Princeton's Fuel Tank Raingarden Threatened By Lack of Early Intervention

A couple years ago, the town planted this raingarden next to the fuel tank on Witherspoon Street. They put in some pretty cultivars of showy native species like black-eyed susan, purple coneflower, and St. Johnswort, then mulched it all carefully. Everything looked under control, as gardens do when they are first planted.

Even this summer, with flowers blazing, it looks like a success. 

But I can see that the seeds of its ultimate demise have already sprouted. This botanical drama has played out many times before--raingardens that failed for lack of strategic intervention when aggressive weeds started to move in.

Most deadly is the mugwort that has become established and is quickly spreading. That one invasive species alone could obliterate the intended plants in a few years.

Nutsedge, too, spreads rapidly.

Along with foxtail grass, 

and barnyard grass, the nutsedge is obscuring a nice stand of soft rush the town planted two years ago. 

More easily dealt with are the ragweed--a native weed with allergenic green flowers--

a flamboyant patch of crabgrass, 

and what looks like a patch of black medic. The mulch laid down two years ago surely helped, but its capacity to stifle weed growth clearly didn't last.

And what's this vine, crawling out over the other plants? Ivyleaf morning glory is a new one for me. 

Back in late April, when this photo showed the mugwort looking tamable, pullable, sprayable, I alerted the town that early detection and rapid response is what's needed to keep the weeds from taking over. The response was that a public works crew weeds the garden once or twice per year. That's not how a raingarden works. I know from long experience. Catch the aggressive weeds early, and the raingarden will ultimately become very easy to maintain. 

Vikki Caines, a longtime member of the Recreation Department who recently retired, kept beautiful gardens growing in areas near the community pool. But that was a labor of love, done in her spare time. It's love, of a parental variety, that leads one to acquire plant knowledge in the first place, and then to grow a garden and anticipate its needs, and check for weeds, much more than once or twice per year. 

How can your typical institution--where staff lack plant knowledge, motivation, and the flexibility in routine needed to catch problems early--successfully tend to a botanically complex raingarden planting? For the past 30 years, I've watched as many native raingardens and meadows planted by towns or universities have incrementally failed for lack of early and ongoing intervention by a knowledgeable caretaker. Maintenance requires more knowledge than installation, because the caretaker must know not only the intended plants but also the many species of weeds that inevitably try to move in. Yet we see over and over that money is invested in design and installation, while maintenance is deprived of funding and respect. We have doctors and nurses to care for people, but precious few plant doctors to care for landscapes. 

A bit of good news: Last year, I wrote a google review of the Betsey Stockton Garden planted on top of the Princeton University's Firestone Library, pointing out that white clover and other weeds were invading the flower beds. Whether the review had an impact, I can't say, but the university is taking better care of the meadow planting this year.

Related Posts:

Princeton Finally Plants Its Fuel Tank Raingarden

Princeton's New Neuroscience Building Has Thoughtful Native Plantings

Followed two years later by:

Where Have All the Flowers Gone at the Neuroscience Building?

Sedges Have Edges, and the Blessing of Wet Ground

Sedges are an acquired taste that, once acquired, deepens the pleasure of botanizing. They are grasslike plants that show their beauty not through color but through architecture. Many of them flourish in wet ground. Perhaps the most famous sedge is papyrus, which we were all taught was used by the Egyptians to make paper.

In New Jersey, we have lots of native sedges. One of my favorites is the fringed sedge (Carex crinita). I planted one in the mini-raingarden in front of the Whole Earth Center, along Nassau Street. I guess it looks like a grassy blob, but if you look more closely, 

you'll see it has these pendulant clusters of seeds that look like fingers. The fringed sedge's graceful aspects disguise the toughness at its root, so to speak, as it holds fiercely to the ground. That and its capacity to thrive in wet ground makes it very useful for stream restoration projects.

To distinguish a sedge from a grass, take a close look at the stems, which aren't round like a grass but instead are triangular in cross section. "Sedges have edges" is a fun way of describing the stems. Roll the stem between your thumb and forefinger and feel the edges. Some sedges have more rounded edges than others.

