To the Great Smoky Mountains, to Learn

The Nature Conservancy is in a class by itself when it comes to the environment. It has an eleven-word mission statement: “To conserve the lands and waters in which all life depends.” It has more than a million members worldwide, has protected more than 125 million acres of land (and has more than a hundred marine conservation projects), and is active in 86 countries and territories. It would be a fair statement to say TNC is the most effective environmental non-profit on the planet.

The best way to truly understand an organization as active as TNC is to take a dive into one part of it and look through a microscope. This past week I had the opportunity to do just that: I saw first-hand what the Tennessee business unit (they’re no longer ‘chapters’) is doing in the Great Smoky Mountains. Along with eleven other supporters, I got my hands dirty and my feet muddy; and asked and got answers to hundreds of questions.

We started our trek in Shady Valley, about twenty miles southeast of Bristol. Shady Valley (so named because of the mammoth pines that once were its dominant feature) is a classic example of protecting an otherwise endangered fragment of nature. The valley – roughly ten miles long and three or four miles wide – has been agricultural for more than two hundred years. It once grew more green beans than any other site in Tennessee; later, it grew prized burley tobacco.

But, in its recesses were something exceedingly rare: cranberry bogs. Shady Valley cranberries are genetically identical their New England cousins, and were pushed down by the last glacial period (12,000 years ago). Those bogs, in turn, are a major preserve of the endangered bog turtle.

Our guides through the site were Gabby Lynch, TNC Tennessee's Director of Lands (pictured at right), who explained why The Nature Conservancy acquired these lands and continues to look for opportunities to expand TNC’s holdings; and Kenneth McQueen (shown below in the blue jacket), who has been the steward of the Shady Valley Preserve for more than two decades. His father had the job before him.

We carefully walked the borders of the bog; aided in part by spoils left over from an ill-thought-out Army Corps of Engineers project to slice a drainage canal through the site – the better to make it suitable for crops. We learned that, left to their own devices, bogs will grow up in opportunistic brush. What is needed is a low-maintenance system, and that cattle fill that bill quite nicely. Fencing and cattle rotation are part of McQueen’s schedule.

The next day, we were ten miles deeper into the mountains; this time in Doe Valley. In 2005, a developer acquired 8400 acres - about 12 square miles - of mountainous forest in Doe Valley, which is located in Johnson County, North Carolina. The developer began selling mountainside lots, neglecting to tell buyers there would be no electricity, water, or roads. In 2008, the developer declared bankruptcy, owing more than $10 million including taxes never paid to the county.

In such proceedings, the usual, grim outcome is that a lumber company acquires the land in foreclosure for pennies on the dollar and, in doing so, exercises the right to harvest all of the timber.  

This case turned out differently. The Nature Conservancy acquired the land, ensuring it would never be cut for lumber. But TNC did something else: Johnson County is one of the poorest counties in Tennessee. Its principal employer is a state prison and county school system. A plan was put together to create a 'destination' outdoor recreation business. Hurricane Helene slowed its development, but the plan is now becoming a reality. Assuming it meets projections, the Doe Mountain Recreation Area (which now owns the land) will bring several million dollars each year in tourism spending and generate much-needed jobs for area residents.

There are now more than twenty miles of trails running through twelve square miles of mountainous terrain. Doe Mountain is designed to attract hikers, bicyclists, and motorized utility vehicles. The site is overseen by a board whose members (including TNC) will balance environmental preservation with the needs of adventure-seekers. My hope is that it exceeds expectations.

Our third day took us into the National Park. There, we hiked well into the trail abutting the Middle Prong of the Little River. It was an opportunity to see resilience in nature. A century ago, lumber companies essentially denuded the old-growth forests, blasting out room for railroad tracks and moveable towns, and leaving behind nothing but stumps and debris. Fast-growing poplar trees took over and, today, the forest looks – at least to the unaided eye – like the Smoky Mountains of yore. What is clear is that the creation of the National Park prevented what could well have been an environmental calamity.

Our last full day with TNC showed us how the organization links with other groups to support their work. We started at Seven Islands State Birding Park, a 416-acre preserve in Kodak (near Knoxville) with considerable frontage on the French Broad River. Once a farm, the site was acquired by a developer with plans to build an amusement park. Public pushback and work by the Audubon Society allowed it to instead remain undeveloped as an Audubon sanctuary. Six years ago, it became a state park.

