Ginny Maffitt will be presenting a hands-on program featuring native plants of Oregon’s northwest coast at the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, 2106 Second Street, Tillamook, at 1:00 PM on Saturday, March 10, 2018. Her topic is “Native Plants: Food Factories for Critters, Source of Life for Indigenous People” and she will be using both live photos and life plants used by native people for clothing, food, medicines, and housing for visitors to examine.
Teaching elementary school in the Beaverton District for many years, Ginny introduced her classes to the First People of eastern Oregon and the Northwest, but little was known about the local people. As several books have now been published and museums have begun to show their artifacts, it has been a labor of love for Ginny to collect the photos, documents, plant artifacts and stories about these peaceful and creative people.
Ginny and her husband John have lived in Sherwood for 25 years. Gardening on an acre has made it easy to grow many native plants so interconnected with the local flora and fauna.
Ginny volunteers at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge in Sherwood and at the Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge, near Gaston. Since 1998, Ginny has been the acting botanist there collecting vouchers for both herbariums, plus generating spread sheets and digital photo records of all plant species found, native and introduced.
Following Ginny’s presentation, museum visitors are invited to an artist reception for Frances Stilwell, whose “Oregon’s Botanical Landscape” exhibit is currently on display at the Pioneer Museum.