In a much larger raingarden that I manage, over in Smoyer Park, there's a massing of sedges that look like a sea of grass with little pompoms on top. I had been repeatedly forgetting the name of this one, so I was happy to see my "Seek" app (a version of iNaturalist) identify it as squarrose sedge (Carex squarrosa). 

Sedges, like all plants, encourage you to look closely and make fine distinctions, which can help your thinking in other aspects of life. This one probably looks a lot like the squarrose sedge, but the seedheads are a bit heftier. My Seek app is calling it hop sedge (Carex lupulina), which I'll go with. We botany types are often in our own orbits. It really is transformative to have a fellow botanist in the form of a cellphone to carry around in your pocket.

This one has elongated seedheads in clusters. I'll call it sallow sedge (Carex lurida). 

Another sedge I've been dividing and moving to new locations--in my front yard and at the Barden in Herrontown Woods--has distinctive seedheads that look like stars. Having enjoyed calling this morning star sedge, I was surprised to find Seek calling it Gray's sedge, but these are just two common names for the same plant, Carex grayi.

There are other sedges that you're likely to encounter if you gravitate like I do to wet, sunny places. Green bulrush and woolgrass are sedges that were obviously named by people who couldn't tell a sedge from a rush from a grass. Feel the edges, people. 

So-called woolgrass is one of my favorites. This photo was taken at the Barden, later in the season, after it has developed its wooly inflorescence. Unlike most sedges, which mature early in the season, woolgrass grows taller and over a longer arc of time, with attractive features at each stage of development. 

One sedge you're less likely to encounter is tussock sedge, which I've only seen in a springfed marshy area of Mountain Lakes that is unfortunately inaccessible via existing trails. 

Often contrasting beautifully with the light-green leaves of sedges is the deeper green of soft rush (Juncus effusus), which here in the Smoyer Park detention basin has achieved a lovely vase-shaped form decorated with pendulant clusters of seeds reminiscent of earrings. I've seen soft rush used as a striking specimen in gardens--not bad for a native plant that mostly hangs out in ditches and other low ground. 

Sedges have edges; rushes are round, meaning that rushes have rounded stems.

Another reason I like sedges so much--along with other plants they associate with in wet, sunny places, like this Hibiscus (moscheutos)--is that so many native plant species thrive in wet ground and full sun. That, and the soft ground that facilitates weeding, makes for less work and more time to gaze across the expanse and appreciate the beauty. 

September Nature Vignettes

 Encounters with nature and sustainability around Princeton in September.

One of my favorite corners in Princeton is near the middle school, at Guyot and Ewing. It's a small enclave, a triangle of sense, where the yards and the roofs of houses actually perform work, growing food and gathering energy. On one side is a small house with a small yard that the owner has turned into an orchard and vineyard, as might be more often encountered in Italy. 

Nearby is a house whose south-facing roof has been completely covered with solar panels for 20 years. 

When a house was torn down recently at the corner, I feared it would be replaced with something huge and unattractive, 

but instead, a one-story house with extra thick insulated walls and solar panels and interesting design is taking form. It was a real surprise to see a one-story house being replaced with another one-story house that is sensitive to the history of the site and seeking to fit in, while showing off a modern design that seeks to minimize energy consumption.

They even have a sign on the fence describing the project and what was there back in Princeton's agrarian era. 

Blooming along the fenceline next to the house are sunflowers and autumn clematis vine. Gorgeous as they are, thankfully generating color at a time when most flowers are spent, they are best not planted in a garden unless where the spread of their roots is limited by a house or pavement. Otherwise, given abundant sun to power their aggressively spreading roots, they will take over your garden.

Another common encounter in September is with late-flowering thoroughwort, which spreads not by roots but by seed. It can be weedy but also lovely and even elegant at times, and is great for pollinators. I couldn't get myself to pull this one out in our backyard, even though it has completely taken over a garden path.

At the Barden in Herrontown Woods, they are so plentiful that we don't feel too bad pulling out the ones that lean over the pathways.

The fight against invasive species has the side benefit of taking me to areas of a nature preserve where I wouldn't otherwise go. Recently, it led me to a patch of native diversity in Herrotown Woods that I hadn't noticed before.

Here is obedient plant, 

New York ironweed, 

and the post-flowering look of water hemlock. 