Ranger Stephanie (pictured at right) took us on a two-mile walk through the park. Using Merlin, we identified upward of 20 species (the park has recorded over 220). The site has been 're-wilded' with the planting of native grasses, perennials, and shrubs. The state also utilizes annual 'controlled burns' to prevent the site from becoming completely re-forested. There are more than eleven miles of walking trails. and a pedestrian-only bridge across the French Broad River.

From there, we ventured into Knoxville to Conservation Fisheries, a nonprofit organization that collects and propagates rare and endangered species. You would think such an activity would be run by a state agency. In Tennessee, it falls to private philanthropy.

Director Bo Baxter and conservation specialist Shannon Murphy took us through the history of how fish conservation came to be in the state, starting with the deliberate poisoning of a creek in 1957 to get rid of 'trash fish' so more desirable ones could be introduced. That catastrophe, coupled with the periodic discoveries of small colonies of native fish thought to have been extinct led to the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

By the 1980s, wildlife biologists were finding pockets of distinct species of fish across the state, with many of them in areas where development made their extinction likely. In 1986, Conservation Fisheries came into being. Today, it collects, propagates, and returns to the wild more than a hundred species of endangered species of fish.

It was an insightful afternoon: Ms. Murphy (pictured at right in the black tee) is part of a team that locates, collects, and transports back to CFI the endangered species. In a relatively modest building, the fishes' environment is replicated in hundreds of tanks. Eggs are laid, fish hatch, and grow to maturity. Every effort is taken to prevent genetic inbreeding. The right food is grown and supplied in such a way that, when the fish are returned to their natural environment, they'll be acclimated.

We finished the day at a site where TNC is working toward getting permits to take down an antiquated dam on the Little River. Once used for milling, it has outlived its purpose and now serves only to block the migration of fish on the river. From TNC Director Mark Thurman (shown at left), We learned the process is long; four to five years for permitting, planning, and execution.

It was an extraordinary week: educational, fun, and with ample opportunity for exercising hiking muscles. My thanks to TNC for allowing me to participate.

 

 

Life on Mars

A century ago, Massachusetts was the unquestioned cranberry capital of the world; its products were the industry gold standard and fetched premium prices for a scarce commodity. Why cranberries and why Massachusetts? Because cranberries grew best in moist sandy acidic soil; and the glaciers that created Cape Cod retreated to leave hundreds of square miles of exactly that recipe. Beginning in the 1890s, growers cleared land, dammed creeks, and planted the bogs that were ideal for cranberry cultivation.

You can still see working cranberry bogs as you approach Cape Cod, but there are fewer of them today than just decades ago.  Why are they disappearing? Because selective breeding led to cranberry cultivars that double the yield of their native ancestors, as well as offering uniform size, color, and even flavor. Wisconsin – where the state’s lightly populated central and northern regions feature flat, low-lying marshlands left behind by ancient glacial lakes, paired with naturally acidic, sandy peat soils where cranberries thrive – leaped to adopt the new cultivars and offered a lower cost of production. Wisconsin overtook Massachusetts in 1994 and today produces half of the world’s crop.

What became of those unprofitable cranberry bogs in Massachusetts?  Did they become planned communities? Remarkably, through programs led by the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration, Mass Audubon, and federal partners, landowners are instead utilizing a "green exit strategy” which uses state and federal grants to buy out distressed or unproductive bogs and restore them to their original, self-sustaining natural wetlands and become public nature preserves.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to visit one such site: Mass Audubon’s Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth. I was part of a group of Grow Native Massachusetts volunteers being thanked for their hours of work by getting an expert-led, two-hour-long, in-depth look at the site (that's me on the far right). 

A working cranberry farm for 120 years, this landscape underwent the largest freshwater ecological restoration ever completed in the Northeast. Now Tidmarsh is a 481-acre property that is home to a vast expanse of cold-water streams, ponds, forest, and woodlands.

