Gardening Update, August 6th

A group of young runners was just finishing up their morning workout when we gathered at the CCC Field for our gardening session.  We didn’t need to run to get our workout; we had a tree to plant and the manual edger to run along the brick walk.  The tree is a small White Fringetree, purchased to continue a tradition of honoring outgoing presidents of our sister organization in the park, the Pocahontas Chapter of Virginia Master Naturalists. 

Planting the tree was relatively easy, compared to working the edger, so the edging work will be continued next week, along with general weeding of the landscape beds.  We moved to the Pool Gardens for a bit of cleaning up, then checked the Anniversary Garden.  That was still in good shape, so we moved on to the Butterfly Garden, finding a few weeds and one Pearl Crescent butterfly.  After that a few minutes at the CCC Museum, and finally ending up at the Rain Garden.

We have finally arrived at the “sweet spot” of garden maintenance, where a few minutes weekly at each garden is enough, provided that there are several of us doing the work.  The Pool Gardens and the CCC Field are so much cleaner and more attractive than they were in the summer last year, it’s ironic that our new park manager, Joshua Ellington, did not get to see the transformation.


(Photo of a small wildflower at the CCC Museum)