Category Archives: PASSION

I hate multiflora rose

PASSION, POPULAR INTEREST, PUNCHY

by Heather Risher

I hate multiflora rose. Hate it. With a passion. Why? In the summer of 1998, I was a field technician in a Phase I Archaeological Survey on property owned by the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The land had been residential in the 1950s, and after the airport purchased the land, the houses were razed and the area fenced in. Thanks to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, federal projects require an Environmental Impact Statement to be prepared before construction can begin. Part of an EIS is a survey for artifacts, both historic and prehistoric.

We were looking for anything of cultural significance. What we discovered were jungles of multiflora rose so thick that machetes were necessary to hack paths between our shovel tests. We spent more time traveling the fifty feet to our next test site than we did digging each pit. Crawling was frequently more efficient than walking.

Photo by Ohio DNR

For those of you blessedly unaware of multiflora rose, it is a species native to Asia, imported to the United States in the 1700s, and misguidedly provided to landowners as a conservation measure in the 1930s. Now, depending on the state you live in, it is classified as a noxious weed, a prohibited invasive species, or banned. It had been planted in the area ignored by the airport, and spread like the weed that it is.

If the vines and thorns of multiflora rose weren’t trouble enough, the mosquitoes were brutal. The ground was swampy enough to provide thousands of stagnant puddles, perfect for mosquitoes. We spent most of the summer filthy, scratched, and bleeding, surrounded by swarms of bloodthirsty beasts. Even the nonsmokers resorted to carrying lit cigarettes or cigars in an attempt to ward off the airborne attack.

That’s not to say we missed the beauty in the abandoned land. Occasionally we discovered fields of day lilies that had naturalized into a brilliance of yellow. I discovered the secret hiding place of a young fawn – twice, as the first time its terrified stumble led it directly along my transect. The air was filled with birdsong, and I’m sure I would have counted dozens of species if I had stopped cursing the thorny vines long enough to look.

Photo by Ohio DNR

Lunches were eaten outdoors, along one of the roads, usually providing a welcome respite from the mosquitoes. We sometimes spent hours waiting for airport employees to unlock the gates so we could enter or exit the property, and if we’d attempted to leave for a midday meal most likely no work would have been done that day. There is great contentment in a mushy peanut butter and jelly sandwich eaten in the sunshine after a tough morning’s work.

Despite screening the dirt thoroughly, we found very little of cultural significance in our test pits. We did, however, find things that held our interest. I once spent a long afternoon sketching a map of a foundation and a well while my very manly male coworkers cut down saplings in an attempt to determine the depth of the water.

One notable find was a field where marijuana had been grown. We notified airport officials, who called the DEA, who visited and left business cards scattered around the site. My boss had worked on other airport projects, and shared that the crew had discovered pot on each one. As airports are unwilling to shut down air traffic for helicopter surveys, flight paths are perfect places to grow marijuana. Possibly the airport employees were so reluctant to grant us access in the mornings because they knew their growing operation would be discovered.

We also discovered that the dirt near the I-X center smells of bubblegum. Decades of deicer had soaked into the ground, saturating it with an odor that wouldn’t dissipate. If the I-X center soil was disturbing, it had nothing on that of NASA-Glenn. The crew chief, a new father, asked the men to cover that segment of the survey, as he had no idea which chemicals had been dumped, and what exposure to them might do to the reproductive systems of the twentysomething childless women on the team.

We crisscrossed airport property all summer, and eventually moved on to another airport, another pipeline, another renovation. I loved that job, and cried when I left. My paycheck wouldn’t cover my student loans plus a car payment and rent. I always wanted to go back to the field, but my grandmother got sick and died, I found a better-paying office job, got married: life happened. I planted roots, which made it difficult to walk halfway across New York State, stopping to dig a hole every fifty feet. Or to drive to Maryland on a moment’s notice because the Navy wanted to remodel a golf course.

But even though that summer’s tangle has since been bulldozed and covered with asphalt, I still hate multiflora rose.

Addendum from Elsa Johnson : Multiflora rose and other prickly things  —  removal

It’s true. If left undisturbed, invasive multiflora rose takes over. In Connecticut near where my granddaughters live, multiflora rose has taken over along a power line right of way; it is wall to wall multiflora rose — and where it’s not rose, there are blackberries. Both like growing in open, sunny conditions. Meanwhile, in the woods there, growing under the tree canopy, there is barberry, which is known to harbor ticks – and, as I discovered when I had one growing under a front window, also fleas.

The multiflora rose and the barberry are both invasive, non-native species and should be removed. How do you eradicate a plant that eagerly bites back? The answer, of course, is very carefully.

This is how I do it. First, armor your body with densely woven clothes. Wear gloves. Cut the canes back in short manageable sections. I yard-bag them. When you have cut them back all the way to the ground, this is the time for the careful and limited application of glyphosate directly to the cut cane surface at ground level. All it takes is a tiny, tiny  amount. Check back later in the growing season for regrowth. If there is regrowth that is the time for application of glyphosate to the leaves of the plant, since, having minimized the plant’s footprint, the plant is now much smaller, and weaker. You can spread plastic or newspaper under the leaves at ground level to avoid killing anything other than the prickly thing you’re trying to kill. Again: wear gloves. Check back in a week. It can take a while for the glyphosate to reach the roots. Use the minimal amount of glyphosate necessary. Wait. Be patient. Use the same system to remove barberry. Do not spray glyphosate on rose or barberry fruits. Animals eat these. 

