Brad Jenkins, board member, webmaster, and treasurer of the California Native Plant Society Orange County Chapter (OCCNPS), is featured this month, and answers the question:

What draws us to our relationships with nature and native plants?

“Innate influences, happenstance encounters, analytical purposefulness, and social associations.“

Brad writes: “My first wedding was in a wild field in Sunnyvale. It was full of spring flowers, fluttering bugs, and intriguing aromas. This wild field bordered a turf field of the school where I was in second grade. Location was important because the ceremony had to fit into our short lunch time.  Friends joined us, picking flowers and greenery to hold, and to put in girls’ hair, and to toss in the air at the end of our nuptials. A nature(ish) location seemed perfect for such an important social occasion. 

In high school, a new running coach took us into the San Gabriel Mountains to train on trails. The scenery was energizing. Trails weaved in and out of dense shrubs and dryer sun baked plants and trees and views and varieties of smells. Miles passed swiftly with senses enjoying the variety of plants, and the mind focused on staying on narrow trails. Oh my goodness(!) that was dangerously dumb, but also a wonderful way to fall in love with California mountains.  

College started with the intent for an engineering degree. There was excitement around lasers, high-tech structures, and the space age. That enthusiasm drained in classes about the basics of chemistry and physics. Then came a class in Ecosystems. These people looked at the big picture, details, and cause-and-effect all at the same time right from the beginning. Then my roommate said, “Let’s backpack in the high Sierra’s for a week before fall classes start”. Now I was consciously hooked on nature and big interconnected systems. Graduation came with a double major degree in Ecosystems and Economics. 

Life veered into manufacturing, computer programming for manufacturing, programming for other types of businesses, and then large business system fixes. Oh, and family too!

Many years later while hiking with a group, I met Sarah Jayne, an influential member of the CNPS Orange County Chapter. I said her group needed a Garden Tour to show the rest of us how to get started. She said she would make it happen if I joined her in the endeavor. That garden tour has run for most of the last 22 years (mostly led by Sarah until recent years and supported by dozens of volunteers over time).

I met Dan Songster, and we created what became the first Why Plant Native Plants brochure for statewide CNPS. I met Celia Kutcher and found that her comment letters brought easy to follow structure to complex legal, biological, land issues. The guidance and teamwork of these people made me decide that CNPS would become my primary active pathway for engaging with nature. 

One of the projects bringing the most pride was instigating and being on the team to create a new online Rare Plant Inventory. A northern California member had built a techy query application available on the net. It was intimidating and limiting for most users but useful and also inspiring about what the next generation of app could do. So the CNPS Rare Plant program director, our web tech who was also a graphic designer, a programmer from Calflora, and I created that next generation application. My years in programming and business systems became useful to the nature world. 

Every fun and purposeful story I have about CNPS involves a team of people. Our organization brings together people of many levels of interest, types of interest, and varieties of skills. That’s good because we are social creatures (even for those of us for which socializing is not one of our skills) and because so many projects of value nowadays require teamwork. I hope to see you… on the trails enjoying nature’s landscapes… on our teams supporting native plants… and in the garden bringing local nature webs into our urban landscapes.”