By Tom Harville reporting for Native Plant News
How do you describe an NC Native Plant Society award winner? If you attended the 2024 Annual Picnic/Meeting of the society, you heard their achievements recounted with the following words: “Passion and effectiveness,” “stalwart and results-oriented,” “elevated the level of botanical knowledge that’s the backbone of many NCNPS’s efforts,” “outstanding impact,” “a treasure.”
This year, five people received awards presented by NCNPS President Ken Bridle and Tom Harville, chair of the Awards Committee, at a ceremony last June during the 2024 Annual Picnic/Meeting at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina.
The North Carolina Native Plant Society Awards Program is presented each year and accomplishes several purposes:
- To recognize and publicly acknowledge individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to the Society and to the cause of native plant and habitat conservation in North Carolina.
- To further the mission of the Society to promote the enjoyment and conservation of North Carolina’s native plants and their habitats through education, protection, cultivation, and advocacy.
Nominations can be made year-round. Nominations for all award categories may be emailed to awards@ncwildflower.org.
This Year’s Award Winners
Susan Andrews
The Emily Allen Award for Landscape Design with Native Plant Materials
For a bit of background, Susan was a consultant and coauthor for the Uniform Design Ordinance Revision in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County for their updated and expanded native plant list. She served as a consultant to the Creative Corridors Commission in Winston-Salem for Land Bridge Gardens. She designed and continues to maintain the Bird Friendly Garden at Wright Bird Center in Winston-Salem. She volunteers as the team leader for the Forsyth Audubon Society’s Bird-Friendly Habitat Certification Program and partnered with Lisa Gould to create a “Bird-friendly Yards” spreadsheet for Audubon NC listing 692 native plants that could be grown in North Carolina yards, giving many details of growth habits and requirements, animals that benefit from each plant, and availability in the nursery trade.
But the real focus here is her work on the Emily Allen Garden–now the Emily Allen Wildflower Preserve. The property was donated by the Allen family to the Piedmont Land Conservancy in 2014.
To the rear of the house, and overlooking the six-acre woodland preserve, is a long, steep slope formerly dominated by Common Periwinkle (Vinca minor). The view from the original terrace and lower level of the house was obscured by a dense English Boxwood hedge.
Starting in 2021, the periwinkle and hedge were removed and a new 80’ faux-stone terrace laid across the full length of the house, providing an accessible spot for visitors with limited mobility to enjoy the garden beyond. In place of the boxwood is a new Terrace Bed filled with a variety of native plants representative of those in the greater garden. A low stone retaining wall separates the Terrace Bed from the slope below. Where a periwinkle monoculture once cloaked the slope, now there are numerous flowering native shrubs as well as ferns, sedges, and herbaceous perennials.
In 2022, on a small wedge of land at a front corner of the house, Susan took advantage of the sunniest spot on the property and transformed it into a thriving Pollinator Garden that hummed with insect activity throughout its first growing season. And there are plans for further improvements.
Susan’s ability to share her enthusiasm and knowledge about native plants has been a treasure to anyone who knows her and had the fortune to learn from her. She has made her passion of landscaping with native plants her life’s work.
She is very deserving of recognition by the North Carolina Native Plant Society for her outstanding efforts to further the use of native plants in many landscapes.
Beth Davis
The President’s Award for Service to the Society
Beth has been a member of the Society for a long time but she really made an impact on the Southern Piedmont Chapter and the statewide society when she became the co-chair of the chapter. Under her leadership, the chapter grew from fewer than 100 to more than 400+ and meeting attendance increased over tenfold. No small feat considering that this growth continued through COVID-19! With her communication and marketing skills, she helped revise our newsletter format and distribution. Her team designed and implemented a more flexible digital newsletter. She led a team that created a marketing and communications component to the NCNPS Strategic Plan. She has pulled us into the YouTube world with a native plant oriented channel collectively posting 25 videos. Beth has stepped down as the Chapter co-chair after 6 terms but she is still actively involved in chapter and Society activities.
She is very deserving of recognition by the North Carolina Native Plant Society for her long-term outstanding efforts to further the mission and purpose of the Society.
Lisa Lofland Gould
The B.W. Wells Award for Excellence in Botany or Horticulture
Lisa’s life work has been as a botanist, biologist, environmentalist, researcher, and educator. She has elevated the level of botanical knowledge that is the backbone of many of the NCNPS’s endeavors.
For the NCNPS, she has made sure our nomenclature on the NC Native Plant Society website and publications are up to date with Alan Weakley’s Flora of the Southeastern United States. She has edited numerous handouts and other documents.