The cranberry farm ceased operation in 2010.  Its owners, Evan Schulman, Glorianna Davenport, and their family could have sold their land for development.  Instead, they did something remarkable: they committed to restoring the wetlands to its pre-agricultural splendor. Working with the state, they undertook the largest freshwater ecological restoration ever attempted in the Northeast, re-creating habitats at Tidmarsh including ponds, cold-water streams, red maple and Atlantic white cedar swamps, grasslands, and pine-oak forest.

The process included the removal of nine dams. A subterranean freshwater stream was gently excavated and more than three miles of channel were created. In the process, thousands of tons of sediment were removed. The result was the re-connection of the headwaters of Beaver Dam Brook with Cape Cod Bay. Within a few years, migrating and spawning fish such as river herring, brook trout, and American eel were moving back and forth between the salt water bay and freshwater brook.

With the cranberries gone, native plants immediately began emerging. Those plants, in turn, attracted a wide variety of insect, reptile, and bird species that had not been seen on the property for a century or more.

The restoration also addressed one other issue: the widespread mining of quartz- and silica-rich sand deposits on the site. The mined sand is used in glassmaking, fiber-optics and semiconductor wafers. The mining, however, also threatens the fragile aquifer that provides drinking water to that part of Massachusetts.

When restoration specialists first inspected the mining site, it was barren rock and sand with nothing growing. “It might as well be Mars,” was the common reaction. As the photo at right shows, in sixteen years, soil replenishment and the planting of native pines, grasses, and shrubs has created a stunning change. While walking its perimeter at the end of our tour, we came across a sign on wood reading simply, ‘Life on Mars’. 

Never have three words better expressed such a transformation.

Purple Reigns

 

There is something innately sad about the September garden – or at least the September gardens here in New England. They’re glorious in June and July. They even hold their own in the first part of August.  But, by the end of the month, most everything is spent: the sweeps of perennials are over the hill with browned-out flowers. Everything looks like it has a layer of dust on it, even after a rain.

This morning, though, I went out to collect the newspapers and spotted something unlikely: a foot-high Scutellaria incana (aka downy skullcap) in full bloom. It apparently came up late from seed because its large, August-blooming brethren are sad skeletons picked over by birds and insects.

Then, looking a little further, I began to see other pods of color – and most of them were purple and blue-purple.  There is apparently an entire September sub-culture of perennials and shrubs that wait out the heat of summer and come to life with the cooler nights autumn brings.

I next noticed several stands of Conoclinium coelestinum, better known as either blue mist flower or perennial ageratum. I spent hours this summer pulling armloads of this hyper-aggressive perennial out of places it didn’t belong. I apparently didn’t get it all because there are several stands of it in the driveway perennial border. Now, though, it is topped a very attractive blue-purple flower head, and those flowers are attracting flying insects of every variety. The perennial ageratum will be given temporary residency papers until its blooms fade… then it gets pulled out.

In the Magnolia bed, the Vernonia (ironweed) is halfway into its purple flower. The cultivar, ‘Iron Butterfly’ has attracted migrating Monarchs for the past three seasons. There are now four established Vernonia clumps, so there’s no need to push or shove to get nectar.

The flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus) never stopped flowering, but the blue-purple bloom clusters now seem to be larger, as though it knows that with the first frost, its leaves will drop like a quarterback being blitzed. I still hate that the plant puts up canes several feet from the mother plant, but those flower clusters make it easy to forgive its bad habits.

Geranium maculatum (common cranesbill geranium) also puts on a minor show in September. It is one of the first things to bloom in the spring; turning the ground into a purple carpet. By the end of May, though, it’s just a green ground cover in need of a haircut. For whatever reason, mine is offering a second, albeit minor, flowering.  I’ll take it.

There is also Callicarpa americana, with the common name of beautyberry.  I have mixed feelings about it during the growing season and especially in the spring, as it spreads aggressively by runners. There are now magnificent clusters of tiny purple berries along each of its stems. The first freeze will harden them off. Then, the birds will descend and pick them clean within a week or two.

Not to be forgotten is the Chelonia glabra, or pink turtlehead.  It begins growing in June and, by August, is a nicely proportioned, two-foot-high green bush. Then, seemingly overnight, come the covering of purple flowers and the butterflies that call the plant their host. The flowers are all too brief – less than two weeks. But the show is spectacular.

