Armed with records of the latest property sales in their neighborhoods, ladies with two Highlands garden clubs gather once a month to stuff and address care packages — containing numerous brochures and a videotape — welcoming new property owners to the Highlands community.

Averaging 30 packages a month at $3 each, the endeavor is not a traditional welcome wagon. The brochures and videos describe the sensitive ecology of the region and instruct new property owners to preserve the environmental integrity of the Highlands Plateau as they proceed with developing their property.

One brochure teaches how to minimize the impact to the land, recommending that property owners clear only a small radius around the footprint of new construction. It also recommends safeguards to protect creeks from sedimentation.

Another brochure offers to send out a plant expert to conduct a botanical survey of the property owner’s new tract and to rescue native plants that are in the way of development. Saving native plants is the crux of the group’s mission. The group — comprised of members of Laurel Garden Club and Mountain Garden Club — call themselves the Land Stewards. Mercedes Heller was a founding member of the organization five years ago.

“We started it because we saw a lot of development going on and here were a lot of native plants being destroyed with all the bulldozers coming in,” Heller said. “We have a lot of plants here on the Highlands Plateau that are very rare. They only grow here, and the faster they are destroyed the closer they come to extinction.”

Heller and the other members cringe when they see a new building site being razed before they’ve had a chance to rescue the native plants and shrubs from the site and relocate them. Thus, the group believes it is extremely important to reach new property owners before building begins with offers to inventory their tracts.

“We go out and do a plant inventory and tell them which ones are important and need to be saved. Of course, all of them should be saved, but which ones are rare and should be prioritized,” Heller said.

Brochures published by Land Stewards are: “Flowering times of native wildflowers,” “Designing Your Home and Gardens to Preserve the Beauty of Our Mountains,” and “Hemlock Substitutes: Answers to a Landscaping Dilemma Created by the Wooly Adelgid.”

Property owners interested in native plant rescue prior to development or anyone interested in joining the Land Stewards can email landstewards@aol.com.