Native Plant Project's guest speaker for the January 23 meeting will be Joey Santore. The title of Joey's program will be "Kill Your Lawn," which is also the title of the cable TV show which he hosts on channel EarthX TV.

Besides explaining how to successfully "destroy" one's lawn in order to install native plant gardens, Santore's presentation will focus on rare plants of the Lower Rio Grande Valley with an emphasis on the more desert-like regions of the Western Rio Grande Valley in Starr County. Santore describes himself as a railroader-turned-botanist who quit his job as a locomotive engineer to travel the world and study plant evolution and ecology. He produces the YouTube channel “Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't,” and moved to South Texas in 2021 to start focusing on the native plants in this area.

The program will be January 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the Valley Nature Center, 301 South Border St. in Weslaco behind Gibson Park. The public is invited. There is no charge to attend.

For more about the Native Plant Project, visit http://www.nativeplantproject.org or visit on Facebook.