Some Native White Flowers of June

Arrowood Viburnum (V. dentatum)

Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica)

A new one in the yard, and on this blog: foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis)

Elderberry at the Princeton High School ecolab wetland

Riffing on Wetlands at Princeton High School

This is one of the merry crowds of environmental science students who came outside to hear me riff on wetlands while standing firmly planted in that wonderful mud. Princeton High School's ecolab wetland is blessed with an upscale metal fence around it to lean and learn on while gazing down at all the native plants, crayfish, and other life. While sounds of jazz drifted over from the performing arts wing, I described the ecolab's beginnings in 2006, and how being in a band had helped me learn the basics of bringing people together to make something beautiful, applicable to all community initiatives.

Inbetween classes, there was time to photograph the contrast of seedheads and leaves on a buttonbush,

and the abundant seed clusters of boneset and Joe-Pye-Weed.

Teacher Jim Smirk explained how the school's sump pump provides a consistent supply of water from the basement, kicking on every 15 minutes or so, even during droughts. Without that hydrologic stability, many of the wetland's species would die out, leaving only those plants that can withstand extremes of wet and dry.

The rich balance of native species requires periodic intervention to weed out the more aggressive types that would otherwise take over, particularly willow and cattail. There's a great crop of Hibiscus seeds (black salt-shaker-like capsules in the photo) because students pulled out cattail this spring that would otherwise have overshadowed the Hibiscus.

I explained that, without this sort of followup by people who know which plants to leave and which to pull, native plantings can become overrun by a few aggressive species, which can then lead to a decision to mow it all down and return the area to lawn. A native planting is dynamic and evolving, requiring an ongoing care relationship that goes far beyond the static "mow, blow, and go" custodial approach that gives us the tidy but monotonous urban landscape of trees and turf.

The ecolab wetland has worked out so well over the years that Mr. Smirk and his students want to collaborate with me and others to plant two additional detention basins at the school. All in all, a fun day of talking to the kids about a favorite topic.

Hands-On Learning About Invasiveness in Plants

Environmental science teacher Jim Smirk brought his kids outdoors this spring to do some hands-on learning at the Princeton High School's very own ecolab wetland. Most people would call it a detention basin, but we planted it long ago with native wetland species that thrive on the beneficent, dependable offerings of the high school's sump pump. Yes, a lowly sump pump provides the consistent water flow that drives this lush community of plants. Without it, most of the plant species, along with the frogs and crayfish, would die out the next time a long drought came along.

Jim enlisted me to provide some history on the planting to three of his classes, and also to explain why this manmade detention basin does such a good job of hosting wetland plants and animals. Like any garden, even a fairly wild one, it still needs intervention to maintain balance, since some of the native species tend to take over. Cattails, lizard's tail, and the native sunflowers spread aggressively underground, while the willows pop up in new places and quickly grow, hogging the sunlight.

Some of the more adventurous students donned waders and began digging up short- and broadleafed cattails so that some of the less aggressive sedges and wildflowers wouldn't be overwhelmed.

Others cut back willow, and removed a non-native plant called starwort that gained a foothold a couple years ago.

The students showed a lot of spirit, and were surprised that working in the mud could actually be fun.

Thanks to Mr. Smirk and his environmental science students for helping keep this wetland thriving right next to Princeton High School.

Before and After the Flood at the High School Wetland

Many have seen the video of the extraordinary flooding at Princeton High School on July 30. As something of a citizen "activator", and high school parent, I'm meeting with school and town to help give momentum to a lasting solution to prevent future flood damage to the school.

I hope the school's basement and performing arts stage prove as resilient as the wildflowers in the ecolab wetland, which happen to be in full bloom. First photo is a "during" shot, showing the Joe-Pye-Weed and Rose mallow hibiscus sitting in five feet of floodwater.

This second photo shows the plants the next day, happy as clams, as if refreshed from a nice long bath.

This is a great time to stop by and take a walk around the perimeter of the wetland, and maybe catch the sunset in the big sky over the ball fields just on the other side of the performing arts wing from the wetland, on Walnut Lane.

Towpath Nature Trail Loop:
Another great place to see these beautiful summer wildflowers is along the nature walk created and maintained by the DR Canal State Park crews. Get on the towpath at Harrison Street and look for the Nature Trail sign. A virtual guided walk can be found here. This link should take you to a map.

