Creating A Flood-Free Paradise: Managing Water in the Garden, program Mar. 2nd

Falls Church Garden Club
American Legion Hall
400 N. Oak Street, Falls Church VA
Monday, 2 March 2020
7:30 pm

Falls Church and Fairfax County have faced more than their share of flooding. Award-winning landscape designer and Falls Church resident Elisa Meara, founder/owner of the Native Plant Landscape Design Corp., will share before-and-after stories and photos of properties that have undergone conservation landscaping to manage stormwater and prevent erosion. She also may touch on rain gardens, infiltration trenches, swales and other approaches to water management, as well as provide a list of plants suitable to a wide variety of conditions.

Elisa Meara grew up in the Dominican Republic, where nature and plants always played a big role in her life. Living in a country where the weather allows people to enjoy the outdoors year-round, she became interested in the beautiful array of textures, colors, forms, fragrances and shades of the Dominican flora. This was the beginning of her passion for beauty and design. During the last fifteen years she has lived in five different countries. In each place, she faced the challenges that come with working with unfamiliar plants, soils, and weather, but says that the difficulties were always more than compensated for by the joy of learning and the adventure of working with things new and exotic. While living in England, Meara trained at the Inchbald School of Design, one of the most demanding and prestigious garden design programs in the world. As a certified Virginia Master Gardener who has worked as a landscape designer in England and Italy, she aspires to create personalized garden designs that support the local ecosystem. Her Native Plant Landscape Design Corp., launched in Falls Church in 2013, received the 2019 Virginia Conservation Assistance Program Leadership Award and has won Best of Houzz Service Award from 2016-2019. In 2019, the Chesapeake Stormwater Network awarded her 2nd place for Best Residential BMP in the Bay for a local project that captures and treats 100% of the runoff from the property.