Our Partners
The Quarry Gardens at Schuyler, Schuyler, Virginia
As of 2024, PDC owns and operates The Quarry Gardens at Schuyler (QG), a botanical garden and conservation landscape designated by Governor McAuliffe as an official “Virginia Treasure.” The long-standing partnership between PDC and QG has resulted in one of the most remarkable cultural resources in the region – a public, all-native botanical garden (the first of its kind in Virginia) that thrives on the harsh landscape of an abandoned soapstone quarry operation.
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Restoration Ecology Lab, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Tech
We partner with the Restoration Ecology Lab at Virginia Tech to accomplish research, education, and outreach around ecosystem assessment and restoration. The Lab supports PDC research by providing guidance, expertise, and student interns for field research initiatives and publication. We provide education and impactful opportunities for students who want to experience working with a real-world organization that accomplishes multiple environmental services, including natural community restoration design, native plant propagation, and research.
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The Virginia Natural Heritage Program at DCR
PDC research staff work closely with the Virginia Natural Heritage Program at DCR. PDC shares research data with the DCR annually, including the location of rare ecological systems and species. DCR provides expertise on classification and identification, and through permitting processes, allows us access to rare and protected habitats and rare species locations so that they can be incorporated in our Piedmont Grasslands Assessment research. This is a powerful partnership for conservation and education. We act as a go-between for the public and the DCR on conservation issues, and our data helps inform the range maps and species descriptions curated at The Flora of Virginia and elsewhere.
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Southeastern Grasslands Institute
PDC is partnered with SGI to solve one of the most urgent conservation issues of our time – the loss of native grasslands. PDC provides guidance and expertise on methodology for how to document old growth remnant grasslands. PDC is responsible for research, documentation, and education around grasslands in a portion of the SGI study area. We share data as well as staff. Together, we are aimed at understanding and mapping the historic grasslands of Eastern North America.
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University of Virginia
PDC’s director, Devin Floyd, is an assistant professor in the UVA Landscape Architecture Department’s Master’s program. Devin teaches restoration ecology, ecological assessment, and plant propagation to graduate students. His classes are held outdoors and focus on immersive activities, providing students with a real-world ecological interface. They expose students to natural disturbance regimes, such as prescribed fire, and challenge them to incorporate conservation and education into their final projects and landscape designs.
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City of Charlottesville, Central Virginia.
Charlottesville contracts PDC to survey high-traffic corridors along the Rivanna Trails system and develop education content for the general public. This content is made available via signs along the trails. PDC also does native landscape design and installation in the city and biological survey on city properties like the Heyward Community Forest. PDC also provides expertise and volunteers to inventory and track natural resources and biodiversity in the city. In 2018, PDC launched a project called “A Natural History of Charlottesville” to inventory and map all biota, geology, and ecosystems within city limits.
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Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridors Collaborative (VSWCC)
VSWCC partners are committed to protecting people and wildlife by reducing animal-vehicle conflicts and improving safe wildlife passage. They do this by identifying and implementing innovative solutions to improve human safety, wildlife conservation, and habitat connectivity. PDC furthers the mission of this partnership by taking action in the Central Virginia Piedmont with education outreach, volunteer coordination, and scientific investigation related to wildlife and roads. PDC’s most popular project related to wildlife road crossings is the salamander tunnel project at Polo Grounds Road in Charlottesville. PDC has been the leader of this initiative in partnership with Albemarle County Parks and Recreation, and Riverbend Development.
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Monacan Indian Nation
PDC partners with the Monacan Nation concerning the documentation and curation of fragments of precolonial ecosystems found at their tribal headquarters in Amhearst County. PDC also works closely with the Monacan to curate and interpret prehistoric artifact collections, expanding their capacity for reaching the general public and providing an onramp for private projectile point collections – shifting them from being in storage to having their story tol. Advisors from Monacan Nation ensure that our interpretations and narratives, as well as the way these are conveyed to the public, are accurate and effective. PDC displays a land acknowledgment statement at all of its research and education facilities.
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Rivanna Chapter Master Naturalists, Central Virginia
Many of Piedmont Discovery Center’s projects are approved volunteer projects for Master Naturalist trainees. PDC benefits from this volunteer workforce because it increases the capacity and outreach of our public projects. In return, PDC offers unique ecological training for budding naturalists through habitat restoration projects and continuing education opportunities.
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The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
DWR contracts PDC to train landscaping professionals across Virginia in wildlife gardening, native plant community landscaping, and landscape design. PDC also provides support in tracking local wildlife through its biological surveys. New species records discovered during surveys are reported to DWR.
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Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee, Central Virginia
In partnership with the Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee (ANHC), PDC provides expertise and volunteer staff to inventory and track important natural resources. In 2018, PDC began a monthly assessment of Albemarle County’s Important Biological Sites. PDC is occasionally contracted by Albemarle County to do landscape design and installation and biological survey work, and continues to discover, document, and report occurrences of rare species and imperiled ecological systems to the ANHC.
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The Clifton Institute
The Clifton Institute is an education and research partner in northern Virginia. They facilitate access to properties in the NOVA region for our grasslands research project, and we provide the data that results for Clifton’s use for education outreach and stewardship. PDC partners with Clifton to accomplish landowner contact and stewardship at some of the high priority conservation sites we have discovered through field research. We work together to publish the results of the Piedmont Grasslands Assessment and restoration efforts in peer-reviewed journals.
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Blue Ridge Discovery Center (BRDC), Konnarock, Virginia
This partnership is natural, as PDC’s founder also co-founded BRDC. The Blue Ridge and Piedmont regions are unique natural, cultural, and geologic provinces that share a common edge. BRDC and PDC share resources and expertise in a variety of ways to accomplish education and conservation in a broad region of Eastern North America. Both organizations are rooted in experiential learning at the confluence of art and scientific investigation, and have a strong charge of discovery, healthy competition, and conservation-rooted adventure.
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Hummingbird Hill Native Plant Nursery, Crozet, Virginia.
PDC runs a sustainable local genotype Conservation Nursery, and shares seeds with Hummingbird Hill (HH) to increase and diversify Central VA plant purchase opportunities. HH supplies wholesale plant material to PDC for its native landscaping projects. This partnership increases the amount and quality of native plant material used in local gardens. It supports biodiversity conservation by distributing local genotype native plants to important restoration and education-based projects.
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