Stories From the Forest: Haley and Native Plants
As we move toward the end of 2023, we’re taking a look back at some of the stories that defined the year. This week, Haley Hamblen, our Nursery Manager, reflects on her journey to Reflection Riding and the value of connection and community.
To me, Reflection Riding is about connection—with people, with nature, with our past. I moved to Chattanooga during the global health crisis, so it was difficult to build community. The fall of 2021 was the first time I visited Reflection Riding; nothing was blooming, and everything was seemingly quiet and stark. But I was immediately greeted by Paul who had just lit a fire outside the visitor’s center. A quick question about hiking trails led to a two-hour conversation about Red Wolves and plant conservation. I knew I had found my people and the community I sought.
I was so excited when I had the opportunity to join the Reflection Riding team as an educator and now I’m managing the Native Plant Nursery. I’ve learned so much about conservation horticulture; beyond what I ever learned by studying landscape architecture in school or working on farms. It brings me such joy to be part of a community that is actively working towards connecting people to nature but it also brings me joy to be out here with my hands in the dirt doing this work.
I still work as an environmental educator and love the opportunity to communicate with the many different groups that come to Reflection Riding. Often people will come to the woods with fear. You can see that they are not comfortable in this environment and bring very reasonable fears with them about bugs, snakes, and wild animals. For one event in particular I decided to focus on things that may spark an ancestral remembrance. So we walked around and talked about traditional uses for some of the native plants on our campus, specifically those with indigenous history. After an hour-and-a-half tour, I watched the group’s demeanor go from apprehension to excitement. They remembered how their parents or grandparents used local plants in different ways, how they used cucumber magnolia for stomach pains or black walnut for a toothache-curing tea. They were not just getting excited about what they were learning, but they were gaining a sense of belonging, a sense of heritage.
I love to see Reflection Riding’s mission in action—reconnecting Chattanoogans back to nature. Whether it is teaching school students how native plants are pertinent to ecological justice in their communities or meeting groups of master gardeners to help provide an ecological understanding of native plants and how the ecosystem in their home garden affects the types of birds, insects, and wildlife that show up, we are really helping people connect with nature in new ways here. I even help researchers from universities in other states who are studying some of the plant populations we have on-site because they’re exemplary. Traveling that far just to see a population of a plant is profound! We are becoming a massive resource for biodiversity and rewilding that is being noticed throughout the southeast.
Community interest in native plants has increased significantly this past year not just from individual homeowners, but also from landscapers doing larger installations around the region. Earlier this year I worked with a landscape architect hired by the Chattanooga Choo Choo to workshop a plant list for a massive native plant installation, right in front of this beautiful historic building on Market Street. Overall, I’m seeing the city take more of an initiative to prioritize restoring biodiversity in our built environment and we get to be an instrumental part of that. I think our presence is setting an example for Chattanooga and beyond. I am excited to be a part of creating vital connections between people and their native ecosystems.