See the Ohio Department of Natural Resources site for more on invasive species and their removal. Fire is another option.

As for blackberry, which, although native, can be invasive: blackberry can usually be controlled by mowing early in the season, before it gets tall. If you want it to produce berries, don’t mow. It fruits on second year canes. Repeated mowing weakens the plant.

Conservation Report from the Front Lines: Recent Land Acquisition Work of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRESERVATION

by Garrett Ormiston, GIS and Stewardship Specialist, Natural Areas Division, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

The Museum’s Natural Areas Program

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is home to a unique conservation program which has protected some of the highest-quality natural sites in Northeast Ohio. This program, known as the Museum’s ‘Natural Areas Division’ was formally created in 1956 with the purchase of a portion of a small bog in Geauga County known as ‘Fern Lake Bog’. This preserve acquisition was conducted under the leadership of Museum Director William Scheele. The natural areas program has since grown to include more than 10,000 acres of land that have been conserved through either direct land purchase by the Museum, or through the purchase of conservation easements held over privately-owned land.

In total, the Museum has conserved 58 distinct nature preserves that are as far-flung as Kelleys Island and the Huron River watershed to the west, the Ohio-Pennsylvania line to the east, and the Akron-Canton metropolitan area to the south. These preserves contain a plethora of different habitat types that are wide-ranging and include peat bogs and fens, glacial alvar, forested wetlands, and sand barrens. Indeed, each preserve is a unique example of a particular habitat with distinct plant communities that existed naturally within our region before European settlement.

Natural Areas of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Map by Garrett Ormiston.

The Museum is very focused in its mission to conserve sites that contain unique habitat or that harbor rare species. In Ohio, rare species are listed as endangered, threatened, or potentially-threatened based on the number of populations in the State. The Museum’s program is unique in that its conservation efforts are largely steered by the research and inventory work conducted by the Museum’s staff. For instance, inventory data that is collected from field surveys conducted by the Museum’s various departments is compiled in Ohio’s Heritage Database which is managed by the Ohio Division of Wildlife. It is the data from this Heritage Database that helps determine which species are considered ‘rare’ in the State, as opposed to species that might simply be overlooked or not studied. Indeed, a rare species list is only as good as the data that is fed in to it, and the Museum is the main contributor in Northeast Ohio to the State’s Heritage Database. It is true that the Museum’s collections and research are literally driving its conservation efforts in Northeast Ohio.

The Museum ramped up its conservation efforts significantly around 1980 under the leadership of its Curator of Botany and Director of Natural Areas, Dr. James Bissell. Between 1980 and 2005, The natural areas program more than doubled in size. And between 2006 and the present, the program has more than doubled a second time. Over the last year, the Museum has seen the acquisition of several important tracts of land, which are described in detail below.

Expansion of the Mentor Marsh Preserve

One of the Museum’s oldest natural areas is the Mentor Marsh Preserve which is dedicated as a State Nature Preserve in Ohio. This 780-acre preserve was once a sprawling swamp forest system. Rich silver maple-dominated swamp flats and vernal pools covered the landscape, interspersed with small areas of open water, and emergent wetlands dominated by Greater bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum), a species that was likely one of the largest components of emergent wetlands in our region before invasive species like narrow-leaf cattail and canary grass became dominant.

The Museum took ownership of Mentor Marsh in 1965 after a grassroots effort to conserve the site was carried out between 1960 and 1965.  The Museum owns the site through a combination of a land transfer and a long-term leasing arrangement with the State of Ohio.

Unfortunately, the biological integrity of Mentor Marsh was dramatically altered in 1966 with the influx of salt contamination from an adjacent site. The water in Mentor Marsh became excessively saline, and caused the trees within the swamp forest to perish and to be replaced by a nearly 800-acre monoculture of giant reed grass (Phragmites australis), a non-native invasive grass that is salt tolerant, spreads quickly and aggressively, and can reach heights of more than 15 feet in a single season, displacing all manner of native vegetation. What was once a diverse ecosystem was transformed in to a landscape dominated by a single invasive species.

Since 2015, the Museum has been engaged in an ambitious project to rid Mentor Marsh of the invasive Phragmites, and to restore the site to native vegetation. This effort has been led by Museum Restoration Specialist, Dr. David Kriska, and has involved the aggressive treatment and removal of the Phragmites at the site, as well as the planting of native plant plugs and seed mixes to re-establish native vegetation. While the site may never return to the swamp forest it once was, the Museum envisions the 800-acre marsh basin returning to a rich diversity of native wetland plants including swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), and Greater bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum), among other species.

Native plants being planted at Mentor Marsh after Phragmites removal. Photo by Dr. David Kriska.

At the start of the restoration project at Mentor Marsh, the Museum did not own the entire marsh basin. This created a problem in that large swaths of the marsh were still under private ownership. Those areas would not have been able to be included in the Phragmites removal efforts. The Museum addressed this problem through a combination of land acquisitions and management agreements with private owners within the marsh that allowed for invasive species treatment of the entire Mentor Marsh basin.