Finally, there is Lobelia siphilitica, or great blue lobelia. It comes out of nowhere in August, growing from the seeds sewn the previous fall. Until it blooms, it is an ugly duckling of a perennial; squat but also somehow gangly at the same time. But, when it (and its white-flowering sibling) blooms, it is the belle of the ball. Birds, alas, pick apart the flowers, but there is so many of them, the savaging is easily overlooked.

That’s the purple reign of September. You have to look for it but, once you see it, you can’t stop smiling.

The Blue Garden: a gem hiding in plain sight

 Occasionally, fairy tales do come true.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see a stunning garden that, for seventy years, was only a memory and was presumed a vanished artifact of another age. Yet, here it was in all its glory; made possible by a fairy godmother.

Let’s go back 113 years to the night of August 15, 1913. Arthur Curtiss James, who both inherited and made a fortune in copper mines and railroads, and his spouse, Harriet Parson James, are throwing a party to inaugurate their new garden. The garden is located at their Newport summer residence, Beacon Hill House, which is located on 125 acres on an inland promontory; the highest point in Newport.

The garden, in turn, is Harriet’s idea and passion. Since 1908, The Olmsted Brothers have designed and executed the palatial landscape of the estate, save for a hollow on the northeast side of the property where there is an indication for ‘an informal garden’. For the preceding two years, Harriet has engaged Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr. to design and build what she envisions as “a monochromatic concentration of purples and blues.”

Olmsted creates a hortus conclusus, a secret garden hidden behind a dense border of trees and shrubs.

On this August evening, “The Masque of the Blue Garden” is being held for 300 invited guests. The event, which features performances of musicians and dancers, culminates with Amphitrite, the Greek goddess of the sea, leaping from a giant shell placed at the far end of the long pool that is the central feature of the garden.  We know all of this because the event was covered in detail by newspapers and periodicals across the country.

But times change. Harriet and Arthur die within weeks of one another in 1941. Beacon Hill House and its landscape fall into disrepair. In 1967, the mansion is destroyed by fire. Eventually, it will be demolished. The property will be sub-divided into multi-acre lots in the 1970s. In the ensuing decades, the Blue Garden will disappear under the weight of vines and undergrowth.

Enter Dorrance “Dodo” Hill Hamilton. Born in 1928, she was the granddaughter of John Thompson Dorrance. Mr. Dorrance created the process for condensing soups and, in 1914, became the owner of the Campbell’s Soup Company. In the early 2000s and now widowed, Ms. Hamilton was a billionaire and one of the wealthiest women in America according to Forbes magazine.

Ms. Hamilton had longstanding ties to Newport, having spent summer there since childhood. In 1998 she acquired Wildacre, an oceanfront estate but, fifteen years later and now in her eighties, she realized she needed a house on one level, and acquired one of the parcels of land that had been part of the Beacon Hill House property, and set out to build ‘The Birdhouse’.

In 2012, as Ms. Hamilton was completing her new home, an adjacent parcel on which the Blue Garden had been located came up for sale. It is worth noting that Ms. Hamilton was a major supporter of horticultural causes, including the Philadelphia Flower Show and the Newport Flower Show, as well as Blithewold Mansion, Gardens and Arboretum.

She acquired the property for the specific purpose of rebuilding the garden. A team led by renowned Cambridge, MA landscape architectural firm, Reed Hildebrand was charged with recreating it. The original plans were located from the Olmsted National Historic Site. The invasive Norway Maples and other detritus was removed… as was a 1980s modern house that had been constructed on the site of one of the two pergolas. Specialists meticulously dissected the garden’s site and perimeter; pulling out and preserving tiles and ornamental stonework from the original garden.

It took two years, but the site was restored. By design, the horticultural elements were faithful to the spirit of the original garden but not replicated exactly. Trees, shrubs, and perennials were chosen for their suitability to the Newport climate. They were also selected for sustainability: in the time of Arthur and Harriet James, the garden staff numbered more than forty. Such a force is impractical in the third decade of the 21^st Century.

Dorrance Hill Hamilton died in 2017. She lived to see the garden’s completion. In August 2014, the renewed Blue Garden opened to a group of invited guests who came together to celebrate its rescue from the diminished condition in which it was found. The garden is an accredited arboretum with the Morton Register of Arboreta and, in 2018, a permanent conservation easement was placed on it by the Aquidneck Land Trust. Its maintenance is provided under a perpetual trust created by Ms. Hamilton.

