About RestoraFlora



Our
Story
Bob Gale has been growing plants since working on a farm in the 1960’s. While completing a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies in geology, botany, and ecology at the University of South Carolina, he developed a passion for native plant ecology. Following this, he entered the landscaping profession to follow his interest in growing plants at a time when the residential housing market began to explode, creating an equal demand for landscape plantings. But he saw how landscape architects were seeking new plant species and bringing unusual “ornamentals” from other continents to the U.S.
As an ecologist, Bob noticed that these plants, though attractive to humans, seemed to offer little food or nutrition for our native wildlife, from mammals, reptiles and amphibians, to birds and pollinating insects. He tried to convince landscape architects that he worked with to consider using more native plants, but to little avail.

Unhappy with the direction of the landscaping industry, Bob left that field and became the Forest Ecologist for the non-profit environmental organization, MountainTrue, where he was able to pursue his passion for wild plants by monitoring, protecting, and restoring native mountain ecosystems on public lands in western North Carolina.
Simultaneous with this work, scientists in colleges, agencies and organizations nationwide, began to realize a new threat: Non-native plants, including many of those “ornamentals” that were brought from Asia and Europe since 1970, were rapidly invading natural habitats and displacing our native species.
Bob decided to put his earlier knowledge of these non-native invasive plants to good use by helping eradicate them from rare ecosystems and restoring native ecology. At MountainTrue, Bob developed methods of non-native invasive control and monitoring on public lands including the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forests, Appalachian Trail, state parks and forests, municipal parks, conservation easements, and rare Southern Appalachian Bogs.

Performing this work on protected public lands for over 25 years was rewarding, but Bob also wanted to approach the invasives problem from the source, namely the residential and urban yards from which most of these species were spreading. The native landscaping concept began to gain some ground by the mid-2000’s, but didn’t really start to garner the public’s attention until the honeybee colony collapse. For the first time, people began to appreciate the role that pollinators play, not only in natural areas, but in their residential gardens.
Bob has witnessed a new awareness among homeowners about problematic non-native invasive plants, and they are becoming increasingly interested in how to rid them from their yards and replace them with native species. Helping individual home owners, neighborhoods, and Home Owner’s Associations (HOA’s) to restore natural habitats to their yards is why Bob formed RestoraFlora -- Gale Botanical Consulting.
