Committee Chairs
Jan Smith
Membership Chair
Jan has been getting her hands dirty in the garden for as long as she can remember. With a gardening father and a farming grandfather, some of Jan’s earliest memories involve being outside weeding, planting, and watering. With their retirement move to Spotsylvania, Jan and her husband Steve have spent the last several years focused on planting natives and tackling the ever-present invasive plants. They read a lot, experiment more, and are constantly figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Jan is happiest when she is puttering outside and making plans for the next native plant bed, but also enjoys cooking, reading, hiking, and being a Virginia Blue Bird box monitor at Lake Anna State Park.
Ruth Landry-Stone
Advocacy Chair
Ruth has always loved flowers-the beauty, aroma and joy they share. As a youngster, she would traipse the countryside picking flowers to make bouquets to share with others. Later, she traveled the world in search of the non-Virginia native Brugmansia Suaveolens. She found them thriving on a Himalayan mountaintop in Thailand, all the way down to a large planter in an Austrian castle's greenhouse, plus everywhere in between. After reading Doug Tallamy's book, Bringing Nature Home, she changed her course. Now, she's devoted to native plants. She welcomes and cares for them in her yard(and elsewhere), protects their habitat in Virginia and spreads the word on their importance in our ecosystem. She is also devoted to her family, friends and community.
Rosie Green
Botany and Field Trips Chair
Kass Givler
Social Media Chair
Kass is a photographer who fell in love with plants, upon more research she realized native plants are a must! This chair has now combined both her loves.
Charlotte Hunter
Newsletter Chair
Charlotte is a native of northern Virginia, a retired Navy officer who traded sea legs for gardening gloves, and she is living proof one doesn’t need a green thumb to love and champion native plants. When not puzzling over the name and sun/watering needs of something she forgot to label- Charlotte is a constant sketcher of just about anything, and I write science books for kids … yet, ironically, cannot explain why her indoor plants keep staging death scenes worthy of Shakespeare (RIP, countless peace lilies). Charlotte brings to the CRCVPNS what every group needs: someone who makes everyone else look like a master gardener!