One of my favorite garden plants this time of year is stonecrop "Autumn Joy." 

A sedum, its disks of flowers go through a gradual enrichment of color from green to pink to deepening shades of red, then finally chocolate. Nonnative but noninvasive, it has the added benefit of being popular with pollinators. 

Pawpaw trees are becoming more common in Princeton. The patches planted in Herrontown Woods have yet to bear, but this one in my backyard reflects a growing interest in this unusual species native to the north yet with a tropical taste.

Native persimmons, likely once common in Princeton but often shaded out by larger trees in recent decades, are an attractive smaller tree that might actually bear edible fruit if you happen to get a female and harvest it just at the right time.

If the drought hasn't made the berries too dry, these blackhaw berries could make for some good picking after they darken. Blackhaw viburnum, Viburnum prunifolium, is the most common native viburnum in our woodlands.

Less generating of anticipation are the fruits of a female ginkgo tree, encountered growing near the Princeton Junction train station. The fruits have such an unappealing smell that people try to avoid planting female trees. 

Among inedible fruits, I call this the incredible shrinking pokeweed, because it initially grew to be seven feet tall--way too big to grow along a busy street. So I cut it down midsummer and thought that was that, only to have it sprout back as a smaller version of itself. You could try this technique with a number of perennial native wildflowers that get too tall for people's taste. Cut them down partway through the summer, then let them grow back in a miniature form. 

Though it dies down to the ground each year like a perennial wildflower, pokeweed looks more like a miniature tree, and in fact it has a close relative in Argentina. The ombu grows to the size of a large tree, yet lacks xylem. 

This shrub, too, needs to be cut back. It's an oak-leafed hydrangea I planted long ago in a little raingarden at the front of the Whole Earth Center. The landlord the store leases from must have a new landscape firm taking care of the grounds, because I stopped by recently to find that my native shrubs have been trimmed to look like bowling balls. Funny to see a native shrub and wildflower planting getting the bowling ball treatment. I'll have to take some loppers to restore light to the window next time I stop by to buy some beets or delicious bread.

Sometimes, frequently in fact, I find myself wishing I wasn't right. Take this ash tree for instance, planted by the people who landscaped the new parking lot that Westminster Choir College built about ten years ago. I told them they needed to remove the ash trees they had just planted. The emerald ash borers are coming, and the trees won't survive. They left the trees in. The trees survived longer than I expected, but are finally succumbing. 

Actually, if you were trying to make Princeton sustainable, you might want to "farm" Princeton with smaller, short-lived trees that provide shade but are less expensive to take down. The above ground portions could be periodically harvested as a local energy source, and the roots left in the ground would sequester carbon. Trees are a source of solar energy, since they draw their carbon not from underground but from the atmosphere all around them. Thus, no net increase in atmospheric carbon from their combustion.

The landscaping for the parking lot also called for a raingarden to be planted here in this hollow. After being planted, the young river birch trees soon began to wither for lack of water. I assumed they would die, and that the raingarden would be poorly maintained and ultimately be mowed down. I was only half right. The river birch trees survived.

Here's what looks like a bright white flower that isn't. The white is the puffy seeds that give the plant its name. The flower seems not to open but remain in what looks like a bud stage. It's pilewort, a native weed that can reach seven feet tall.

Finally, a grass encountered in fields and local rights of way. When its flowers open and display their golden anthers, this native member of the tallgrass prairies can be eye-catching. Indian grass, Sorghastrum nutans, reminds me of the midwest prairies I used to help manage, and a time long ago when prairie openings were common in the east as well.

The Evolution of the Front Lawn in Ann Arbor, MI

Back when I was writing and performing climate theater, it was a very useful exercise to view things like the earth or the economy as characters. Upon reflecting on what sort of character a front lawn might be, I realized that the expanse of mowed grass is much like a trophy wife for the House. Expected to be well manicured, passive and forever young, the front lawn serves no other purpose than to present a flattering view of the House to the public. In return for its submissiveness, the front lawn is allowed, and in fact expected, to remain perpetually idle. Any shift away from bland formality, such as a wildflower meadow or, heaven forbid, a vegetable garden, would be unbecoming and steal attention away from the House. It seemed to me the front lawn could benefit from a good turf therapist who could help her sort through how she ended up in such a one-way relationship, and from that developed a monologue called Turf Therapy. 

