IMAGINE Native Plant Farm Ribbon Cutting

Home Earth Alliance celebrated it official opening with a ribbon-cutting on August 29, 2024. Special guests include Assembly Member Patricia Fahy, County Legislator Matthew Miller, Town Supervisor David VanLuven, numerous board members and generous supporters. Executive Director Pam Skripak offered the following remarks:

As we celebrate the ribbon cutting of Home Earth Alliance’s IMAGINE Native Plant Farm, I would like to reflect for a moment on where we are today and what our longer vision moving forward is. So many exciting things are happening! We have an amazing and growing board that bring myriad talents and experience to this endeavor. We have a growing and dedicated team pouring their hearts into this work. We have just launched a new membership program, have over 60 individual donors, and have received our first three grants. We have two large scale Ecological Landscape exhibits behind us, have launched our Landscapes in Transition Tours, and are installing our first four IMAGINE Native Community Gardens. We have a hoop house - the start of IMAGINE Native Plant Farm that we are celebrating today - with hundreds of plants and over 20 species inside, seeded primarily from wild seeds collected from and for this ecoregion. We are at the Delmar Farmers Market and have held our first successful Open House & Plant Sale on site. With the help of all of you, we are getting native plants in the ground!

But these are small wins, and we know we are still a seedling (or maybe just a sprout!) of an organization compared to our vision.

Let’s look further down the road. New York’s State commitment to a healthier, more resilient NY means our future is very bright. By a margin of more than 2-1, NYS citizens approved an environmental rights amendment stating that each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment. The Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act passed in 2022 is investing $4.2 billion in New York's environment and communities. Governor Hochul has committed to putting more than 700 million trees in the ground by 2050 to capture carbon and help us meet our ambitious carbon reduction goals. More recently, Governor Hochul signed into law a bill that was passed unanimously by the NYS Assembly and Senate to establish the New York native plant seed supply, to increase the availability and use of native plant seeds across the state. Thank you, Senator May and Assemblymember Kelles, for drafting that important Bill, and thank you, Assemblymember Patricia Fahy, for being one of its co-sponsors.

All of this work, all of these projects, will require precious plants, and in the Capital Region we will do everything we can to make sure they are local eco-types: from and for, adapted to, this ecoregion.

What it requires is the spawning of a whole new agribusiness and commitment to developing a native plant supply chain. It means the ethical collection of wild seed, the establishment of native seed banks with knowledge about the cleaning and processing of those individual seeds to replicate nature’s role in germination, and the propagation and care of native plants. It requires researchers who understand the interaction between microbes, insect populations, wildlife, and indigenous plants; a growing workforce that is knowledgeable about the thousands of plants native to this region; more designers who know how to regenerate ecosystems and create beautiful landscapes.

IMAGINE, if you can, what it looked like when the Mohican Native Tribe inhabited this land. Before the Invasion. Before so many invasives arrived. It is my deep hope that our work here in some small way honors them and their beautiful ancestral land. The river was clean and clear. The waters and forests teamed with life. Everything that was here had co-evolved over millions of years, a tightly interconnected web of life.

IMAGINE if we could reverse course on the subsequent loss of habitat to sprawling monoculture lawns and ecologically barren wastelands and begin to restore the biodiversity we have lost.

IMAGINE if we could reconnect as a people with nature and rediscover the knowledge we once had of our natural world. I deeply regret that I have grown up unfamiliar with so many of the plants we are now growing in a greenhouse. How did that happen? When did the big disconnect begin?

IMAGINE if all municipal, county, and state restoration projects required native plants, and we could mitigate the impacts of climate change - cool cities, better manage droughts and floods, provide beauty, and create habitats and food sources for wildlife all at once.

IMAGINE if we could be ready for what is coming - to meet the demand with native plants from and for this ecoregion.

IMAGINE the community that might be built around these efforts.

IMAGINE.…. IMAGINE Native Farm!

I would like to close with these words from Prentis Hemphill. They were speaking about racial, gender, and social justice - close sisters to environmental justice.

“When people are willing to put their bodies on the line, to spend their time outside of their lives figuring out how to bring about the transformations that we need. There, we can almost catch courage, as it spreads from person to person. This embodied courage does not override feeling or fear; instead it catalyzes the energy they create into action. Our courage helps us keep our commitments to the visions we see. Social movements [environmental movements] are born from this mix of grief, fear, love, vision, and the courage it takes to change everything.”

We must have the courage to “IMAGINE BIG” and be agents of change. We must rethink how we live on this Earth. We are excited to grow. Please join us and thank you for coming today to celebrate this seedling start.

Pam Skripak
August 29, 2024
IMAGINE Native Plant Farm