An Eco Bite with Nick Fletcher - Hawken Native Plant Society

Summer is here, and we're at the Mastery School of Hawken's Native Plant Sale in University Circle for an Eco Bite with Nick Fletcher. Nick is a high school Latin teacher who started one of the most practical environmental education projects around - the Hawken Native Plant Society.  Along with his colleague Claudia Tausz and students of all grade levels, Nick oversees the cultivation of more than 230 plant species native to Northeast Ohio. The plants help improve habitat across three campuses and are also donated to nonprofit partners for restoration efforts. Plant sales are held at the Mastery School campus all summer, with proceeds benefiting this work. 

This experiential learning grew out of COVID, when Nick took his Latin classes outdoors and began observing nature on campus. This led him to help plant gardens at his daughter's school and then grow a few seedlings on campus. Nick never grew anything until then, and today, he oversees a registered nursery with hundreds of thriving plants, plus the challenges that come with it, like keeping a greenhouse full of seedlings alive through summer heat. Nick shares how students across grade levels get involved through classes, garden club, and hands-on field days where kids research a plant, collect and sort seeds, pot seedlings, and plant new native gardens.

Nick believes in making space for other species besides our own, and he and his students see the payoff: native bees showing up, insect life returning, and host plants doing their job.

Email Nick - nativeplants@hawken.edu

Learn More: Hawken Native Plant Society and Sales, Hawken Native Gardens,

The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy

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Transcript

Diane Bickett, Host 0:04

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for the Eco Curious in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bickett, and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together we speak with local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn, and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello, friends, it's June 28th, a beautiful summer Sunday morning, and I am at the Hawken Native Plant Sale in University Circle on Magnolia Drive for an EcoBite with Nick Fletcher. And Nick is a high school Latin teacher and also an unofficial science teacher, he just told me, at the Mastery School of Hawken, where hands-on learning is at the heart of his teaching, and that approach is on full display today, where over a hundred varieties of native plants grown by Hawken students are available for purchase. Hi, Nick.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 0:56

Hi, thanks for visiting

Diane Bickett, Host 0:57

Tell us about the sale and the work that led to the cultivation of all these species of native plants.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 1:09

Yeah, so we call ourselves the Hawken Native Plant Society, our native plant sort of operation at Hawken on our three campuses. And we hold sales periodically down here at the Mastery School campus on Magnolia Drive. That's where we have a little greenhouse set up. Our first gardens that we put in are on this campus. And so we typically host plant sales down here. We've been growing for a couple of years. We officially registered this year with the Ohio Department of Agriculture as a nursery. And so we hold sales pretty regularly now, usually on the weekends. And we'll be doing that throughout the summer months and into the fall. We started in in April. We grow over, I think, 230 species of plants native to northeast Ohio. Oh wow.

Diane Bickett, Host 1:52

I didn't give you enough credit.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 1:53

As of last count. And really, our our goal is to you know make the spaces on Hawkins campuses better in terms of you know adding native plants that support the ecosystem and also trying to get more plants out into the world, both through sales, but then also we donate a number of plants to various nonprofit organizations in Northeast Ohio and to restoration efforts as well. So, you know, growing so many things allows us to be able to donate some plants as well.

Diane Bickett, Host 2:25

Great. So you have a greenhouse here, and tell us about the space behind us.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 2:30

Yeah, so we started initially, my colleague and I, Dr. Claudia Tausz who teaches science here at the Mastery School. We started it in 2022. We put in a native garden using an Ohio STEM education grant. So we started with 15 species in the space next to the greenhouse, and really that was kind of it. And then that winter into the spring, greenhouse was just kind of sitting here, not used. We decided to, you know, kind of activate that space and start growing things. Neither of us had really grown much of anything ever, let alone, you know, 200 plus native species from seed. So bold. So we've just, you know, kept on building this up over the last few years and making it bigger and bigger and and you know, getting better and better at growing things and keeping them alive and happy as well. So you know, sometimes I was just gonna say sometimes it's a blessing and a curse in the sense that you know, the more you grow and the better you get at keeping things alive, then the more, you know, plants you have and with the impending, you know, heat wave, that means you know, a little more stress in terms of trying to keep everything, you know, thriving through that little little spell.