Sections of the marsh were seeded by a helicopter with a mix of native plant species. Photo by Dr. David Kriska.

In July 2018, the Museum purchased the 25-acre Fredebaugh Property in the southeast section of the marsh basin, a site that extended out in to the Mentor Marsh basin. This property purchase was funded through a grant from the State of Ohio’s Clean Ohio program. At the same time the Museum acquired a 20-acre conservation easement in the far-western section of the Marsh basin.

Consolidating the Museum’s land ownership of the marsh basin through such acquisitions is the best way to insure that the Museum is able to manage the site in the long-term. If isolated stands of invasive Phragmites are allowed to persist in the marsh basin, they will remain a seed source that will allow continued invasion in to the preserve.

The Windsor Woods Preserve

In August 2018, the Museum purchased an additional 572 acres of land at its Windsor Woods Preserve, creating a sprawling 643-acre preserve nestled in the heart of the Grand River lowlands region. This purchase was funded through two grants, one from the State’s Water Resource Restoration Sponsorship Program (WRRSP), and a second grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission through the Clean Ohio program. The WRRSP grant was utilized as matching funds towards the Clean Ohio grant. The Museum had worked to protect Windsor Woods for more than 10 years, and had engaged in discussions with various landowners over the years before finally sealing the deal this year.

Large beaver-flooded open water wetland at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.

The ‘lowlands’ region of the Grand River watershed is a wild place, where the Grand River and its many tributaries weave in great arcs within the flat valley. Historic meanders of the Grand River eventually transform in to ‘oxbow’ channel ponds, which provide outstanding breeding habitat for many amphibian species. The preserve is home to at least 11 different species of salamanders and frogs. Some of the old channels of the Grand River are now high-quality peat wetlands and the preserve harbors a population of the native wild calla (Calla palustris) that grows within one of these peat systems. Beavers have also exerted a heavy influence on the landscape at Windsor Woods. Through the building of dams, beavers have engineered expansive open water wetland areas, and have contributed to the habitat diversity at the site.

Wild Calla at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.

The Grand River frequently breaches its banks in this part of the Grand River lowlands which can lead to large sections of the preserve being temporarily inundated with flood waters, and can even necessitate the closing of certain roads in the area due to flooding. Visiting the preserve at different times of year can therefore provide very different landscape views.

Windsor Woods is also unique in that it is situated in a large block of land that is absent of any major roadways. The Museum’s preserve is located in the interior areas of this swamp forest block and is largely buffered from the influx of invasive species that often invade preserves from roadways. The Museum certainly envisions continued expansion of this preserve in the future if the opportunity should present itself.

Swamp Forest at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.

The Minshall Alvar Preserve on Kelleys Island

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a long history of conservation work on Kelleys Island, located in the western basin of Lake Erie. The Museum has a total of nine nature preserves on Kelleys Island presently, including several preserves with frontage on Lake Erie. Kelleys Island is essentially a large limestone block in the middle of the lake, and it is home to many limestone-loving plant species that are not common in the Cleveland area, and are typically more prevalent in areas west of our region. The topsoil layer on Kelleys Island is very thin, with a limestone rock substrate very close to the surface.

Alvar plant communities on the shore of Lake Erie at the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.

Limestone erratic on the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.

The Museum has long considered the Minshall Alvar property, located in a less-developed area in the northwest corner of the Island to be an important conservation target. Through a partnership with the Trust for Public Land, the Museum finally acquired the Minshall Alvar Preserve in October 2018. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the Museum secured funding from the Clean Ohio Conservation fund to purchase the property. The Minshall family generously provided the matching funds that were needed to be eligible for Clean Ohio funding in the form of a bargain sale of the land. The site harbors two globally-rare snakes including the Fox Snake and the Globally-imperiled Lake Erie Water Snake. The preserve’s plant communities are very diverse. Wave-splash alvar wetlands are present along the Lake Erie shoreline at the preserve, and unique microhabitats are perched atop large limestone blocks on the shoreline. The rare mountain rice (Piptatherum racemosum) is among the unique plants that are found on these limestone blocks at the preserve.

Sunken forest area in historically-quarried section of the Minshall Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.

Limestone Blocks on the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.

The preserve also protects the most mature forest present on Kelleys Island, a noteworthy forest dominated by hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata), and honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos). And the honey locust at the preserve are not the thornless cultivars that we are used to seeing in our gardens! They are fully-adorned with long painful thorns that can be both ornamental and agonizing to the touch.

The Minshall Alvar Preserve also contains a formerly quarried area in the center of the property that is home to the State-endangered lakeside daisy (Tetraneuris herbacea). The Kelleys Island State Nature Preserve is located next to the Museum’s Minshall Alvar Preserve, and the lakeside daisy was re-introduced to the State-owned property in 1995, and it subsequently naturalized and spread to the Minshall property over time. More than 200 individual lakeside daisy plants were counted by Museum staff on the Minshall property in 2017. Unique switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) meadows and even shallow buttonbush wetlands are also present in the former quarry area, creating a diverse matrix of different plant communities. And shrublands dominated by Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) are also abundant at the preserve.