If there is an oddity to this story, it is that few people seem to know of the garden, and fewer get to see it: just 100 per week. The garden is open one day a week – on Thursday – and there are three (or occasionally four) tours, each 90 minutes long; and the tours are limited to 25 attendees. The garden is open from mid-June to early October.  I booked the tour on Monday of this week. Only the first (11 a.m.) time slot was filled when I registered.

The reason for the limited opening is, I suspect, that the garden is fragile. One hundred pairs of feet on its grass and pathways one day each week allows the lawn to recover.  Open the garden six days a week and the wear and tear will be evident by July and irreversible by October.

The tour - $25 – is well worth the money. Our guide was Matt Phillips (pictured at left), who wears the hats of property and horticulture manager. His knowledge of the property is vast, his tolerance for questions quite high.

 

Please Don't Swipe Right

While out weeding yesterday, my mind started wandering... and came up with this question: You're one of the later-blooming native perennials... one of the last to makes its presence known. And, you have a very unfortunate common name. What would you say about yourself on a dating app to explain to a gardener that he or she ought to take a chance on you?

Well, I came up with something:
Please don’t swipe right….
I know, I know. No clearly identifiable profile picture and no name. It’s a dead giveaway I’m hiding something, and us plants are always supposed to be ‘out there’ and available. So, give me a few moments to explain. Please!
I’ll start with my name – and you have to promise not to swipe right when you read this. My first name is Downy. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. What plant gets named after a fabric softener? It gets worse: I have a last name, but we’ll have to know one another a lot better before I tell you because it’s mortifying. And I’ve lived with it my entire life.

There’s no profile picture because I’m not sufficiently photogenic yet. I’m an August bloomer in a world where everyone wants May, June and July. But, I’m worth the wait. May bloomers get all the attention. Peonies get all the Prom invitations because of how swell they look… in May. But I know the truth. I’ve seen them changing after gym class. It’s all wadded-up Kleenex and cotton. Caveat emptor!

And, I also know all too well that I look rangy right now with stems headed in every direction. Not like Monarda. Monarda knows how to strut its stuff: one plant, one stem two feet high. And available in every color of the rainbow. Monarda know they’re going to sell out long before anything gets marked down, and they’re snobs about it. I get tired of listening to their bragging.

I grow back from my roots or from seed, and I’ve got stems galore. I can get three feet wide without breaking my stride. And, yes, I know I only come in blue. But it’s a beautiful, iridescent blue and it lasts forever. Plus, I have flowers on every branch. What’s not to love?
Did I mention I spread? Oh, my gosh do I spread. Don’t cut my flowers. Let them stay on into fall. And, if you must cut me down, leave my stems in place. I don’t want to sound promiscuous, but I can fill the border of a garden in two years.
You probably want a reference. OK, Neal has me in what he calls his Sun Garden. And, yes, the core of the Sun Garden is that haughty Monarda, ox-eye-daisies, Rudbeckia, and Betony, plus lots of Asceplias. But their glory was June and July. Now, they’re getting a little ragged.

So, guess who gets to steal the show for the next sixty days? Yes, homely little me; except I’m not going to be homely much longer. I’m already showing a little blue ("give them a little peek", my Aunt Virginia always advised me) on some stems. In another week, you can be walking up the driveway or be on the sidewalk, and I’ll stop you in your tracks. I guarantee it.
Oh, you want to know about pollinators? I hope you like bumblebees and native bees. My flower includes a protective hood, under which is loads of nectar and pollen. I, ahem, leave them satisfied. I also have gentlemen callers in the form of butterflies and skippers. Yes, I know they only love me for my nectar, but who's complaining? It's my lot in life!
OK, you deserve my full name. It’s Scutellaria incana, or more commonly, hoary (don’t you dare go there… I have itchy friends) skullcap or downy skullcap, which is bad enough. Why skullcap? What did I do wrong? Whom did I annoy? I rather like the Latin binomial, though. ‘Incana’. I think Linneaus meant to write, ‘enchanting’ and was forced to abbreviate. Because I think of myself as enchanting.
And, you will, too. So, swipe left. Let’s get together. Put me in your garden. I promise you won't regret it!

