(The below report was submitted on on 8-29-2016)

The trucks have left and quiet has returned to the Park after a long period of construction. Trash cans and poop stations are in, but not being emptied. We will talk with the City about their pick-up schedule. Lights have been installed but not yet turned on. Many of us are happy that the park is still dark overnight. Lots of new people in the park, most enjoying the walk, a few with headphones separating them from the environment.. No trash on the ground or vandalism noted. Silt fences will come down when it is determined that the grass see is established enough to prevent runoff. Deer have survived the construction well it seems. We see them regularly, Mommas and babies mostly, although Joe took a picture of our resident 8-point buck lying in the stream. That guy has it good!

Worker bees are watering trees on slopes, fencing and watering the trees planted in April, and we are re-fencing trees in advance of the deer fall and winter rubbing/feeding. We had taken many fences down to make life easier for the mowers.

Pictures below show another project: the refurbishing of the woods paths and the new path connecting main mulched path to the old sewer line.  The contractors left stones for us, and they are at the entryways to the mulched woods paths.We will complete the path work Aug. 30 in the evening.  Enjoy – but the cardboard under the new connector may be a bit slippery at first, so be careful.

 

The Chesapeake Bay is in trouble due to pollution and sediment in runoff that eventually drains into the Bay. Most Maryland residents live within a half-mile radius of a drainage ditch, storm drain, stream, or river, and what we do to maintain our own landscapes can affect the health of the Bay and our environment. The Bay-Wise Residential Landscape Management program was developed by the University of Maryland as part of the Maryland Master Gardener program. These trained volunteers help citizens create healthier gardens and landscapes using sustainable practices. Private and public properties like Waterford Park which demonstrate such practices can be certified as “Bay-Wise” by first filling out an application and Bay-Wise Yardstick. Specially trained Bay-Wise Master Gardeners will then visit the property and determine if it meets the requirements. If so, a handsome Bay-Wise sign will be given.

This spring, Waterford Park applied to be a certified as a Bay-wise property. We completed the forms and toured the park with the committee from the Frederick County Master Gardeners (pictured). Their group also held one of their monthly meetings here where a large group of us walked the park together, identifying plants, discussing the work of Friends of Waterford Park and enjoying a walk in the woods on a fine late spring day. We are pleased to participate in this worthy program. More about Bay-Wise...

The Chesapeake Bay is in trouble due to pollution and sediment in runoff that eventually drains into the Bay. Most Maryland residents live within a half-mile radius of a drainage ditch, storm drain, stream, or river, and what we do to maintain our own landscapes can affect the health of the Bay and our environment.

The Bay-Wise Residential Landscape Management program was developed by the UMD as part of the MD Master Gardener program to help citizens create healthier gardens and landscapes using sustainable practices. Private and public properties such as Waterford Park which demonstrate such practices can be certified as “Bay-Wise.” For more information, please go here.

Pictured above (L to R) Virginia Brace receives “”Bay-Wise” designation sign from Master Gardner Suzanna Hill.

Check out the below picture of almost all of the 37, yes indeed, 37 volunteers who came out Saturday, April 23rd, to plant the 50 container plants we purchased with grant funds from MUCFC (MD Urban and Community Forest Committee) funds.

Regular FWP volunteers were joined by a Middletown brownie troop and Hood students organized by the Biology Honor Society.

Construction of the shared use path is in the open areas; this grant funded trees that grow in the understory where we have cleared invasives.

Species planted included: American and Eastern hornbeams, red maple, pagoda dogwood, Henry Garnet sweet spire, gray dogwood and witchhazel.  In open spaces we planted silver maple, basswood and sycamore.

As always, Joanne Leathery provided brownies and cookies for the post-planting gathering. We had everything planted, watered, papered and mulched in just a little over an hour.

Andy Driscoll, FWP volunteer and professional arborist, demonstrated proper planting of container trees. He showed us to rough up the rootball and cautioned us not to plant too deep. Thanks, Andy.

Thanks to all, especially to Lesley and Kevin who put in hours of prep work Wed. – Friday.

Ginny

Come join us as we plant 50 container trees. in the woods in Waterford.

10 am Saturday. We should be finished by noon. We will do a demonstration of planting technique first, then break into groups to plant, mulch and water.

We will be doing a lot of prep work Friday, April 22nd if you can help then.

Email us at info@friendsofwaterfordpark.org or call 301 682 6135 to volunteer.

Construction of the shared-use path connecting Waterford and Baker Parks has begun. The required black fence to protect the waterways from runoff and the L.O.D. stakes (limit of disturbance) are in place. The paved path will be replaced with a semi-permeable path that is 10 feet wide. The path will be extended to Carroll Creek where an 80 foot bridge will cross the creek. The low spot at the bend near the benches will be altered so we do not have pools of water and ice there. The construction of the tunnel under the ramp from Rosemont to Rt. 15 is scheduled for early May. That ramp will be closed for as short a time as possible. The path will then connect to the existing concrete path at Rosemont. Trees with white X’s will be removed. Trees with orange tape will be moved. (Top picture shows a staging area; bottom picture looks toward Carroll Creek where the bridge will go).

Click here for the Winter 2015/2016 edition of “The Parks Reporter” newsletter.

Jennifer Willoughby (below, center), Sustainability Manager for the city of Frederick, held several tree identification classes in Waterford Park which now has over 40 species of native trees.