PHS Ecolab Gets Some Timely Help

Thanks to Bay Daily of Cranbury for some timely help with steering growth at Princeton High School's ecolab wetland. To finish his freshman year in horticulturist Paula Jakowlew's class, Bay chose a hands-on project, which meant wading into the high school's thriving wetland hidden between the arts and sciences wings of the school on Walnut Street.

His interest got me--one of the founders of this ecolab planting--in there as well, to supervise and do work that had long been needed to keep the wetland's 35 native plant species growing in harmony. You could call him a steward, or a weed warrior, but I like the term "plant keeper", because we're helping the plants to keep on keepin' on. Plants don't actively call out for attention. Most people see only an undifferentiated mass of green, and assume everything must be fine. A plantkeeper looks more closely, and takes action to encourage the good trends and discourage the bad, ultimately sustaining an aesthetic and ecological balance.

The first task, oddly enough, was to cut back the plant species most associated with wetlands: cattails. The ecolab has two kinds: broadleaf and narrowleaf. I planted the narrowleaf cattail in a shady corner years ago, where it remained well-behaved until some of it got established where there was lots of sun. With all that extra energy to drive its growth, this species that I had thought to be docile began to run rampant over other native species--sedges, rushes, and wildflowers like the hibiscus in this photo.

The cattail expands its domain via rhizomes that send up new stems as they spread underground. Much of the work we do to maintain a balance of native species involves cutting back the aggressors that have rhizomes. Cattails, and the floodplain versions of sunflower and goldenrod, live in highly competitive environments in the wild, where their aggressiveness is necessary for survival. Put them in the tamer environs of a manmade wetland and they will take over if not held in check.

This is the trap we gardeners fall into over and over. A new garden has lots of space to fill, so one puts in plants that will spread to cover the bare ground, only to later regret their aggressive behavior. Many homeowners have experienced this with nonnative plants like english ivy, myrtle, or bamboo, but the same imbalance can happen in an all-native garden.

In two after-school sessions, we cut down hundreds of cattail stems to weaken the roots and provide sunlight to other species. One interesting notion is that American Indians took advantage of the cattail's aggressiveness by harvesting it for food. Many parts of the plant are edible, and steady harvest would have curbed the cattail's tendency to take over.

Then there was some trimming back of the opulence to keep sidewalks clear. One of the great things about this wetland is that there's an elevated walkway all around it, allowing people to look down at this watery world of wildflowers, crayfish and frogs.

The other nice aspect of the planting is its isolation, so that problematic species that would tend to throw things out of balance can be prevented from becoming established. A single native Virginia creeper vine growing up the wall got this preventative treatment.

We came upon what's likely a nonnative species--pond water starwort, which will slowly blanket the wet areas unless it's removed next winter.

Here's a closeup of this plant, which looks like the native duckweed but has a stem.

Above ground, there's a similar blanketing threat. Though bindweed, a nonnative morning glory vine, has been less of a problem than I would have predicted, it still needs to be discouraged to keep it from growing over everything.

Bay and I found time to appreciate and weed around some of the plants that are staying where they were planted. Retiring science teacher Tim Anderson planted this Atlantic white cedar donated by a Princeton resident, Bill Sachs.

A snail, apparently with a hitchhiker in tow, navigated the hairy leaves of boneset.

A cup-plant and a persimmon are flourishing along the wetland's edge, on higher ground but still able to tap into the water just below the surface.

A few swamp milkweeds have persisted, hopefully to feed monarch butterfly caterpillars later in the summer.

The cattail has a soft inner core whose edibility I was confident enough of to try some. Not bad.

A glance down at the water shows that it's a good year for elderberry blossoms.

And making it all possible, the high school's sump pump, which so fortuitously spills its year-round beneficence into this improbable wetland.

It was great working with Bay to keep this wetland keepin' on.

PawPaw Patches Proliferate in Princeton

My friend Stan, who has a knack for collecting and growing out seed of local fruit trees, gave me about twenty pawpaws (Asimina triloba) he grew from local populations of this remarkable native species. Though adapted to the north, the pawpaw bears a fruit reminiscent of mango. Hard to store and ship, the fruit has proven hard to turn into a cash crop, so it remains at the margins of our diets and awareness.