Lakeside Daisy (Tetraneuris heteracea) which has naturalized at the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Judy Semroc.

Switch-grass meadow in a historically-quarried section of the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.

Saw Whet Owl in a Red Cedar on Kelleys Island. Photo by Judy Semroc.

Conclusion

The Museum is actively growing its network of nature preserves in Northeast Ohio. Its focus is on expanding existing preserves, especially when it results in the protection of entire wetland systems or other natural features, or when additional acquisitions can be useful from a preserve management perspective. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the Museum’s conservation work is encouraged to sign up for a field trip through the Museum’s website, www.cmnh.org. Several trips to Museum preserves are offered every month.

Sustainable Suburbia

PASSION, PERMACULTURE, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Melissa Amit Shuck

Sustainable Suburbia. It seems like an oxymoron. Yes, there are a few gem homes in the lower latitudes that have achieved just that, zeroing out their lives’ inputs and outputs without retreating to the remote country side.

Just think: how lavish and sustainable would the world be if everyone could live such a life? Yet I could find no model for this in northern climates: urban farms – yes, zero energy living – yes, but no combinations mooshed into the size of a suburban lot. I guess we can blame the cold.

It is a seemingly impossible challenge, therefore, naturally, I have to try with my small suburban home. First: as any good planner would do, I calculated the possibility. This is in order to keep God laughing (as the saying goes: Man plans, God laughs). Stark Brothers has a chart on fruit tree yields and, with some quick conversions from bushels to units I recognize in a grocery store, a semi-dwarf apple tree can yield approximately 1,000 apples.

Square foot gardening and permaculture also make high claims for sustainable living. Integrating those techniques and performing a cross- check between my comprehensive grocery list and their yield potential seems promising. Despite the north’s limitations on growing, my home landscape could produce almost everything I need except some very important staples: cinnamon, coffee, cocoa, beef, dairy, and cumin. Ok, maybe not very important, but those we are not willing to give up—yet anyway.

As for the rest of our home being sustainable, the calculations were simpler. Insulate the house, add window treatments, compost, recycle, redirect water for multiple uses and keep it on the property; investigate and balance solar, wind, and other types of electrical energy; reduce and refine our use patterns for low waste.

The biggest problem with the structural changes, such as the gobs of insulation that need to fill our attic is either money, time, or both The money can, I reason, be saved from the garden. I can generally expect an annual savings of at least $200 off of my annual veggies and berries. The time to install will come in winter when it is too cold to garden.

As my skill improves, my seed selections are refined, and my perennials begin to fruit, my savings increase.

In fact, it’s the rate of return that led me to the garden first. Rarely are investments found to have as high a gain as a garden managed by a knowledgeable gardener. Fertilizer can be free, if you know where to look. Because I have a low fertility soil I demand a lot from, I would need to do a lot of hustling to get enough free fertilizer to meet my demand. Since I already have a plate full of hustle, I supplement my free fertilizers with organic fertilizers.

Seed and plant stock can also be free. Look no further than your trash bin or compost pile. However, there are plants you may never meet at your grocery store that would fill both a niche in your diet and landscape. Thus, in order as much as possible, I decided to order some plants via catalog.

Most seed and plant sellers are happy to send you a free catalog. These are great antidepressants for bored gardeners frozen out of their hobby during winter and great learning tools for new gardeners about variety, timing, and the abundance of species available to us humans in a global world. Such plants as Hardy Kiwi, super sweet wild tomatoes, flowering bush cherries, currants, and more are all available to be mailed to your doorstep in spring.

I figured the $5/bareroot hazelnut bush was worth the $25 of fruit it would yield per year upon maturity. This reinvesting helps increase my annual gains in the garden, as long as a niche needs filling, and it is amazing how many niches there are! I guesstimate that by filling such niches I can save $200 more per year.

This is similar to building a business. The business is our food bill, utility bills, and our health. All which are monetized in our society and at rates that make this a “lucrative business.” The starting pay for any new business is, however very bad. There are one-time efforts and purchases that cost a lot with returns only to be seen years down the line. This being a sustainable business is no different. Fruit trees average three to five years to yield anything substantial, but require TLC every year.

The calculations I described thus far are about what is needed for a homestead outside the city. In the city there is another factor – aesthetics. Some cities require lawns or tell you “no vegetable gardens in your front yard”, or even more commonly, “no chickens.” We chose to live in a city without those rules, but we do not feel that gives us license to annoy our neighbors. Plus, the nicer sustainable gardening looks, the more likely it is to be adopted, making the whole city more sustainable, not just our backyard.

More research was needed on foliage color and shape, flower color, bloom time, fall foliage color, etc. As it turns out, since fruit come from flowers, most plants have an aesthetic element that makes them compatible with the average flower garden, accept maybe the tomato. Those small yellow flowers and well known fruit just shout “veggies here!” A maypop or echinacea, on the other hand, would camouflage into even the most stringent suburban landscape. All this research led me into the business of garden design and my Facebook page “Imitating Eden Garden Design.”