Hooray! We are now “Friends of Waterford Park, Inc.”, a 501(c)(3) charity recognized by the IRS. We will open a bank account and soon will be operating independently. We owe a great thank-you to the Friends of Baker Park which has served as our fiscal agent for many years. We will let you know when our transition is complete and your dues/donations can be payable to us rather than to FOBP.

Park blooms – the surge of spring bloom is over, but several shrubs and flowers are in bloom. Look for white hydrangea blooms along the path near the new bridge. As the path curves into the open field of Waterford Park, the pink blooms of the swamp rose and the white blooms of buttonbush appear. On the hill at Meadowdale, the oak-leaf hydrangea is gorgeous, and the wild petunias are emerging. Many plants are in bloom in the meadow, most conspicuously the pink of the monarda (beebalm) and the bright orange of butterfly weed. In the woods, the bottlebrush buckeyes and elderberries are in flower.

Fruits of the chokeberry, native black raspberry and several viburnum are coming out.

Our Eagle Scout candidate is about 3/4 finished with his paths in the woods. We were able to treat all 24 of the ashes we wanted to protect. You can see tiny yellow plugs at the base of the treated trees.

Most of you have renewed. Let’s try to get the rest in so we can be done with that annual administrative task.  You folks continue to be THE BEST! We have such great support. (If you need another  membership form, go to www.friendsofwaterfordpark.org. Dave Maloney keeps a link to the form on the first page.)

GInny

In Your Garden, Choose Plants That Help the Environment

By DOUGLAS W. TALLAMYMARCH 11, 2015

OXFORD, Pa. — I GREW up thinking little of plants. I was interested in snakes and turtles, then insects and, eventually, birds. Now I like plants. But I still like the life they create even more.

Plants are as close to biological miracles as a scientist could dare admit. After all, they allow us, and nearly every other species, to eat sunlight, by creating the nourishment that drives food webs on this planet. As if that weren’t enough, plants also produce oxygen, build topsoil and hold it in place, prevent floods, sequester carbon dioxide, buffer extreme weather and clean our water. Considering all this, you might think we gardeners would value plants for what they do. Instead, we value them for what they look like.

When we design our home landscapes, too many of us choose beautiful plants from all over the world, without considering their ability to support life within our local ecosystems.

Last summer I did a simple experiment at home to measure just how different the plants we use for landscaping can be in supporting local animals. I compared a young white oak in my yard with one of the Bradford pears in my neighbor’s yard. Both trees are the same size, but Bradford pears are ornamentals from Asia, while white oaks are native to eastern North America. I walked around each tree and counted the caterpillars on their leaves at head height. I found 410 caterpillars on the white oak (comprising 19 different species), and only one caterpillar (an inchworm) on the Bradford pear.

Was this a fluke? Hardly. The next day I repeated my survey on a different white oak and Bradford pear. This time I found 233 caterpillars on the white oak (comprising 15 species) and, again, only one on the Bradford pear.

Why such huge differences? It’s simple: Plants don’t want to be eaten, so they have loaded their tissues with nasty chemicals that would kill most insects if eaten. Insects do eat plants, though, and they achieve this by adapting to the chemical defenses of just one or two plant lineages. So some have evolved to eat oak trees without dying, while others have specialized in native cherries or ashes and so on.

But local insects have only just met Bradford pears, in an evolutionary sense, and have not had the time — millennia — required to adapt to their chemical defenses. And so Bradford pears stand virtually untouched in my neighbor’s yard.

In the past, we thought this was a good thing. After all, Asian ornamentals were planted to look pretty, and we certainly didn’t want insects eating them. We were happy with our perfect pears, burning bushes, Japanese barberries, porcelain berries, golden rain trees, crape myrtles, privets, bush honeysuckles and all the other foreign ornamentals.

But there are serious ecological consequences to such choices, and another exercise you can do at home makes them clear. This spring, if you live in North America, put up a chickadee nest box in your yard. If you are lucky, a pair of chickadees will move in and raise a family. While they are feeding their young, watch what the chickadees bring to the nest: mostly caterpillars. Both parents take turns feeding the chicks, enabling them to bring a caterpillar to the nest once every three minutes. And they do this from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. for each of the 16 to 18 days it takes the chicks to fledge. That’s a total of 350 to 570 caterpillars every day, depending on how many chicks they have. So, an incredible 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars are required to make one clutch of chickadees.

And chickadees are tiny birds: just a third of an ounce. What if you wanted to support red-bellied woodpeckers in your yard, a bird that is about eight times heavier than a chickadee? How many caterpillars would that take?

What we plant in our landscapes determines what can live in our landscapes. Controlling what grows in our yards is like playing God. By favoring productive species, we can create life, and by using nonnative plants, we can prevent it.

An American yard dominated by Asian ornamentals does not produce nearly the quantity and diversity of insects needed for birds to reproduce. Some might argue that we should just let those birds breed “in nature.” That worked in the past, but now there simply is not enough “nature” left. And it shows. Many bird species in North America have declined drastically in the past 40 years.

Fortunately, more and more gardeners are realizing that their yards offer one of the most empowering conservation options we have, and are sharing their properties with the nature around them.

By the way, you might assume that my oak was riddled with unsightly caterpillar holes, but not so. Since birds eat most of the caterpillars before they get very large, from 10 feet away the oak looked as perfect as a Bradford pear.

Douglas W. Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, is the author of “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants.”