It's easy to knock suburban culture's striving for a sterile deep green conformity, and the chemical dependency and noxious lawn equipment that keeps it propped up. But most homeowners find themselves completely unprepared to own land, and the myriad kinds of plants that grow upon it. No surprise, then, that people try to turn the outdoors into as simple a landscape as possible, essentially an extension of the indoors. A lawn is the equivalent of a wall-to-wall carpet. 

In our era, the expansion of the suburban lawn has coincided with a shrinkage in knowledge of plants. Each generation sprouts more distant from ancestors who farmed or foraged. And how many schools teach children to identify even the most common trees? 

It's a brave homeowner, then, who dares take a shovel to the front lawn, bucking conformity to plant something more colorful, beneficial, and interesting. Usually, the change is wrought incrementally, expanding flowerbeds a little at a time. 

While most plantings tend to hug the edges and stick close to the house, in this yard a Salvia is boldly asserting itself right out in the middle of the yard.

Just down this street, which happens to be called Easy Street, someone dug a raingarden that catches water piped to it from the roof. They used the dirt dug out of the hole to build a berm on the downhill side, expanding the hole's capacity. The wildflowers feed the pollinators while the signs feed passersby with ideas, like Public Power, in which a town takes ownership of its electricity and moves rapidly towards 100% renewable energy.

A neighbor further down has converted even more of the yard to raingarden, and added a sign from the local watershed association: "Rain Garden: Improving wildlife habitat and water quality in the Huron River one garden at a time." This is a nice sentiment that all too often remains on the fringe, but in this neighborhood it has caught on.

Next door is a vegetable garden in the front yard. It's starting to look like the trophy wife has decided to pursue a life of her own. Any House with an ego is going to be really upset.

This homeowner, a friend of mine named Jeannine, has nurtured a burr oak savanna habitat in her front yard, with an understory of trilliums, plus black cohosh in its full mid-summer bloom. The House? Well, it's back there somewhere, having to accept that yards like to express themselves and have meaningful lives, too. 

Interestingly, some of her bur oaks are getting tall enough to start interfering with the solar panels on their garage. She has started managing her front yard forest, removing larger trees while keeping smaller ones not tall enough to shade the panels. It's a way of having your trees and panels, too. Each tree removed leaves a legacy of roots--a network of carbon consumed from the air and injected into the ground.

Even in more upscale neighborhoods, where homeowners can afford to hire landscapers, many yards are cared for by crews that carefully weed the wildflower meadows, displacing the noisy custodial crews that "mow, blow, and go." What a pleasure to bicycle through a lovely neighborhood with colorful, botanically interesting yards and a delicious quiet. Machines to suppress vegetation are replaced by skilled intervention to steer vegetation. All week in Ann Arbor, the neighborhoods were remarkably quiet. I looked online for information about bans on leaf blowers, and could only find a ban on 2-cycle lawn equipment in the city's downtown, passed in 2019.

The shift from lawn to meadow in many yards was surely inspired in part by the work of Jeannine Palms, who with her preschool kids, neighbors and town staff have carved native wet meadows into what had been a vast expanse of turfgrass in nearby Buhr Park. 

Their meadows have many of the same wildflowers we have in Princeton, with some differences. The photo shows gray-headed coneflower, which is close in appearance to our cutleaf coneflower. And they have additional kinds of Silphium (rosinweed, prairie dock, compass plant), and a grass called smooth cordgrass. 

More recently, Jeannine has led a volunteer effort to shift even more of the park away from turfgrass, in this case to create a food forest packed with grapes, apples, pears, elderberry, pawpaw, currants, raspberries, strawberries, fennel, and a "three sisters" planting of corn, beans and squash. 

Here's an effort to grow sweet potatoes, not only for the tubers but also for the leaves, which are delicious. Fabric is spread on the ground to suppress weeds, and fencing suspended above to deter the deer. 

The story of this heroic transformation is told in a sign posted next to the first wet meadows. In the process, they have brought diverse, edible life back to the land and the neighborhood.