With the calculations complete, it was time to get cracking. That was four seasons ago, when we started turning a typical suburban lot to a food forest paradise. The transition continues with some good early results. We are sustainable in or nearly sustainable in: most herbs, onions, garlic, squash, wine, fresh tomatoes, salad greens, snap peas, rhubarb, and most berries. Our diet has changed. After 3 frustrating years trying to grow poppies, I found out broad leaf plantain has small edible seeds that could be used to decorate bread, like poppies or sesame. My celery always turned out stunted at best, so I substituted the more attractive—and still quite edible—prolific rhubarb.

My cooking now more resembles the show Chopped, than following Tollhouse’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The conclusion of this study is so far unknown. The data gathered has many positive indications. This recent harvest season has dropped our food bill, despite our growing family. Certainly, if nothing else, there are many lessons to be applied to a general northern city living which reduce the suburbanite foot print. I try to share these lessons on my Facebook page, through the volunteer-led gardens I run, my business, Permies.com and the occasional article or talk. I hope to publish more as the data arrives. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. My Facebook page has the details.

Global Gardening: Benefits of Gardening with the Newest Members of our Community

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Maggie Fitzpatrick

For parts of our community, particularly newly arrived refugees and immigrants, gardens can be an important source of cultural expression and food for the home.  Having diverse and welcoming gardens can be an opportunity for all to thrive.  It allows for opportunities to learn unique growing skills and new perspectives on gardening. 

Whether people are newly arrived or had immigrant relatives generations ago, growing information is often handed down through generations.  From working with Bhutanese and Burmese individuals I learned about growing cucurbits through what we termed “shelf gardening.”  In other terms using a trellis, like an arbor, allowing for the plant foliage to grow and for the melon, gourd or squash fruit to hang down.  This was done with Asian varieties including bottle gourd and bitter melon.  Try this with delicata or acorn squash, nothing too heavy. 

Living in our commercial milieu, gardeners in the US often think they have to buy something to solve a garden issue.  The perspective on garden supplies is much different for refugee and immigrant farmers.  For trellises, I’ve seen community gardeners scour for large fallen branches.  The results of pole beans growing up and winding around the branches is beautiful and free! 

Working with a diverse set of gardeners also give the opportunity to learn about other cultures.  If you can engage with your fellow gardeners, you can learn about different crop varieties that are particular to other regions of the world.  Thai eggplant, Asian long beans, Thai chili peppers, okra, bitter melon and the list goes on.  By communicating with the people that know these veggies best, you learn how to prepare and cook these special veggies. 

Here are some tips for working with a refugee and/or language-learning community:

  • Have picture-based signage. Put as many garden rules into clear graphic signage so that no matter your language or literacy level you can discern the message.  If you can, interpret and demonstrate the rule to the group so that the meaning is solidified.
  • Seek interpretation when available. If there is a language barrier, try to find a family member or a community leader to help with communication.  Communication is key to good relationships between gardeners.
  • Navigate cultural differences and misunderstandings. Cultural differences will arise, however the benefits are well worth negotiating these issues.  Common misunderstanding can be over perceptions of neatness in the garden, plot boundaries and ownership of produce.
  • Provide information and learning for all levels and styles. Individuals have varying levels of experience and success with formal, classroom-based education.  Some may have no experience.  Remember there are many approaches to learning.  Materials and sessions that are text and graph heavy can be difficult for some.  Consider storytelling, role-play vignettes, and demonstration as techniques to use in addition to plain language handouts to send home.
  • Make space for empowerment and sharing knowledge. Many people have rich backgrounds farming in their homelands.  With pre-set garden rules and typical “ways of doing things” much of the information can seem one-directional.  Adults are most engaged and learn best when they can share and draw upon experience.  Make space for this sharing to happen, and invite leadership from any cultural communities involved in the garden.

One great resources for working with refugee and immigrants as farmers and community gardeners: ISED Solutions (2017). Teaching Handbook Refugee Farmer Training. Happy garden planning!

Maggie Fitzpatrick is the Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator at Cuyahoga County Extension

Masterful gardener Lois Rose shares autumn in the garden

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST

by Lois Rose

These images are from Heights area gardens in September this year.

Anemone.  Needs full sun to partial shade, rich well drained soil.

Aster needs full sun.  They will self-seed around your garden if you fail to deadhead. Can be lanky so cutting back early in the season, by early June, can create a shorter and later flowering plant. Aster tataricus is blooming right now—very late, with lavender-blue tall stems.

Hardy begonia. Partial or full shade, bloom for months, prefers moist rich soil, come in late.

Belamcanda, or Blackberry lily likes full sun, sometimes reseeds. Needs good drainage. Seed pods are great for arrangements.

Plumbago—cerratostigma plumbaginoides. Blue flowers late in season, full sun to partial shade. Good drainage is important, slowly spreading ground cover.

Chelone—pink turtlehead, full sun or partial shade. Seedheads are nice. Plants can be pinched back in spring to reduce height.

Heuchera likes full sun to partial shade.  Don’t prune in winter.  Mulch instead.

Kirengeshoma palmata likes partial shade, suffers in drought. Prefers slightly acid soil.

Liriope, creeping lilyturf. Full sun or shade, do not deadhead for interesting fruit. Clean up in spring.

Perovskia or Russian sage in full sun. Long flowering, tendency to flop. Pinch by one-half when a foot tall for fuller plants.

Phlox in full sun. Seedlings are not true to type. Thin by a third early to reduce mildew, or choose wisely. Pinching produces shorter plants and delays flowering.

