Ten of our worker bees contributed to the planting today of 33 trees and shrubs.
- 17 of those are 5 gallon (about 6 feet tall) oak, hackberry, elm and sweetgum, mainly in the buffer area
- 1 is a beautiful 7 gallon oakleaf hydranga at the curve in the path, and 1 is a 5 gallon fringetree, also near the curve
- 2 are viburnum near the buffer
- 12 are gray dogwood and hornbeam along the old sewer line
The trees were picked up in Union Bridge at Clear Ridge Nursery by Chris Judd and Lynn Leathery. Trees were placed at the planting sites yesterday by Lesley Cristol and Rachel Zigler. Planting, watering and sheltering/fencing today was done by Andy Driscoll, Kathy Soria, Lesley Cristol, Peter Brehm, Bill Einloth and Chris Wise.
Shown above are (L) Peter Brehm planting and (R) Andy & Bill preparing to stake a hackberry we planted a few years ago that was leaning because of recent water and wind events.
We are trying a new tactic to discourage voles in the buffer – we put 3/4″ washed gravel around the base of the new trees. We’ll see how that works.
Last week several of the worker bees (Andy, Bill, Kathy and Rachel) dug up the approximately 2 dozen cherry, hackberry and sweet gum young trees that the birds had planted in my yard – we put those in the buffer and in the woods. Rachel helped me fence those mid-week.
If we can control the voles the buffer should in the next few years begin to look like a forest!
Two new large trees are also along the paved path (look for the green gator bags) – one is a Princeton elm (disease-resistant) and the other is a yellowwood (loves limestone soil). Both were donated by FWP members. We only need two or three more large trees to finish off the Waterford path tree planting. Stadler Nursery planted the elm and Tom Rippeon, City arborist, planted the yellowwood.
Below Ginny, Rachel and Lesley are getting the new trees loaded on the trailer and delivered to the planting holes. They are also unloading the stones we placed around each tree after planting instead of mulch.
Lynn Leathery and I have gotten 40 new tree signs up in the park, identifying and giving some info on the trees – it is amazing to me that we have about 50 species total in the park – and that’s just the trees, not shrubs or wildflowers. We get so many positive comments about the signs we do have up, so the board voted to add more. We got them from Voss SIgns in NY at a reasonable price and Lynn mounted them on pressure-treated lumber – your donations at work!!
I hope you can get out there on this fine weekend to enjoy the park and check out the signs.
Next week I’ll have a list of the trees/signs so you can take one and see if you can find all 43 (40 up now, 3 to go!)
Also, check out the 3 persimmon trees in the buffer area loaded with fruit. Pretty neat.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Ginny