Gardening Update, July 16th

Gardening in the Park is not just weeding, trimming and cleaning up.  It’s also about enhancing esthetic value, or beautification.  So we collectively need to make decisions about arranging plants and garden accessories.  For the CCC Field, we felt that the arrangement of benches in a straight line along the walk was uncomfortable and unappealing, so we moved them around to take advantage of comfort, views and shade.  While there, we also worked on weeding, mulching and keeping the walks clean.

From there, we answered a call to help restore manageability to the landscape bed in front of the Park Office.  There was a good deal of crabgrass and Bermuda grass overrunning the bed, and that was all removed, along with a couple of unwanted Nandina shrubs, which are not native.  We’ll continue to keep an eye on this bed, but one of our Master Naturalists has volunteered to maintain it.

Our final stop was the Butterfly Garden, where an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail was a tease.  The plantings are progressing nicely, with just a few “weed” plants trying to take root.  Eric got a nice photo of the garden, which I will use for establishing a plant “collection” at plantsmap.com