(Photo courtesy of Worthy Garden Club)
The Worthy Garden Club is expanding and rebranding as Worthy Environmental to better represent the changing mission and direction of the nonprofit. We’re excited about the change!
The Worthy Garden Club was established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2013 to provide educational opportunities in sustainability, gardening, and native plant landscaping through lectures, courses, and active practice at the Worthy Brewing campus. And the “hopservatory” has been teaching the public about the cosmos and instilling a perspective of how our small planet fits into the universe.
But while those programs met the original intent of the nonprofit and continue to be an important part of our organization, the Garden Club has moved into active efforts to address climate change issues on state, regional, and national scales. Additionally, we developed a working small-scale regenerative farm providing produce to the restaurant at Worthy Brewing, and now own the largest native plant propagation nursery in central Oregon. Moreover, we’ve developed partnerships with OSU-Cascades and the National Park Service that refocus our vision on conserving biodiverse systems throughout the west. The Club has quickly become an active and influential conservation organization.
And our support for primary research continues through generous funding from Roger Worthington. To date, we’ve backed the work of Mary Wood and the University of Oregon law school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, Dr. Beverly Law, Emeritus professor of Forestry at Oregon State University in her continuing research on forest carbon storage capacity and the environmental costs of current forest management practices on state and private lands, Dr. Dominick DellaSala and his efforts to protect forests as natural climate solutions around the world, and Dr. Bill Ripple for his continued research into the effects of climate change and large predators on biodiversity throughout the west.
Other work by the Garden Club quietly tackles global climate change issues through collaborative projects with a number of conservation organizations such as Audubon, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, land trusts and conservancies, and grass-roots organizations improving environmental conditions in their local areas.
The name “Garden Club” evoked images of an organization walking softly through the world, but the stick we were carrying kept getting bigger. Now our name more closely represents the broad impacts were making in the world.
We have educational events scheduled at Worthy Brewing (495 NE Bellevue Drive, Bend) every month through 2023. Keep an eye on WorthyEnvironmental.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook for more information and contact Rick Martinson, our Executive Director (rick@worthyenvironmental.org) if you’re interested in getting involved with our efforts or would like to be an active supporter. Keep up the good work, and remember…
Earth First, Beer Second!
