Thursday Night Nature: Gardening with an Eye towards Climate Change with Dylan Finley (April 18, 2024)

Learn how installing diverse native plant communities and smart stormwater features can improve your garden’s climate resilience and our ecosystem as a whole. Smart gardeners want to ensure the longevity of their landscapes, but climate change presents many uncertainties. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will alter which plants can grow in our region 30 years from now. Invasive plant species and tree pests are increasing their range. Extreme weather events are destabilizing stream banks. How do we prepare for these coming changes? In this session, we will discuss some ways to bolster your backyard against an uncertain future.

Dylan Finley is a restoration ecologist with seven years of experience managing natural resources in NY, PA and HI. He has spent several years working with the Student Conservation Association, first at the Vassar Ecological Preserve and then at a national wildlife refuge on the Hawaiian island of Maui. There he directed a volunteer-based restoration program to revitalize an endangered tropical dry forest. In between, he earned a master’s degree in conservation biology from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, focusing his research on streamlining approaches to invasive species management using community science data. Today, he works as an ecosystem restoration specialist with ArcheWild. Inspiring people to learn about and care for the natural world, especially plants, is his passion.

Program Fee: $15 (Members, enter your code at checkout to receive your 20% discount.)

All lectures will be held virtually using Zoom. They will be recorded and shared with everyone who registers for a short time.