I delivered three to Mountain Lakes, for planting there, then called up my friend and author-of-note Clifford Zink over at Harrison Street Park, to see about starting a pawpaw patch over there.

Last month, we planted three in a swale that receives water from a nearby parking lot--a good urban version of the floodplains that are the pawpaw's preferred habitat.

Around the same time, Bill Sachs gave me some white cedars and hemlocks he'd grown in his backyard. Bill has been leading efforts in town to bring back the native chestnut and butternut. Since white cedars are adapted to swamps, two of them ended up in the Princeton High School ecolab wetland, thanks to environmental science teacher Tim Anderson and his students.

Most of the pawpaws are being saved for planting a pawpaw patch out at the Veblen House site, part of a PawPaw Patch Planting Party, public invited, tentatively scheduled for the first weekend of the new year, El Nino weather permitting.

(Other pawpaw posts can be found by typing pawpaw into the search box at the top of this website.)

Johnny Elderberrystem

When Johnny Elderberrystem had to remove a big pin oak tree in his backyard that was sitting on a drainage tile and shading his neighbor's vegetable garden, one thing he did with all that extra sunlight was, not surprisingly, grow some elderberry bushes. Johnny acquired his love for elderberries way back when, during jaunts with his parents each fall to harvest elderberries along the streams of Wisconsin. All those berries turned into delicious preserves and pies. Decades later, he learned that elderberry bushes, like buttonbush and silky dogwood, could be propagated by cutting a section of dormant stem in late winter and pushing it into the ground. Couldn't be easier. Johnny Elderberrystem was off and running.

And when those now ten foot high shrubs hold forth with disks of white flowers, Johnny knows it's time to venture out and see how all the other elderberries he's planted in Princeton over the years are doing.

This one in the raingarden at Mountain Lakes House probably grew from one of those live stakes he started in the greenhouse.

And this one along the Mountain Lakes driveway is one he planted and actually remembered to water through its first, precarious year. (You've got to wonder what sort of survival rate Johnny Appleseed got, planting apples here and there while he waltzed from county to county, leaving all those seedlings to the whims of the weather.) Other elderberries are living the good life at the Princeton High School ecolab wetland, their thirst well quenched by the sump pump's steady offerings.

This spring, Johnny Elderberrystem remembered to go down to the canal just west of the Harrison Street bridge, to mark elderberries with red tape so that the state parks crew that does the annual mowing of the fields there would mow around them. He missed one, and though new stems are popping up, they won't bloom and thus won't offer wildlife any flowers or berries to feast on. He did manage to mark about ten, though (he lost count at three, being easily distracted from counting) and the crew mowed around them, which means a little more dining pleasure for the pollinators and the birds.

Now, if only the birds could be trained to use the elderberry feast to bomb the visiting coxwains as they bark orders at their crews in ivy league regattas this fall, Johnny might be able to get some funding for all of this proactive stewardship.

Marsh Marigold vs. Lesser Celandine

Yellow is not so mellow in April and May, when one of the uber-invasives, lesser celandine, carpets many floodplains and spreads across lawns. The now massive population at Pettoranello Gardens no doubt started as a clump here and there. In an example of how the management of one park can affect others, the lesser celandine at Pettoranello Gardens has since spread downstream to infest the lower portion of Mountain Lakes preserve, where it is displacing the native species that have long filled a similar niche in a less domineering way.

The lesser celandine is often confused with the native marsh marigold, which I've never seen growing naturally in Princeton. To show how they can be distinguished, I planted some marsh marigold (bought at Pinelands Nursery) down near the stream at Pettoranello Gardens, in a spot that would benefit from the stream's steady water supply but not be swept away by floods. The location proved a good choice, because it has survived many years now. You can see it at the top of the photo, taller and with larger leaves than the lesser celandine in the lower half of the photo. More marsh marigold has been thriving at the Princeton High School ecolab wetland, which too has the stable presence of moisture the native requires.

Ecologically, the only good news I know about lesser celandine is that there are still some parts of Princeton that have not been colonized by it. But those locations must be monitored each year to catch invasions before they get out of hand. To take a for instance, in Community Park North, which is upstream of Pettoranello Gardens, I found only two small patches that could easily be treated to prevent spread. The plant likely got there on the shoes of someone hiking on a muddy day.