Lisa organized and published the Triad Flora Report since 2012, documenting the region’s plant phenology and shared it with Triad Chapter Members via email. Check out the link to all reports. You will be amazed at the number of reports she has submitted over the years. https://ncwildflower.org/triad-flora-reports/
She is the author of many “Chlorofiends!” articles in our newsletter for more than ten years, educating our members and the public about invasive plants. She is an important voice urging folks to protect our natural areas.
Lisa was one of the editors of the Piedmont Landscape Booklet, offering suggestions and checking to make sure all plant names were correct. A valuable reviewer.
For other organizations, Lisa has been instrumental in organizing data and finalizing the new 2023 NC Invasive Plant List, approved by both boards of directors of the NCNPS and NC Invasive Plant Council. This list would not have been successfully updated without Lisa’s knowledge, persistence, research, organizational skills, and ability to bring it to a conclusion with input from many contributors.
Lisa’s knowledge and enthusiasm for plant ecology are infectious. She selflessly gives of her time and demonstrates the value sustained commitment and service can offer to projects like the Emily Allen Wildflower Preserve. She is an enduring presence at all of the volunteer workdays, arriving with her walking stick to saunter along the trails with her little legal pad, noting what is in bloom and flagging plants of interest. She has created a growing database of over 500 garden plant species, including 28 of the 35 known eastern North American Trillium and 30 species of ferns. Lisa inspires all the volunteers with great purpose through her keen understanding of the benefits of native plants and the harm of invasives.
Her passion for education is unparalleled and everyone who attends her annual Wildflower and Fern Identification workshops knows it, many returning each year. Lisa has a beautiful way of expounding specialized plant knowledge in the most approachable ways.
She is very deserving of recognition by the North Carolina Native Plant Society for her outstanding efforts to further the Society’s botanical knowledge.
Diane Laslie
The President’s Award for Service to the Society
Diane Laslie has been a stalwart of the Native Plant Society at the state and local chapter level for decades. Diane is an amazing results-oriented individual who, when seeing a Society need, jumps right in to fill that need without complaint. She has voluntarily stepped in and spent countless hours and weekends planning and overseeing the 2022 Spring Outing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the 2023 Spring Outing in Morrow Mountain State Park. When there have been other vacancies in leadership positions within the NCNPS, Diane, with no prompting from others, has taken the time and made the effort to find willing members to fill these spots. Inspired by a booklet published by the Coastal Landscapes Initiative, Diane designed and arranged for the printing of the stunningly attractive and informative NC Piedmont Landscaping Brochure and Booklet.
Diane has volunteered to represent the NCNPS at many regional and state-sponsored events, including Green and Growin’ and the NC State Fair. She also guides and organizes a crew to help remove invasive plants and to plant native plants in the Greensboro Bog Garden. These endeavors and many others, are all in addition to her current primary responsibility of being the Society treasurer. As treasurer she handles the many routine financial activities that keep this society going as well as a variety of unusual and unique situations that require depth of knowledge and ability to problem-solve. Her work as treasurer is exemplary. Diane also keeps abreast with what other native plant societies are doing and always brings forth some great ideas for our Society.
As a dedicated and hardworking person who “wears many hats,” Diane is very deserving of recognition by the North Carolina Native Plant Society for her long-term outstanding efforts to further the mission and purpose of the Society.
Jackie Trickel
The William Lanier Hunt Award for Environmental Education
Jackie’s passion and effectiveness for environmental education is best exemplified in her volunteer efforts for increasing our native plants educational outreach at the NC State Fair. Jackie’s stewardship of the State Fair Garden and coordination of its expansion have created a vibrant space resulting in a huge increase of booth visitation and interactions with the public over previous years.
She organized and cheerfully led many work days where she and her crew of volunteers improved the native plant gardens, occupied and upfitted an old building for NCNPS use, created better signage and banners, maintained and repaired the water garden feature, and planned activities for fair attendees. She diligently worked to maintain an open and productive working relationship with the fair staff to ensure safety and visual improvements were made. She produced and displayed numerous container gardens to encourage people to explore new ways to incorporate native plants into their personal spaces.
Jackie invited nurseries and like-minded organizations to contribute to and participate with us at the fair to provide additional perspectives and information about the value and uses of native plants. She developed several educational activities to engage young visitors, and got our booth onto the State Fair’s scavenger hunt in 2022, attracting many children and school groups.
Jackie is at the booth every day of the fair, sharing her love of native plants, providing leadership for the volunteers, and greeting visitors. She is a fantastic ambassador for NCNPS and is very deserving of recognition by the North Carolina Native Plant Society for her outstanding efforts in the area of education related to native plants.

Tom Harville is a life member and past president of the North Carolina Native Plant Society. He is chairman of the NCNPS Awards Program.