Physostegia, obedient plant. Full sun or partial shade, deadhead to improve appearance and possibly lengthen bloom time.

Sedum likes full sun or partial shade—Autumn Joy is a four-season plant, so it is cut back after winter has taken its toll but only then. Can flop in shade but can be pinched or cut back to a few inches when 8 inches tall in June for shorter and later blooming.

Solidago is full sun.  Can be cut back by a half in early June for shorter more compact habit and delay of flowering.

Trycyrtis, hairy toad lily likes partial shade. Can be cut back by one half in early June. Needs rich soil.

Heptacodium miconioides, Seven-son Flower. Grown as a shrub or tree, outstanding calyx display in pink after flowering is done in late fall. Needs moist, well drained, rich soil, partial shade, exfoliating bark.

If you want more information about the perennials or shrubs or trees, there are two very useful books that will help. One is “The Well-Tended Perennial Garden,” by Tracy DiSabato-Aust.  This is the kind of book you keep by your bedside so that you can read up on what you have to do tomorrow in the garden. The other book is Michael Dirr’s “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants.” Again, the go-to source for all kinds of information, from beginners to advanced. There are no color illustrations, but he has produced another book to fill that gap. It has less detailed information, but the pictures are worth—well, you know.

If you haven’t seen enough plants, here are more images, offered without commentary.

A Gardeners’ Market for Northeast Ohio

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST

by Tom Gibson

That’s right.  A Gardeners’ Market, not a farmers’ market.  August 2019 will see the launch of what its founders believe will be the region’s first market in which only home and community gardeners, and cooks (and no professional farmers) can sell extra produce and flowers, as well as certain “cottage” products like baked goods that pass muster by the Ohio Dept. of Agriculture.

The Noble Gardeners’ Market, as it has been named, is tentatively scheduled to run for 8 to 10 weeks into early fall and take place on a mini-park at the corner of Roanoke and Noble Roads in the Noble neighborhood of Cleveland Heights. (See www.nobleneighbors.com for continuing updates.)

The inspiration for the market came to Brenda May, a leader of the Noble Neighbors community group from a small market she encountered in Wilmore, Kentucky, just south of Lexington, the state capital. “This market had only about 8 sellers,” she says, “but people came and stayed for hours.”

Some people came with just 20 tomatoes to sell from backyard gardens and one woman sold herb cuttings for a dime a piece. Some of the sellers wanted to make a few extra dollars, but others simply wanted to connect with the community.

Recalls May: “It was clear that the herb seller might not earn three dollars that day. So why was she there? It was about connecting with people, exchanging information, checking up on each other. That’s where I had the “aha” moment about community building and about not needing to have box loads of produce to make a successful market.”

To test the idea, May and a half dozen other members of Noble Neighbors tested the idea in late summer on three successive Saturdays from 10 AM to noon.  The response was strong. Said Jill Tatum, one of the Noble Neighbors participants: “We learned that there was tremendous interest among buyers, that people loved to stay and chat with each other, and that our two-hour market time is perfect for both buyers and sellers.”

Although the Wilmore example started initial thinking, May and her Noble Neighbors colleagues are actually aiming higher. They are looking not only for participants whose highest priority is community connection, but also for home producers who want to use their skills to make extra money.

They are also looking for participants across the region, not just Cleveland Heights.  So far, growers in South Euclid and Cleveland’s Hough Neighborhood have indicated interest.

“We need sellers,” says May. “The more sellers we have, the more customers we’ll be able to attract.”

Sellers will need to bring their own tables or ground cloth and must be able to make change for their customers.  

“Right now,” she says, “we want potential sellers to start thinking.  Since we know that gardeners start planning their gardens during the dark, snowy days of winter, we hope they will be thinking about the Noble Gardeners’ Market. How much they plant next spring will determine how much extra they will have to sell in late summer.”

The gardeners’ market has the enthusiastic support of the City of Cleveland Heights.  Mayor Carol Roe says, “This idea for a community market is just the latest in a series of creative ideas from Noble Neighborhood that bring people together by ‘thinking green.’  We have high hopes that this market will become a landmark for the region.”  

CMNH Conservation Symposium report

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

One of the things I find interesting about the Natural History Museum’s annual late summer symposium is who goes to it. You expect naturalists, conservationists, ecologists – and also teachers, students, volunteers, and birders — but there are a large number of others who attend simply because they are interested in a diversity of nature related subjects. This on a work day…. In an auditorium known for hovering only a few degrees above arctic (Note: ALWAYS bring a hoodie).

This year’s symposium presented a pleasing breadth of topics, and most of them were rooted in Ohio — but not all. The morning keynote speaker, Jennifer Collins, who is Manager of Ocean Education at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History spoke on the educational uses of the biocube. A biocube is an open cube made of — its space defined by — peripheral tubes linked together to measure a cubic foot. Organisms can freely pass through the cube, which is then located on a chosen research site and intensely studied over the course of a day. Everything that passes through it, under it, over it, or past it, is examined and recorded before being released. They make up the cube’s biomass; generally, the more complex the environment being studied, the greater number and diversity of organisms that will be recovered. The tool used for identification is the app called: iNaturalist, available to anyone as a download. The model used is Q?rius, also available online, through the Smithsonian site…designed to “bring the museum’s collections, scientists, and research out from behind the scenes and within your reach. The biocube, and iNaturalist and Q?rius are great educational tools to engage students at every stage in the study of nature.

