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California Native Plant Society

Santa Clara Valley Chapter

About Us

2020 General Meeting - November 14th

Chapter Members -- please join us for a virtual annual potluck. Cook your favorite food and remember when we could meet in person. Starting at 4:00pm, our Chapter’s General Meeting will include our annual election and recognition of volunteers, Fellows and others. Please watch your email for the Zoom invitation. The meeting will be followed by a talk at 5:00pm

Doug TallamyNature’s Best Hope, A talk by Doug Tallamy

Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current land management practices have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Doug Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can and must ̶ take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.

Doug Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 103 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 40 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens was published by Timber Press in 2007 and was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers' Association. The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014. Doug’s new book, Nature’s Best Hope, released by Timber Press in February 2020, is a New York Times Best Seller.

The general public is invited to watch on Youtube starting at 5pm November 14, 2020.

CNPS SCV YouTube Channels

CNPS SCV has two YouTube Channels:

Some of the recordings available on our YouTube Channels include:

Stay In Touch with the Chapter

Stay in Touch!

Our chapter has a rich variety of activities scheduled year-round. Most of our Chapter activities are listed in the Blazing Star Newsletter, but some late-breaking events don't make it into the newsletter and are announced electronically. Stay informed by making sure that your contact information is correct. 

Activities will be announced on our Chapter News list, our Facebook page and Meetup. Two things you can do to make sure you don’t miss anything are:

Chapter news list

The Santa Clara Valley Chapter emails announcements about upcoming events (talks, hikes, sales, wildflower show, garden tour), alerts, last-minute notices and latebreaking news. Events that are scheduled after the Blazing Star is published are announced to this list. To sign up, please send an e-mail to:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. This list is open to the general public. Members are not automatically subscribed to the list, so you need to add yourself if you’re not already on it.

If you do not have an email address associated with your membership

If you did not provide an email address when you joined CNPS or if you are not sure there is an email address associated with your membership, please send a message to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your name and preferred email address so that the email address can be associated with your membership. Please do not create an account on the membership portal (one will be created for you) if you do not already have an email address set up with your membership. 

Check your email settings on CNPS.ORG

Make sure that your membership contact information is correct by going to the membership portal on cnps.org, and clicking on “My Profile” in menubar on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Log in if you have an account set up already, or set an account up if you don’t. Check your email address to make sure that it’s correct, and make sure that you have authorized CNPS to send email to you.  Please see the figure below to see the options you must set in order to receive email from our chapter. "Yes, I would like to receive email from California Native Plant Society." must be checked in order to receive mail from us! It is not enough to check the Local Chapter News under Email Interests.

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