Diane Bickett, Host 3:41

For sure. So how many students are involved with your program here? Is it an extracurricular activity or a it's a little bit of everything.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 3:51

So, you know, here at the mastery school, my my colleague Claudia, she teaches, you know, classes here that will incorporate some of this into class activities or you know, data research. So she's you know, does that regularly. She also has a garden club that that meets regularly, and so they'll either work in the garden or work in the greenhouse throughout the year. There's always work to be done, whether it's December or April or you know, September. You know, there's seeds to sort and collect and you know, things to sow and things to separate. So it really keeps people busy. But then we also work with our colleagues on our other campuses. So our Lindhurst campus, for example, middle school and lower school, preschool through eighth grade, almost every grade in that school has come down here to work with us. And so towards the end of the school year, we had the entire fourth grade here for a day. So 64th graders set up in different stations around here. You know, they were working with naturalists from the uh Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a Metor Marsh in the garden looking for pollinators. They were potting up plants that we had grown from seed, they were separating and sorting seeds that we had collected, you know, last fall. So they're here, you know, whirlwind of activity for a couple of hours. And then before that, we had the preschool and first grade. One of their classes came down. Each one of the students had researched a specific native plant based on our species list. And so, you know, we pulled those plants from our stock, and then the the kids took them back to the Lindhurst campus and put in a brand new native garden. They cleared a space of grass and prepped the site and you know put in all the plants that they had picked out and then you know added some more. And I think, you know, as the year goes years go on, they'll just keep on adding to that garden. So our goal is really just to get more plants into our campuses, make you know, our own students and families more aware of, you know, native plants, native wildlife, and then connect with you know community partners to you know get plants out into northeast Ohio as well.

Diane Bickett, Host 6:03

Wow, what what a gift for the students to be able to come down here for a field day and help with this these projects and and get their hands dirty. Are you the most popular teacher at school? Uh I don't know about that.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 6:15

But you know, we work with a lot of students and you know, our colleagues, you know, in the middle school and the lower school do an amazing job of getting kids educated about native species, invaded invasive species, and get them excited to be outside and to engage in in nature. And so it's always a lot of fun to work with younger students and to see them, you know, the hope is to you know keep seeing them through the years as they get to high school and then you know hopefully they'll they'll be down here or at the upper school campus or both to to work on some of the spaces we've created and and keep you know everything that we grow happy and healthy.

Diane Bickett, Host 6:54

Awesome. Well, I understand that you started this pretty much on your own back during COVID. Tell us a little bit about how this came to be.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 7:06

Yeah, so this is my it will be my 25th year at Hawken as a Latin teacher. And so for you know, most of those years I was just a regular old Latin teacher teaching, you know, in the building during COVID. Because I have, you know, asthma, I I could have taught on Zoom for that time and decided that you know that'd be kind of a weird experience to be at home on Zoom while students were in the classroom at school, and so sort of struck a compromise where I could teach outside. Um and so initially, you know, the plan was just to teach kind of near the building, you know, picnic tables, nothing fancy. One of my colleagues turned me on to the idea of teaching out in the woods on campus. Our Chesterland campus is you know great space, a lot of wooded spaces, just a beautiful location. And so for those, you know, first few months in the fall during COVID, you know, I would go out into the woods and get a fire started. Students would come to me for my four levels of Latin throughout the day, and you know, we'd meet out in the woods to read, read things in Latin, some of them to do with nature, some not. And, you know, I I'd never really knew much of anything about native plants until around that time. So I just happened to find out about Doug Talamy's The Nature of Oaks when it came out, I think in 2021, if I remember correctly, stumbled across that. You know, my daughter's teacher at Shaker Onaway Elementary, happened to have native gardens there, and so I started talking to him about plants. And but you know, as of summer of 2021, you know, I'd grown pretty much nothing ever, knew pretty much nothing at all about invasive species or native species. My mom had always been into gardening, but you know, it was a mix of all kinds of things, you know, not really specifically native or other. And so really, you know, five years later now, we're growing 200 plus species, and I don't know how many thousands of plants we've put out into the world or onto our campuses in that time. And the hope is to just keep doing more and more of this in the coming years.

Diane Bickett, Host 9:12

So you don't need to be a botanist to start something like this. Is it just a lot of trial and error and curiosity and reading and talking to people?

Nick Fletcher, Guest 9:20

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, the humbling thing about all of this, and this is true for all kinds of disciplines and areas, of course, but you know, I feel like you could do this for a hundred years and you still want to learn everything there is to know about the species that are native to Northeast Ohio, let alone all the native fauna that that those species support. So that's the other cool thing is that once you start planting these things, you start noticing, you know, the insects that show up because of them. So this area down here, there really wasn't much going on before we put this garden in. Now, you know, routinely, almost daily during the summer months, you know, we spot species that are new to us, you know, some sort of new, you know, mimic a fly or you know, assassin bug or ambush bug or you know, different caterpillars or beetles or you know, whatever it is. So just you know, the vast number of interactions between plants and you know the living world is really fascinating. And, you know, I think you know, there's just there's more than anybody could learn in a lifetime. What are the kids getting out of this? I mean, I think, you know, a lot of things in the sense that, you know, some of them, you know, don't necessarily work with plants regularly, or, you know, it as is the case with many adults, you know, to some extent people think of plants just as, you know, I like that flower, or I need something for this space. They don't necessarily think about you know the further implications in terms of, you know, what life does it support? If it's something that's invasive to this area, you know, how does that, you know, wreck the ecosystem and make it more difficult for things to survive? And so I think, you know, building that awareness and then engagement, you know, with with nature, you know, a lot of people initially are scared of you know, insects, you know, bees, wasps, beetles, whatever, you know, whatever it is. And once you start seeing all these different species of native bees, for example, showing up to these plants, native bees that, you know, wouldn't bother you if you're five inches away from them. They don't care what you're doing, they're they've got a job to do. It's really, really great to see that interest in and passion for nature awakened in in students and in adults alike, you know, whether it be parents or alumni that come to our sales or you know, people that come to some of our workshops that we run to show people how to grow things the same way that that we grow them. And we collect enough seeds now that we can provide seeds through these workshops for people to grow their own native plants.