Another morning talk was called: The State of Dragons. Presented by Linda Gilbert and Jim Lemon, this was an update on dragonflies, of which, we were told, there are 170 (ish) species in Ohio.  Lest we think dragonflies too fragile looking and benign, we were reminded that these magical looking creatures of the gossamer wings are predators at every step, through every stage, of their transformative lives. We learned that it is the males that frequent water, while the females, which prefer to spend their adult lives farther afield, come to water lay their eggs. Kinda of like the girls of a Friday night visiting the neighborhood pub.  iNaturalist, again, can help with ID.

A more depressing morning session was plant health specialist David Lentz’s talk on the invasive insects  and pathogens that have killed, are killing, and are going to kill so many of our Ohio trees. This was his list: Dutch elm disease; the Japanese beetle (crops); the brown marmorated stink bug; the emerald ash borer; the hemlock wooly adelgid; the Asian long horned beetle (maples); the velvet long horned beetle (everything – its indiscriminate); thousand canker disease (walnut); the spotted lantern fly (pines, stone fruits); beech leaf disease; beech scale insects; laurel wilt disease ; the redbay ambrosia beetle (spicebush and sassafras – oh no). I would add oak wilt and two lined chestnut borer. There goes the mixed hardwood forests of northern Ohio. Isn’t that depressing….

What trees does Lentz recommend? — bald cypress; cucumber magnolia; Kentucky coffee tree; black gum; black maple; northern catalpa; big toothed aspen; and tulip poplar. Good luck with all that. And remember: avoid monocultures.

Lunch was followed by the afternoon keynote speaker, Chris Martine, the David Burpee Chair in plant genetics and research as well as Director of the Manning Herbarium, Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, who spoke on using good communication skills to get your narrative across: #1 – own your narrative;  #2 – produce good work; #3 – choose your story; #4 – write and share; #5 –do the legwork. And then when all that has been done, your article or presentation should be multi-layered, possess some attention getting and keeping novelty, and have good visuals. Of course he provided examples, which don’t translate well to this review… but one example (of several) that he provided was his #PlantsAreCoolToo video series, also found on Uzay Sezen’s Nature Documentaries site.   

This was followed by the afternoon sessions.

The first of these was Scott Butterworth’s talk on the history and management of white-tailed deer in Ohio. I can remember, as a child growing up in a still-very-rural (at that time) east side of Twinsburg (now the location of Liberty Park), the thrill of seeing a small herd of deer running through a neighbors field and effortlessly leaping a fence row as if no serious barrier existed. So I was interested to learn that there was a time in Ohio when both the hardwood forests and the deer had both been largely extirpated by logging/habitat removal (there’s an example of adding a little novelty to your presentation), and that between 1998 and 2008 the deer herd doubled. Today, we learned, we are seeing a decline in deer pregnancy numbers, and our coyotes – whose population seems to be stabilizing – are acting as effective predators. I can actually anecdotally verify that, as several times in the past recent years hikers have reported stumbling across deer haunches, or what remained of them, in Forest Hill Park. For more information on deer, the ODNR site to visit is WildOhio.gov.

This was followed by a presentation by John Watts on efforts to restore and preserve the native tall grass prairies of the Darby Plains, Madison County, geographically just west of Columbus and Franklin County. Two areas in the preserve are the Bigelow Cemetery and the Smith Cemetery Nature Preserves. These preserves, with deep soils and 350 year old Burr Oak trees, are located within (?) (I hope I have this right – my notes are not clear) the Pearl King Prairie Savanna, a 6070 acre wet prairie in the watershed of the Big Darby Creek. As part of the restoration, the drainage tile that had been installed to turn the wet prairie into well-drained tillable farmland, had to be exposed and broken. Buffalo have been re-introduced to this prairie, as well as thirteen-lined ground squirrels (that is their title) and hellbenders. Plants to be found there are Stiff Gentian, Tall Larkspur, Royal Catchfly, Sullivant’s Milkweed, Queen of the Prairie; Bunch Flower, Coneflower, Black-eyed Susan, and more. This would be a fairly easy day trip for those who want to see a tall grass prairie with buffalo without traveling west of the Mississippi River. Bonus: Water quality in the Big Darby is improving due to less sedimentation.

Two additional presentations were on areas closer to home and close to our hearts — one on restoring biodiversity at Acacia Reservation, and the other on the tragic history and hopeful recovery of the Mentor Marsh. Because Gardenopolis Cleveland has published David Kriska’s story of the Mentor Marsh in the past year, we are not including it today.