The Cascade Effect

This was supposed to be a lazy Sunday afternoon. Read the newspaper (yes, I’m a dinosaur who subscribes to the print edition of newspapers), organize some documents I had been putting off doing; that sort of thing.

I looked out the window and saw my
containers needed watering

But, I glanced out the window by the front door and saw that the two container gardens at the base of steps needed watering. So, I filled a jug of water from a rain barrel and went out to quench the thirsty containers. Which is when I noticed that one of my foundation shrubs, a Leucothoe (aka dogshobble), had sent some exploratory branches out, and those branches were mostly hiding what I thought was a very attractive container.

The flowering raspberry was behaving
like, well, a raspberry bush

So, I went to the garage and got a pair of Felcos and a fabric barrel to trim back the errant branches. Which is when I noticed that almost all of the flowers on my flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), located a few feet away from the Leucothoe, were past bloom and needed to be cut off. So, I did that first.
Which is when I saw that the flowering raspberry was behaving like, well, a raspberry, and had sent out a dozen runners into the birch bed (a very nice Betula nigra). So, I pulled up the runners and placed then into the barrel. But, in doing so, I saw there was an infestation under the birch of jewel weed (impatiens capensis); a low-order nuisance because they pull out very easily. It’s almost as though they know they’re not supposed to be there and so don’t put up a fight.

Both the Kalmia and Leucothoe
had committed a no-no: they
had grown higher than the sill.

But, what they lacked in fight to survive, they more than made up in sheer numbers. There were hundreds of them all along either side of the thirty foot (or so) path between the birch bed and the foundation plantings. Because they reproduce so easily, I knew I needed to get them all out. A few that had access to sunlight were as tall as the about-to-bloom summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) which they has also colonized.
By now, the debris barrel was full and I emptied it in the compost pile. When I returned, I noted that mountain laurel (Kalmia ‘Sara’) along the house foundation also harbored jewel weed which needed to be pulled. But the Kalmia also was growing over the top of some very attractive (and expensive) coral bells (Heuchera) that had been planted as ‘boots and socks’ for the foundation shrubs.

I filled three barrels with debris

So, I carefully trimmed back the Kalmia to make it look as though it and the Heuchera had always co-existed peacefully. Stepping back to admire my work, I saw that the Kalmia also was transgressing in another – maybe even more serious – way: its height was six or eight inches above my home’s window sill. I have always believed that shrubs higher than a home’s window sills is the first step on the slippery slope to becoming a recluse.
So, I went in and carefully cut back the top of the Kalmia, making certain no one could ever think I has just sheared off the top eight inches willy-nilly. Each offending branch was trimmed individually so there was no protruding stem visible.

Order restored

And, of course, the two Leucothoes (which had long since grown together) also were above the window sills. I filled and emptied the debris barrel a second time. Since I was already hot and sweaty, I figured I might as well also provide a modicum of ‘space definition’ between the Kalmia and the Leucothoe. I gave the Kalmia the benefit of the doubt where the two shrubs had dueling branches.
Then, I was back at the front steps of my house. I carefully trimmed back the Leucothoe – pulling out several branches that had rooted within a foot of the containers – and reshaped the corner so there would be ample light. Oh, and I watered both containers well.

And, the container
garden has light!

So, all it took to give a jug of water to two urns filled with annuals was three hours to do six other things. I’m certain this – which I call the Cascade Effect – never happens in your garden. It is, unfortunately, an all-too-common occurrence in mine.

The unwanted interloper

If anyone ever offers you the opportunity - and calls it ‘the honor’ – of running a community garden, you should run at high speed from the person trying to recruit you. Delete the individual from your phone and email. Change your address. Answer the phone in a foreign language.

600 square feet of Japanese hop

I know this because I spent Monday afternoon removing a nasty, invasive vine from 600 square feet of the conservation land in which the Medfield Community Garden is located; and from which garden I have been removing yet another pernicious vine now for the better part of a month.

Two millennia ago, the poet Virgil wrote the famous Latin line “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, which translates to: "I fear the Greeks (Danaans), even those bearing gifts." My update is “Beware of anything your town’s Department of Public Works brings you.” It especially applies when you’ve been told that only the DPW can supply something.