Diane Bickett, Host 11:59

That's awesome. So, can you give us a couple of resources that you use, local resources, where you learn more about growing native plants?

Nick Fletcher, Guest 12:09

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, there's a lot of great resources out there, a lot of great institutions out there doing really good work. You know, we work with Holden Arboretum, for example, Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland Metro Parks, you know, you've got Soil and Water Conservation Districts. Soil and water conservation districts, you know, there's some really great native plant nurseries in town, like Meadow for example, or Avonlea, you know, and a lot of people that are just willing to share their knowledge and expertise and passion. And, you know, online there's you know, a ton of great resources in terms of lists of plants that are native to this area, what native bees they support, how many different caterpillar species they might support, you know, Doug Talamy's books, The Nature of Oaks, you know, or what is it, Nature's Best Hope, I think. You know, he's got a lot of great resources out there. So just, you know, there's an abundance of resources out there for anybody that's that's interested. And really the best thing to do is just get started. So that's what's really empowering about this is that you know, you don't have to have a degree in, you know, horticulture or botany or be an expert at you know planting things or growing things. It's really just important to start making space for others. So, and I think that's a a lesson that you know is great for our you know, spaces around our homes and institutions, but also just a lesson for life in general in terms of making space for others, whether those be you know humans or the 99.9%, you know, which would be the other species that we share this this world with.

Diane Bickett, Host 13:49

Yeah. Thank you for those great words of wisdom. I last summer we redid our landscape in our backyard and planted all native things back there with the help of a company called Native, a great landscape design company. But what are some of the things that you have here for sale that are like some of your favorites?

Nick Fletcher, Guest 14:11

Um, I mean, I love them all for one reason or another. You know, we try to grow just really interesting things. But you know, here on the table you see Kerrix Pennsylvanica, that's Pennsylvania sedge, which is a really great species that's pretty adaptable for different locations, can even be used as like a lawn alternative. You know, you've got rattlesnake master towering up above there, which is great with the you know, the spiky ball of flowers on the top. This looks kind of otherworldly. You know, some of our favorites in the garden are pearly everlasting, the silvery foliage, also host plant for the American Painted Lady, whose numbers are down 40% here in the last 20 years. Uh so you know, just planting that and you know, can only lay its eggs on a few species of plants, that being one of them. And so within a month of me and Claudia planting it here in our garden, we had butterflies showing up to lay eggs on it. And, you know, routinely now, you know, they'll find every single plant we have outside at the upper school where we store a lot of our plants. They'll go along that patio and lay eggs on every single pearly everlasting, every single pussy toe plant that's out there, and then we'll have caterpillars, you know, devouring the leaves, which is the point.

Diane Bickett, Host 15:26

So I can get some of those today. Will those grow in shade?

Nick Fletcher, Guest 15:30

They don't really grow well in shade. They're more of a full sun, part sun. They like you know, dry, hot spaces, especially. So, like our soil here is very sandy, really sun-baked, and they they thrive here. But they have some you know adaptability in terms of soil and and and light conditions, but love that plant. But there's so many, you know, great, great, great plants, you know. Milkweed, obviously, we grow several species of milkweed, of course.

Diane Bickett, Host 15:58

And okay, so you don't play favorites, and anyone can come down here and pick your brain about what they might want to plant and how to take care of the plants. And you have a newsletter, right? So people can learn more about these sales.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 16:11

Really, if anybody wants to contact me and Claudia, we have a very easy email address, which is just nativeplants at hawken.edu.

Diane Bickett, Host 16:20

Okay.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 16:20

Um and so we're on Instagram at Hawken Native Plants as well. And you know, we do sales according to you know what Claudia and I can make work on the weekends. So and you know, really we're just growing things all year round and and trying to get as many plants native to Northeast Ohio out into the community.

Diane Bickett, Host 16:39

Okay. We'll put that email address in our show notes and a link to the native plant society on your website, which is good because that's where the sale, the events are noted. And so thank you so much for doing all this and for getting the kids involved with nature, the you know, teaching them now and helping develop that desire to protect the environment is so important. So you must be a great teacher.

Nick Fletcher, Guest 17:06

Well, thank you for for coming down and thank you for yeah highlighting uh the importance of native plants.

Greg Rotuno, producer 17:14

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