The Sierra Club is a non-profit member-supported, public interest organization that promotes conservation of the natural environment by influencing public policy decisions: legislative, administrative, legal and electoral.
Sierra Club's mission is "To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environments; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives."
The Piedmont Group is one of thirteen groups under the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. We are based in the Charlottesville area and serve Charlottesville City and Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna, Louisa, Culpeper, and Orange Counties. The National Sierra Club headquarters is located in San Francisco.
The Piedmont Group holds general meetings and sponsors other events with the aim of providing educational programs on the natural environment and other issues of current interest. Our meetings and periodic outings are open to the public. We are a grassroots organization relying on volunteers to accomplish our goals.
United Plant Savers
United Plant Savers' mission is to protect native medicinal plants of the United States and Canada and their native habitat while ensuring an abundant renewable supply of medicinal plants for generations to come.
Virginia Association for Biological Farming
Virginia's premier, non-profit, educational organization, dedicated to the vision of a sustainable food and fiber system that will maintain healthy soil, clean water and thriving ecosystems, while providing quality products for consumers and economic security for farmers and rural communities. The Virginia Association for Biological Farming is an active network of citizens in and around Virginia whose primary focus is to provide information and services to farmers, gardeners and consumers about biological agriculture. We can be reached off-line by contacting Linda Davis, Office Manager, at 540-463-6363.
Piedmont Environmental Council
The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit conservation organization and regional land trust founded in 1972 to promote and protect the Virginia Piedmont's rural economy, natural resources, history and beauty. For 35 years PEC has worked with landowners, residents, and local governments to ensure the long-term protection of their communities and quality of life through land conservation and land use planning programs. In partnership with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and other local land trusts, PEC has helped protect over 272,000 acres of land throughout Virginia's northern Piedmont to date, with the ultimate goal of creating the Piedmont Reserve 1,000,000 acres of private land protected with conservation easements.
PEC's primary service region includes Albemarle, Orange, Madison, Greene, Culpeper, Fauquier, Loudoun, Clarke, and Rappahannock Counties, although assistance is also provided to citizens and organizations with parallel missions in neighboring counties. PEC is recognized nationally for leadership in promotion of smart growth principles, land conservation, and related work in rural historic preservation, habitat protection, and watershed protection.
Virginia Master Gardeners
Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners (VCE-MGs) are volunteers with Extension dedicated to working with the community to encourage and promote environmentally sound horticulture practices through sustainable landscape management educational Programs.
The five counties (Louisa, Fluvanna, , Green, Nelson counties) of Piedmont Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners link to
are proud to add the Heritage Harvest Festival to the many community educational programs they support. One Seed At a Time
The Saving Our Seed Project, in conjunction with the Seed Saver's Exchange, is starting One Seed At A Time, an organic seed bank to save the biodiversity of heirloom southeast vegetables and flowers. As seed saving has become less a part of our culture, hundreds of heirloom varieties are on the verge of being lost. This bank will play a crucial roll in preserving our heritage for us and for our future. We are asking you to support us in this important work.
One Seed At a Time will address this crisis by:
* Seeking out and collecting samples of the heirloom varieties that are currently being raised and banked by farmers and gardeners in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Tennessee.
* Banking these seeds both here in the Southeast and also at the Seed Saver's Exchange in Decorah, IA.
* Regularly growing out all of the collected varieties at least every five years to ensure their viability today and for generations to come
* Enlisting the support of the network of amateur and professional seed savers built up by the Saving Our Seed project.
Seed Savers and others in the seed business from around the country are excited about this project. There are similar seed banks already set up in other regions of the country, but as of yet, there is no such bank in the Southeast and we need to fix this now if we are to save our vegetable heritage. Seed saving organizations and foundations from around the country have indicated they are interested in supporting this project, but for it to succeed, we also need support of folks in our region, folks like you.
