Governor's Butterfly Garden

 In the spring of this year the director of DCR's Stewardship Virginia program held a nature camp for youth.  In preparation for the camp, she planted a variety of wildflowers in the area above this garden where the grass is normally mowed.  One of our tasks for today was to transplant all those "outliers" closer to the garden proper so that mowing could be resumed next year.  Thanks to the recent soaking rains, the ground was just right for digging and planting.

With that done, we checked on the CCC Museum Garden and found it to be in good shape, so we moved on to clean out the weeds in the Heritage Center Garden and the Native Plant Garden.  The most abundant grass in the Native Plant Garden is Broomsedge.  It functions there primarily as a free substitute for wood mulch, which must be purchased every year.  Depending on your point of view, it can be either attractive or unkempt, but it does help to soak up the rain and to retain moisture during dry spells.  The downside is that Broomsedge self-sows freely, so we have to keep weeding it out to keep it from completely overrunning the bed.

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