Gardening Update, August 27th

The front of the CCC Field was a busy place this morning, with high school runners finishing up their morning workouts.  If they had needed water, they could have used the drinking fountain; it’s working again, thanks to Park Manager Josh.  We finally finished lining the brick walk with a strip of mulch.  With that and a little weeding, we can safely say that it is truly ready for the public to enjoy.  To top it off, the sunflowers in the planting box have attracted several dazzling butterflies.

Our second and most important task this morning was to perform end-of-summer cleaning in the Rain Garden.  To assure proper rain garden functioning, spent vegetation needs to be removed.  Over time, if plant debris is allowed to build up in the garden, it will lose its capacity to hold and infiltrate run-off.  In our case, most of the spent vegetation was bee balm, and that was removed down to the soil level.  In addition, the decline of summer growth was revealing weeds that needed to be removed.  The bee balm and the weeds are all good candidates for composting.

Next on the agenda was a check of the CCC Museum and the Butterfly Garden, both of which presently require little maintenance.   Eric wants to follow up on getting rid of the bugs on the Butterflyweed.  Finally, Eric and I cruised over to the Powhatan Activity Center to water and weed the new plantings there.  We found the new transplants holding up well, and the so-recently subdued weeds beginning to return. 

Our next trick will be to locate the important “see me” plants in the Native Plant Garden, and remove the plants that are distractions.  We will have lots of grasses and sedges to chip out of that rock-hard clay soil.  A rain dance would be appropriate now.


(Photo of Bee Balm at the Rain Garden)