As the Community Garden co-manager (or Garden Ogre, and I have titled myself), one of my tasks each spring is to request that tenants of the 70 plots in the acre-sized garden replenish the wood chips that for the ‘streets and avenues’ around their gardens. I start saving newspapers beginning in September so that gardeners can easily a) rake back last year’s chips that did not break down into organic material over the winter; b) put down either cardboard or (preferably) newspapers across the three-foot-wide paths around all sides of their plot; and c) rake the old chips over the newspaper and supplement with fresh chips for a depth not to exceed two inches.

The town's mulch pile, in theory, weed free

Where do the chips come from? Historically, they have come from the Medfield DPW, which take wood debris dumped by homeowners at the town’s transfer station, grinds it up into a mulch, puts it in a large pile where, in theory, the internal temperature of the wood pile will get to just below the combustion point. In the process, those high temperatures will kill off pathogens and sterilize any weed seeds or vines that might have been ground up along with the wood.

The key phrase, is ‘in theory’,

The chips were perfect!

Each year, I request 60 cubic yards of mulch, starting with four piles, each of ten cubic yards. If that isn’t enough, I request more. Last year, for reasons I cannot understand, the DPW pointedly declined to provide additional chips.  Weeds were starting to appear in the unchipped aisles and so, after pleading for six weeks, my co-manager and I used a wonderful, free service called ‘Chip Drop’ which allows tree service firms to avoid paying tipping fees at landfills and, instead, drop off freshly-chipped wood at homes or other locations. You can even specify ‘no logs’ or ‘no branches’. Did I mention it is free?

Two days later, we got ten cubic yards of the best wood chips we had ever seen.  I was in thrall.

But the Community Garden is not a power unto itself. Like many such gardens, we are under the auspices of our town’s Conservation Commission, and the Medfield Conservation Commission takes its stewardship role quite seriously. We are on the site of Medfield’s last working farm, acquired by the town a quarter century ago. I did not ask permission to bring in ‘outside’ chips. And, when it was learned we had not asked permission, my co-manager and I were – and I will use this word because it is the dictionary-perfect description – castigated for violating the trust of the Conservation Commission.

This spring, we requested our usual supply of chips… and were told by the DPW they didn’t have any available because of the cold winter. So, I investigated ‘outside’ wood chips and narrowed the choice to two: Chip Drop (free) and Certified Playground Chips, which are milled from the everwood and pith of hardwood trees.., and are $55 per cubic yard. The community garden collects enough in user fees to pay for the chips, and I agreed to pay any overage from my own pocket.

We were about to order the certified chips when the DPW said it had taken the temperature of its wood mulch pile and found it had gotten high enough to kill off all the bad stuff. The Conservation Commission decreed we should use DPW chips and they were delivered and spread by gardeners in their aisles.

Three weeks ago, I noticed something I had not seen in the garden in almost a decade: bindweed.

For the uninitiated, bindweed is evil incarnate. It exists to make the lives of gardeners miserable. It can regenerate from root pieces as small as two inches.  And, it was all over the garden, vining up fences. I pulled back the mulch around my own plot. Pieces of the bindweed had survived in the wood mulch and taken root. Since then, I have been cajoling my fellow gardeners to cut off the vines at ground level so as to ‘starve’ the roots of energy.

Underneath the hop, the remnants of
the compost pile which harbored seeds

Two weeks ago, I noticed something else. In 2025, the DPW also delivered two truckloads of compost. It looked beautiful.  We augmented the soil in the garden with it. What was left over just stayed in two piles on opposite ends of the garden…. where, this spring, dormant seeds for an invasive vine called Japanese hop germinated and were running wild.

The Japanese hop, removed.

The smaller tangle was removed, unbidden, by one of our long-time gardeners. Which gave me the idea that I could do the larger one. Took me three hours. To clear the vines that came from the seeds brought in by the compost from the DPW.

But it’s done. And, because the vines were removed before they had an opportunity to flower and set seed, it should be the last I see of it. And the satisfaction of a task completed maybe makes it OK to accept an offer to run a community garden after all.

Unless, of course, the DPW has more ‘surprises’ in store for me….