As I wake up on the day after the 2025 SCNPS Statewide Symposium (hosted by the Grand Strand chapter and held at Brookgreen Gardens, Huntington Beach State Park in Murrell’s Inlet; and various field trip locations around the area) on this refreshingly cool autumn morning and settle in to rest some this Monday October 20th, I wanted to take a moment to capture a few feelings and express them to everyone who had anything to do with putting together this wonderful weekend and who attended.
It all came together thanks to everyone! From the initial spark of the idea that the Grand Strand chapter could host this years event, to months of flashes of ideas in the head, planning, meetings, logistics, communications, details, scouting field trip locations, gathering auction items, and on and on. It really seems a little odd that this is now in the rearview mirror. But it’s one of those memories that makes you feel good and feeling like you have been through a lot. So I must be able to tackle other things in the future that maybe could have felt a little bit daunting before this began.
My little part in this years puzzle of the Symposium was that of a presenter, multiple co-field trip leader, and a few other back end details on the Grand Strand Symposium planning committee.
It makes me think back to 1996 when I was 18 years old and first heard the news in some media source I have long forgotten that South Carolina now had its own Native Plant Society. Huh??? I honestly remember thinking back then. I was a nature lover back at that age but didn’t fully understand native plants and their part in the grand scheme of things on Earth. I just knew how it felt to be in nature close by to where I lived at that time and how it made me feel good in ways hard to verbally express.
I truthfully and honestly thought in the mid 1990’s that Native Plant Societies were for states out west that were far away from where I lived in South Carolina, like Colorado, California, Washington, and Oregon, or unique alien foreign countries; or the Amazon rain forest. They were for the elite in my mind and for elite plants that I would never see. Certainly it was kind of weird we had one and I thought in no way could it be for what I was use to seeing all around the countryside of South Carolina and the southeast.
I kind of forgot about the SCNPS in general for many years after that initial news as I did my own thing as a hobby and past time in nature. If I was to go back to that 18 year old me (or maybe even the 34 year old me) and tell myself that I was going to be a Presenter and help with the 2025 Symposium the way I just did, I don’t know what I would have thought back then in 1996, but I’m sure I would have started with “What?” or “Huh?”
I just want to thank Rick Huffman and his co-founders for having the fortitude to start this from nothing back in the 1990’s when certain small, but semi-loud portions of the population in South Carolina would have thought if a plant wasn’t a crop, for timber production, or perhaps hunting game, than a native plant was really good for nothing. Much in the same light, thanks to those who created the Grand Strand chapter in recent years from nothing a few years back. It is all awesome to see it grow!
As Rick said this past weekend, we are not a garden club, but in some sense a science club. Gardening can be a beautiful part of this society that really at its core is about the interconnections in nature and how native plants fit in and function on many levels. This helps learn about and bring to life many native plants in the process. I certainly learned and re-learned things (ghost pipe is not a fungi-oops my bad! And how many varieties of Solidago are known to be native in SC now? ) and felt my head smoking from trying to comprehend all the expanding intricate botany knowledge areas I’m not as familiar with that others have more knowledge about than me.
This is my feelings after getting some rest and letting a calm mind reflect. What a great weekend!!!
Jason L. Flynn
SCNPS Grand Strand chapter member – Education Committee member
Brookgreen Gardens-Horticulture
P.S: Here is a beautiful ambient song to leave you with a connection to an exciting plant, Asclepias humistrata (Pinewoods or Sandhill Milkweed), that we saw Sunday in its own newly found population on the property on the Brookgreen Gardens Beech Allee Backwoods field trip:
Chronotope Project: Chrysalis (2012)