Working With Nature at the High School Ecolab Wetland

It wasn't easy to convince Tim to trim back the willow trees at the Princeton High School ecolab this past week. That's the detention basin that was only growing turf grass until the school gave permission for Tim's students and we community volunteers turn it into a very healthy native wetland. Maintenance isn't the right word for what we've done in the years since then, because though we "maintain" it, we also try to make it better and more diverse each year, while working to keep any one species from taking over. It's a kind of wild gardening.

Tim sees the willows as shade for the ponds (to keep them cool and discourage algae) and cover for the birds. I agreed, but also made the case that the rapidly expanding willows were making life harder for the 30 other native plant species meant to coexist there.

So we worked for a couple hours, trimming back the willows and doing general cleanup so that this detention basin can continue to thrive. Tim's turning the cut stems into a "corduroy" footpath.

Like any garden, this wild-looking wetland needs periodic rebalancing. The willows and the cattails--the two species most people associate with wet areas--are also the most aggressive and would over time displace the many shrubs, sedges and wildflowers that add to the diversity and beauty of the wetland.

The setting, with its elevated walkway and upscale fencing all around, is perfect for appreciating the tall wildflowers from above, as flying pollinators might. Even when the basin is performing its stormwater function, and fills completely with runoff during heavy storms, the plants bounce back after the water has drained out the next day.

Because the school sump pump that has serendipitously kept the wetland wet year-round was out of commission for awhile over the winter, there may need to be some restocking of crayfish and other aquatic species that have otherwise thrived from the beginning.

But that's all part of the ongoing balancing act, the periodic, strategic human interventions that are minor compared to the weekly mowing a lawn would have required. Our role is to make sure all the basic pieces of the puzzle--the sump pump, the plant and aquatic diversity--are present and in balance. Nature does the rest.

Trenton Students and Science Mentors, Healing the Earth and Themselves

Last month, I found myself sitting at a table in the NJ State Museum, with a budding hyacinth for a centerpiece and a conference room full of high school students showing a budding interest in science. This trip to Trenton began with a surprise email that had arrived out of the blue two months prior:

"My Name is Tatyana and I am in a program called Science Mentors where teens are paired with a mentor and come up with a question that they will solve in order to enter their experiment and project into the Mercer Science and Engineering Science Fair. My mentor and I are very interested in the environmental factors of floods and while searching around the Internet we came upon a little information on water gardens. After visiting your blog we found out how knowledgable you are on this topic. Would you be able to meet with my mentor (Lisa Olson) and I in order to give us more information on water gardens and even be able to give us a tour of your water gardens so we could see them in person?"

So Tatyana came up to Princeton with her mentor for a tour of Princeton High School's ecolab wetland (fed by the school's "Old Faithful" sump pump) and the recreated stream corridor in my backyard. That gave her some ideas for two spots in Trenton, one being the empty lot next to her house, which gets lots of sun and could have some water directed to it from nearby roofs. 

The other is an empty field downtown with a river that runs through it. Well, actually, the river is a creek called Assunpink Creek, and it's been flowing underneath the field rather than through it, ever since the creek was buried to make room for urban development. That may change before too long, if plans put together by the city and the Army Corps of Engineers to daylight the creek are finally realized. 

We discussed what would be a good project having to do with raingardens. Identify what plants are growing in the field? Create a small raingarden there? I encouraged Tati and Lisa to consider inventorying the existing raingardens in Trenton, and see how they're doing. There's a great feeling of promise and achievement when a raingarden is planted, but birth is only the beginning. For a raingarden to thrive, it needs periodic infusions not only of rainwater but also of a love that expresses itself in the form of plant knowledge and periodically remembering to stop by to pull a few weeds. 

Science Mentors operates on a similar principal, that kids will thrive if given ongoing attention and caring. "If you have unconditional love, you can achieve anything, " says Maureen Quinn, the nonprofit's leader and soul. It was touching to see science so clearly paired with the healing power of love, and the awareness that one receives through giving. That is, after all, what drives a raingarden, and our lives.

Each student spoke in front of the group, describing their project.

You know, the world doesn't lack for sad stories. In the corridor leading to the museum's conference room, the story is very well told of the loss of the Carolina Parakeet,

and the passenger pigeon.

But those sad endings only make more moving the stories of thriving and renewal, stories that continue to be told through organizations like Science Mentors.