2025’s Rewilding wrapped
"The City of Oxford has undertaken multiple re-wilding and wildlife-supportive projects in recent years, particularly at the Oxford Community Park, and in the design of the Oxford Area Trails."
Because the season of wrap-ups and recognition falls in the dead of winter, we usually fail to recognize excellence in rewilding efforts in our top 10 lists and awards ceremonies. Though the toil of spring planting, summer weeding, fall water hauling and honeysuckle hacking all feel distant from our warm homes, the importance of this work is quietly being experienced by invertebrates like fireflies that are overwintering in the leaf litter in their juvenile form, and by birds, like the Brown Creeper, that you might find scaling and pecking their way up tree trunks as they eat the eggs and larvae of moths so cleverly camouflaged that most of us will never see them.
So this award season, Wild Ones Miami Valley would like to share some reflections on organizations that have been critical in advancing our vision of native plants and natural landscapes thriving in our community. This year, we’re recognizing the work of three organizations: the City of Oxford (Chad Smith), Miami University Physical Facilities Division (Olivia Herron) and Oxford Lane Library (Jackie Berberich).
The City of Oxford has undertaken multiple re-wilding and wildlife-supportive projects in recent years, particularly at the Oxford Community Park, and in the design of the Oxford Area Trails. In the Oxford Community Park, the StoryWalk connects our community to art and nature, while supporting a woodland habitat with beautiful spring wildflowers. The Native Grassland Demonstration project has converted a portion of the landscape from mowed turfgrass to a native grassland habitat, while the pollinator garden in the traffic circle near the Oxford Aquatic Center demonstrates that our native pollinators can be both showy and beautiful.
Each of these projects was undertaken with community partners, and in part, this membership recognizes the city’s responsiveness to its citizens’ concern for rebuilding a healthy ecology.
In addition to these re-wilded areas, Wild Ones Miami Valley recognizes policy efforts by the City of Oxford to support re-wilding. These include the city’s adoption of a tree preservation ordinance in 2023, the Biodiversity in your Backyard and Beyond campaign in 2023, a landscape naturalization ordinance in 2024, and a deer management plan in 2025.
Miami University is a unique partner in our local re-wilding efforts. With this year’s recognition, Wild Ones particularly wants to recognize the ways Miami uses native plants and re-wilding practices within the more manicured spaces of the university in Oxford. The campus is dotted with rewilded gardens and landscapes, including the Bluestone Pollinator Garden behind the Upham Arch, the pollinator gardens on the west side of Pearson Hall, Becca’s Ecological Educational Pollinator Spaces garden behind McGuffey Hall and the Myaamia Kitahkinaani Garden near Boyd Hall. Many of these gardens feature educational signage that helps visitors build connections with these plants, increasing the possibility that visitors might be inspired to re-wild their own properties. Wild Ones also wants to recognize the ongoing investment in the Miami University trees and tree walk. The campus tree canopy includes many valuable native species, some of which are now labeled, allowing the University community and visitors to build their knowledge of local trees and the ecosystems they support. Wild Ones Miami Valley recognizes the willingness of the Physical Facilities Department and groundskeeping to maintain these resources on campus and looks forward to further implementation of plantings and educational signage on campus.
Finally, Oxford Lane Library has been a critical resource and partner for Wild Ones Miami Valley as we’ve launched our local chapter. The Friends of the Oxford Lane Library collaborated with Miami University to bring noted ecologist and founder of the Homegrown National Park movement Doug Tallamy to Oxford in March 2025. The library applied for and received the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grant and selected the book “Lab Girl” by Hope Jahren, bringing a year’s worth of sustainability engagement to our community. Additionally, the library has partnered with Wild Ones to co-host events on spring planting, deer management and to include the seeds for native plants in the free seed library. Library staff have helped to nurture our knowledge by ensuring that many valuable books on rewilding are available on the shelves.
Representatives from each of these institutions will receive a year’s complimentary Wild Ones membership. It’s not quite a gold trophy or a red carpet, but the chorus of insects and the rising flash of firefly lights in the June dusk have their own sparkle, and we’ll look forward to enjoying it together when spring rolls round again.
Carla Blackmar is the Membership and Media Officer for Wild Ones Miami Valley and is a curatorial assistant at the Hefner Museum of Natural History at Miami University.
