About us
This is a group for anyone interested in supporting the Washington Native Plant Society (WNPS). Our mission is to promote the appreciation and conservation of Washington's native plants and their habitats through study, education and advocacy.
The Central Puget Sound Chapter (CPS) hosts regular monthly membership meetings 7 times a year in Seattle and 4 times a year in Bellevue. Following a brief business discussion and announcements, each meeting features a guest speaker who is an expert on a native plant topic such as native plants found on WA hikes, the impact of climate change and wildfires on native plants, and landscaping with native plants. The Seattle meetings also have a plant identification workshop prior to the start of the meeting.
The CPS Chapter also sponsors a Native Plant Steward training program, which provides 100 hours of free instruction on native plants and environmental stewardship in exchange for a commitment of 100 hours of volunteer work. The organization also has 2 native plant sales a year, where you can find both common and rare species of plants.
For more details about our chapter see: http://www.wnps.org/cps/index3.html
Upcoming events
1
A Botanical Tourist Visits the Western Cape of South Africa
Bellevue Botanical Garden, 12001 Main St (b/t S 118th Ave & 1st St), Bellevue, WA, USSarah Gage will present highlights from her September 2025 tour of South Africa’s Western Cape and Namaqualand Provinces.
The trip was timed to coincide with the rich displays of spring annuals and bulbs that carpet Namaqua National Park. The reserve is home to an estimated 3,500 species of plants (about the same number in the entire state of Washington). Up to 1,000 of these are endemic. The area holds the world’s greatest diversity of succulent plants and is the only declared desert biodiversity hotspot. The tour also visited the unique fynbos vegetation of the Cape Peninsula. The Cape Floristic Region, the smallest of the six recognized floral kingdoms of the world, is home to over 8,500 vascular plant species, of which nearly 70 percent are endemic. In other words, Sarah will show you pictures of a lot of cool plants, and some animals too.
Sarah Gage has always loved plants. Now that she is retired, she has indulged this passion by seeking out botanical and horticultural sites and sights in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Kazakhstan, South Africa… and she hopes she is just getting started. Sarah spent the first half of her career managing the University of Washington Herbarium (now part of the Burke Museum) and the second half working on biodiversity conservation and salmon recovery in state government. She has been active with the Washington Native Plant Society since 1988, serving as president in the mid-1990s. Currently she participates in several committees and curates the Botanical Rambles blog. She was named a WNPS Arthur R. Kruckeberg Fellow in 2024.
Tuesday, April 2, 2026 7:00 PM
Bellevue Botanical Garden, Aaron Education Center, 12001 Main St, Bellevue, WA 98005Program will be in-person & live streamed via Zoom. It will be recorded for later viewing. For information on how to sign up for Zoom, please contact our event web page:
https://www.wnps.org/cps-events/a-botanical-tourist-visits-the-western-cape-of-south-africaStewart Wechsler, our Botanist Fellow, will host a plant ID workshops prior to this program at 6:30 PM. In addition to any plant samples the chapter botanists bring, attendees are welcome to bring in plant samples for identification.
Speaker's program starts at 7:00pm
There will be refreshments, door prizes, and tote bags for sale!
Photo credit: Sarah Gage
2 attendees
Past events
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