The Native Wildflower Garden

It started out as simply a landscape maintenance project to remove the trees and shrub growth that was blocking the street lighting over the Heritage Center parking lot.  Okay, well, then that median strip needs to be landscaped somehow; we’ll need to sculpt the soil and plant grass.  Say, wouldn’t it be great to have some native wildflowers in there?  So the maintenance project was expanded to include the planting of native plants suitable for the space.  A volunteer day was organized to provide the labor, and plant donations were solicited to provide the materials.  The plants and the labor came together on a Saturday in the spring, and voilà, there was a native plant landscape garden in the median of the parking lot.

Sounds good.  Just one little detail.  The landscape garden went unattended through the summer and began to look like just another weed patch in the park.  It was opportunity knocking, and one of our Friends members, Ben Hedges, answered.  His answer, though, was not just to step in with a one-time fix, but was two-pronged: 1) commit the volunteer resources of Friends to maintaining an attractive garden, and 2) expand the scope of the garden to make it an educational resource for the park.

Our commitment is stated on the sign posted at the bottom of the garden: Native Plant Garden maintained by the Friends of Pocahontas State Park.  The educational function is supported by individual plant labels scattered throughout the garden, and by limiting the plant inventory to those plants which support the local Virginia piedmont ecosystem.

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