In late January, we received a call from Wendy Jacobs, a co-founder of the Green Towson Alliance and a great friend and supporter of NeighborSpace, asking whether we might be interested in a donation of a large collection of native plants. The plants, it turns out, had been planted and nurtured by Joanna Hastings-Kiessling, a local master naturalist who had passed away unexpectedly. Her family wanted to ensure that they would continue to be cultivated, that they would be appreciated, and that Joanna's legacy would be honored in the process. We answered with a quick and resounding "YES!" We are grateful to Wendy and to Joanna's family for thinking of us and for the account of Joanna's life that we reprint here.Joanna Hastings-Kiessling was born in Baltimore, Maryland and developed a deep love for our rolling Piedmont countryside. She traveled extensively both nationally and internationally for her jobs with Alcatel-Lucent and Saft America, where she marketed aerospace and defense equipment and solar batteries, respectively. Joanna returned to Baltimore County in 2001 for family reasons.
Joanna decided to take some time off while daughter Faith completed her education at UMBC, and began exploring her interests and deep connection to Nature. In 2012 she completed the Master Naturalist program at Irvine Science Center. She became an ardent follower of University of Delaware ecologist/entomologist Doug Tallamy. Tallamy’s emphasis on native plants as the fundamental underpinning of healthy ecosystems and our own survival on this planet led Joanna to also complete a Master Gardener certification at Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore City in 2013. At Cylburn she learned technical skills and developed connections with expert horticulturalists.
In 2015, Joanna founded a non-profit venture called “biodivers-it”. She gathered and purchased thousands of seeds and seedling plants, which she grew into sturdy yearlings and donated to school and community projects. The purpose was to encourage the re-greening of our area with native plants in order to bring back healthy ecosystems and help heal the planet.
Ridgeley and Deep Creek Middle Schools were major recipients of Joanna’s generosity. Angela Rountree was a teacher there and coordinated with Joanna the creation of native gardens by students at both schools, along with a 10-box bluebird trail at Ridgeley. Many hundreds of shrubs, flowering plants and trees were donated by Joanna to fund the project, along with thousands of seeds used for fund raising. At the time of her death, Joanna was exploring ways to broaden her connections and donations to other County schools.
Another thrust of Biodivers-it was to support community groups in the creation of natural open spaces. Joanna had her own beloved project, a trail spur which connected a residential part of Owings Mills with the Soldier’s Delight Natural Environmental Area and provided foot access to the park for hundreds of Owings Mills residents. She worked diligently for five years to replace invasives with native plants on a half mile access spur and to make it feel safe and appealing. especially for women walkers. Usage of the spur increased exponentially as Joanna’s restoration progressed. Joanna would elicit casual walkers of all ages to help with this all-volunteer effort, educating them as they worked together. Joanna was always there to consult and donate the hard-to-get native plants. And she loved explaining how they contributed to the well being of wildlife and humans.”
Joanna’s plants were used in restoration of backyard buffers in Towson and the restoration of 8 acres of the Pickersgill Retirement Community campus, also in Towson. Besides her general passion for native plants, Joanna had a deep affection for the most aggressive ones (she called them “Survivors”) that would deliver beauty and benefit wildlife under the most difficult growing conditions. She was quite an expert in these species, some rarely for sale in nurseries, and made sure to raise them in great quantities for donations.
Joanna is survived by her mother Shirley Hastings of Owings Mills, MD, sister Nancy Hastings Reuter of Glenwood MD, and her daughter Faith Kiessling of Columbia, MD. NeighborSpace is organizing groups of volunteers to harvest plants at two sites in and near Owings Mills on May 18, 19, 25 and June 1, 2 from 11 AM to 3 PM. If you are willing and able, please sign up below. Later this summer, we will host a memorial service where we will dedicate a portion of one of our parks in Joanna's honor.