Below is a list of the Greater Baltimore chapter directors, who serve a 1-year term. Our chapter holds elections once a year, typically in November. We invite members to vote for directors at the annual meeting when elections are held. All of our directors volunteer in the hopes of helping others learn more about native plants.
Chapter Directors
Amanda Wray, President & Web Chair
Vinaya Frank, Co-Vice President
Anne Gneo, Co-Vice President & Marketing Chair
Brigit Burbank, Secretary
Harry Quigley, Treasurer
Katie Garvey, Membership Chair
President
AMANDA “NAN” WRAY founded the Greater Baltimore Wild Ones Chapter in 2021. She is passionate about helping others learn more about native plants. She and fellow board members continue to build the group through outreach and educational activities.
Most recently Amanda designed the 2025 Maryland Native Plant Guide for the Piedmont, for the UME Maryland Native Plants Program (she initially assisted with and testified for the bill which became adopted into law as the Maryland Native Plants Program). She also helped with strategy and communication for a bill about invasive plants, the Biodiversity and Agricultural Protection Act. Prior to this, she sparked the Towson Native Garden Contest through the Green Towson Alliance as a way to provide prestige and support for native gardeners.
She also helped develop (initial design and illustration) the 2022 edition of Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas Field Guide. She re-designed elements of the Mid-Atlantic Invaders Tool, an online database of invasive plants. Amanda runs three Facebook groups focused on native plants. She also created art for garden signs for home gardeners to educate passers-by on the importance of fallen leaves and dried stalks as habitat.
Amanda has added more than 50 native trees and a variety of native herbaceous plants to her landscape since moving to the area in 2017. She got her start in garden design in California, working with drought tolerant native plants to shrink lawns. Her career also includes work as a reporter, editor and graphic designer, and has degrees in communication and graphic design. She is forging community connections to broaden awareness of the critical importance of native plants to the health of our vital ecosystems.
CO-Vice President
VINAYA FRANK is Co-Vice President and Program Chair for the Wild Ones Greater Baltimore. She is a Master Gardener with the University of Maryland Extension (UME). Her passion for native plants is the primary driver for the outreach and educational events she has organized for the chapter. Along with healthy biodiversity in our landscapes, she also believes in racial and ethnic biodiversity in all aspects of human lives. Toward that goal, she also serves as Co-Chair on the Diversity Committee of the UME program.
Vinaya lives in Ellicott City on a 0.5 acre lawn-free, wooded yard. Her oasis, sustains not only the local wildlife, but also its human occupants as they grow their own food. She has gardened for more than 15 years. Vinaya started in the tropical climate of India and to now the temperate deciduous region of eastern United States. She truly believes that a yard should be fully functional and a part of a healthy ecosystem. Her entire family, including their 3-year-old son, contributes toward adding more native plants. They also work on removal of invasive species to provide native species a chance to survive. In just a few years, Vinaya has added more than 200 different species of native plants to her property. She has successfully removed several invasive species from her yard and is helping others learn more about native plants through her advocacy.
Prior to serving in several volunteer positions, Vinaya worked as an Affirmative Action and Compliance Consultant. In this role she assisted several US based federal contractors on their affirmative action requirements. She also led several compensation and pay equity projects, diversity analytics as well as compliance audits for clients across the globe. Vinaya is passionate about fostering racial diversity in the corporate world and providing several minority groups a chance to shine. She has also worked as a soft skills trainer. In this position she custom-designed and delivered training on topics including business communication, time management, negotiation skills, team skills, stress management, and problem solving.
Co-vice president
ANNE GNEO joined the board as the Secretary in 2022 shortly after the founding of the Greater Baltimore seedling chapter. She volunteered to take on the role of Marketing Chair a few months later. As the group has quickly grown, Anne has been inspired by the immense interest in environmentally sound landscaping and through meeting other amazing local native plant gardeners.
With the goal of making the world a little better, Anne has volunteered for many community organizations throughout the years. Currently, in addition to her roles at Wild Ones, she is a board member for the local PTA, a CASA (court appointed special advocate for foster children) and volunteers at Luna’s House, a local animal shelter.
Anne lives in Bel Air, Maryland on a .2 acre suburban lot and is a stay-at-home mom to 2 teenage children. She has been gardening for over 20 years, but only recently realized the importance of gardening with the entire ecosystem in mind. For the past 4 years, she has been prioritizing adding native plants and planting “green” mulch. Although established non-native plants remain, she has removed all invasive plants and added more than 100 native plants that are now spreading throughout the landscape.
Secretary
BRIGIT BURBANK joined Wild Ones as a member in 2024. She enjoys learning about native plants, ecology, and land stewardship. In her spare time, she helps manage a community garden that is transitioning from nonnatives and invasive species to native plants. Volunteering in the community garden has helped her feel more connected to nature that persists in urban landscapes and to neighbors that she has met through their shared love of green spaces. She is excited to help provide vital educational and social opportunities to people interested in learning about native plants.
Treasurer
Harry Quigley and Cristina Quigley moved to a new home in 1996 in Baltimore and began redesigning the garden surrounding it within the first years, since the house has many glass walls and the outdoors are seen from everywhere. While their first efforts were rudimentary (and often non-native), they attended group meetings and plant sales, such as those of Irvine Nature Center. The Baltimore Sun formerly had a contest for home gardens, and Cristina won the Overall Best in Maryland Garden award in 2013. Harry fell under the spell of the late Michael Beer (a fellow Hopkins professor) as a jogger who noticed that the Stoney Run paths through Roland Park had too many invasives. He adopted a zone of Stoney Run to “curate” and has kept working with the Jones Falls Watershed group that was merged into Blue Water Baltimore.
He has been a Treekeeper for TreeBaltimore, planting street trees for 12 years and leading volunteer groups for them. For the last 2 years, he has been a volunteer at Herring Run Nursery, assisting customers with plant choices, and restocking/pruning. He and Cristina started started Poplar Hill Park, a one-acre parcel that was owned by their neighborhood, completely replanting it with trees, shrubs, perennials and paths, along with a play area for kids. It’s owned by a 501c3 non-profit for which they are President and Board member. They have had the pleasure of hosting groups in their home garden from Wild Ones and from the Maryland Horticultural Society. Cristina has been an officer of the Guilford Garden Club, with which they have led groups to plant natives throughout the campus of Friends School of Baltimore with student participation.
Membership Chair
KATIE GARVEY joined Wild Ones Greater Baltimore as a member in August 2025 and quickly found herself wanting to do more. Growing the membership and welcoming new people into the native plant community felt as natural as growing natives!
Katie lives in Baltimore City, where she is working to transform a small urban Waltherson lot into a functional wildlife landscape. Her backyard is largely dedicated to a food garden that supports her family through the seasons. She preserves, freezes, and cans what they cannot eat fresh to make the harvest last through winter, and composts everything else. A corner of native plantings grows there to attract pollinators, while her side yard is a miniature wildflower meadow, and the front yard is planned native garden that is regularly invaded by deer, groundhogs, foxes, and birds of all kinds. Non-native shrubs and trees, including those her neighbors throw to the curb, get repurposed as bonsai!
Professionally, Katie works in privacy and security compliance and is completing a graduate degree in environmental management with a focus on environmental justice. She is passionate about making native plant gardening accessible to city residents at every level of experience, whether someone is working with a traffic median or a full yard. She hopes to help the chapter reach gardeners across the Baltimore region who are just getting started and looking for community, just as she was at the beginning of her journey.
If you are also dedicated to helping others learn more about native plants, please consider joining us as a member and volunteer!