GPLT and Chattahoochee Nature Center Collaborate to Give Falcons a Home

The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT) provided the habitat for two young female American Kestrels found around a hangar at Dobbins Air Force Base and turned over to the Chattahoochee Nature Center (CNC).

Once CNC wildlife experts assessed the birds’ health and fitness and determined they had the necessary hunting and other skills to ensure survival, CNC volunteer Stacy Zarpentine brought them recently to GPLT’s Kistner Center, 50 acres of open pasture and mature woodlands south of Snellville in Gwinnett County, where they were released.

GPLT Executive Director Carol Hassell noted that the Kistner Center, permanently protected green space, provides suitable habitat for the small raptors.  The open fields, recently cut for hay, along with adjacent forest land, should yield plenty of grasshoppers, dragon and damselflies, kestrels’ preferred food, along with lizards and other small vertebrates. 

Adult kestrels are about the size of a blue jay and make their home year round in Georgia.  Striking birds, they have two vertical black stripes on a white field under their eyes, and sport russet back and tail feathers.  Males have blue-gray feathers on their wings.  Wings appear pale when viewed from underneath as the birds fly overhead.  The two juveniles released at the Kistner Center exhibit typical streaking on their breasts.

The event represents a positive example of conservation collaboration across the metro Atlanta region: Zarpentine and Hassell, both birdwatchers, also are members of the Atlanta Audubon Society.  This connection set the stage for the transfer. 

The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (formerly Gwinnett Open Land Trust) honored Earth Day 2009 with a garden workday on Saturday, April 18, at the Kistner Center, the 50-acre conservation legacy of the late prominent local artist Mary Kistner.

A group of gardening enthusiasts, including friends of Mary Kistner and other Master Gardeners, began a garden renewal, concentrating on two beds near the Center building.  Herbs, native plants and other favorite perennials will be able to grow without weedy competition.

The event marked the start of GPLT plans to renew the gardens according to Mary’s vision as part of a strategy for the future. The Center comprises woodland gardens, pastures and her home and studio.  A later phase of renewal will include a substantial renovation of the home and studio.

Much of the debris from Saturday’s weeding, pruning and trimming went into a newly created wattle where it will slowly decompose while providing habitat for birds and other small wildlife.

GPLT Names First-ever Staff & Elects Board President

The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust, formerly the Gwinnett Open Land Trust, announced that co-founder Carol Hassell was named Executive Director beginning in January 2009.  The newly created staff position is the first in the 11-year history of the organization.  The move represents a response to the solid growth in GPLT land protection efforts.

GPLT also announced that board member Rebecca Spitler, representing the City of Berkeley Lake, was elected president and will lead the land trust's strategy of growth in land conservation throughout the Piedmont ecoregion.  GPLT has 870 acres, land worth well over $18 million, under permanent protection.

Land Trust Announces Name Change

The Gwinnett Open Land Trust is now the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT).  The nonprofit land conservation organization officially changed its name, effective November 2008, to recognize a broadened service area.  

GPLT, founded in 1998, originally concentrated its efforts in Gwinnett County.  Over the past five years, however, the organization has expanded its protection efforts beyond Gwinnett, although a focus in this rapidly urbanizing community continues.  The Georgia Piedmont stretches through the midsection of the state from southwest to northeast and is bounded by the mountainous regions to the northwest and the flat coastal plain to the south.  It includes area that has undergone rapid suburbanization and urbanization in recent decades.