~ A Sketchnote

The Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant Society hosted a talk by Pat Reynolds on Maximizing Habitat Value in Urban Environments. Pat’s a restoration ecologist, and serves as the Sacramento Valley Regional Director at River Partners. In his talk, he introduced twelve principles for making the most of urban landscapes. Habitat value means supporting the many environmental relationships between plants and native wildlife. (Here’s a good article on the topic by Nancy Bauer, wildlife habitat gardener and author of The California Wildlife Habitat Garden.) Pat covered a lot of ground in 90 minutes, and the messages were simple yet meaningful.

Here are my sketchnotes from the talk.

Three highlights that stood out:
1) planting milkweed is not a simple as it seems;
2) co-evolution has created a set of relationships that are important to consider when restoring or planting urban areas;
3) local means really local…like to the micro-micro habitat location!

You can view the whole talk online. Someday I’d love to visit River Partners to see their growing environment (especially those young bunch-grass plugs!) and do some nature journaling. That would be so cool.