Connie Hauseman, who is a plant and restoration ecologist with the Cleveland Metroparks, described the process that has turned Acacia, a 155 acre fairly sterile golf course environment into a restored biologically diverse environment (which will get better and better). Like the Prairie project described above, the drain tile underlying the golf course fairways had to be exposed and destroyed. That was merely part of an extensive planning process. In addition to tile breaking the planning and early implementation stages included soil mapping, vegetation mapping, stream surveys, water level logging, deer browse pressure studies (via Hawken students), meadow establishment, invasive plant management, tree planting (5000 trees and shrubs, all native), and most importantly, stream restoration (1,775 linear feet of stream channel) and the construction of headwater swales to slow water down. Since the restoration, 139 different bird species have been documented. This is an easy one – put on your hiking shoes. Acacia reservation is on the north side of Cedar Road opposite Beachwood Mall. Go see.

We have also omitted one of the morning sessions: Sarah Brink, of Foxfield Preserve, speaking on Completing the Cycle: Finding Comfort in Conservation Burial. This is a subject about which we would like to write in the future.

Reeds and Roots

PASSION, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Tom Gibson

A new gardening/earthskills resource has taken root in Northeast Ohio.  Called Reeds & Roots Skillshare, the weekend event covering August 17-19 drew 215 people and probably just as many plaudits.  Its organizers believe they can repeat and expand their success in the years to come.

The event is modeled on the Whipoorwill Festival held annually in Kentucky and which one of that event’s organizers, Stephanie Blessing, passionately determined to transplant here. Taking stock, she sees “tons of support for future years. We are getting offers of other venues and more teachers and all kinds of excitement for future years.”

The skills shared ran the gamut from earthbuilding to fermentation to tree care. One of the attendees, Margy Weinberg of Cleveland Heights, commented that “one teacher was better than the next.”  She attended the fermentation class and also ones of reflexology, herbal foot baths, and leather bookbinding.  

I attended classes on edible mushroom identification and tree care.  I learned from both and am already applying to my own yard several of the ideas I got from Diana Sette, an arborist at Holden Arboretum.  See the full offering at https://reedsandroots.org/

The gathering was highly intergenerational, relaxed and from across the region (not only Cleveland, but Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Columbus, and even eastern Tennessee).

Above all, the event was exceptionally well organized—everything from signage to food.  If you want to be on next year’s mailing list, contact the organizers at reedsandroots@gmail,com.  Here are some pictures.

Gardenopolis Visits the Ohio Heritage Garden

PASSION, PERMACULTURE, POPULAR INTEREST

by Heather Risher

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Ohio Governor’s Residence for a tour of the house and gardens. The house is beautiful, full of Ohio furniture and handicrafts (the furniture, needlepoint, and rotating art exhibits that feature Ohio artists could be featured in their own post), but the gardens are stunning.

From the website: the Heritage Garden was first conceived in 2000 as a way to showcase Ohio’s natural history and environment to the thousands of yearly visitors to the Governor’s Residence. The garden features habitats from the five physiographic regions of Ohio. Former First Lady Hope Taft was the driving force in building the gardens (as well as stitching many of the needlepoint pieces inside the house). In my opinion, she and her team did a wonderful job of creating a welcoming garden representative of the entire state. I wanted to sit on one of the benches or swings and knit or read for several hours.

Our garden tour guide was Guy Denny, who is currently the Board President of the Ohio Natural Areas & Preserves Association (ONAPA) after leading the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves for several years. Guy worked closely with Mrs. Taft on the prairie garden (as he maintains his own prairie in Knox County), but he also shared a wealth of information about the garden in general.

The Governor’s Grove is in front of the house, where each governor since William O’Neill has planted a tree.

There’s a woodland shade garden, and a pergola with water features that provide habitat for turtles.  (If you look closely in the first picture, there’s a turtle head behind the rock in the center.)

When we toured at the end of July, the prairie sunflowers were in bloom. There are several helianthus species in the garden, including the threatened Ashy sunflower (helianthus mollis).

In 2011, the Heritage Garden was designated a monarch waystation.

Towards the rear of the property, there’s a medicinal garden and a Johnny Appleseed tree.

Along the side, there’s a greenhouse and vegetable garden. There is a solar array that provides backup power to the greenhouse and carriage house.

Circling back to the house, there’s a kettle bog with cranberries and pitcher plants.

I strongly encourage readers to schedule a tour and take a Tuesday road trip to Bexley, just east of Columbus, to visit the house and gardens.

If you can’t make the trip, the Columbus Dispatch produced a video tour of the residence, available on youtube:

This weekend! GardenWalk Cleveland 2018

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Ann McCulloh

A FREE self-guided tour of Gardens in Cleveland, Ohio, July 7-8, 2018. Some new features (see below) and some favorites, too. Check it out at gardenwalkcleveland.org.

GardenWalk Cleveland has been a (nearly) annual tradition in Cleveland since 2010, when the founders of this free, self-guided celebration of this city’s neighborhoods and gardens were inspired by their experiences of the GardenWalk in Buffalo New York. After seeing the way GardenWalk Buffalo revitalized perceptions of that city from cold, drab and depressed, to vibrant and blooming, Jan Kious and Bobbi Reichtel initiated an all-volunteer effort to bring that same vitality and spirit of neighborliness to Cleveland.

GardenWalk Cleveland is an invitation to walk the city’s neighborhoods and glimpse literally hundreds of unique hidden worlds. Every gardener has a vision of their ideal place, created in partnership with art and nature. Most people love to share their proud successes, but also welcome the chance to discuss their hopes and letdowns with sympathetic fellow gardeners.

All of us co-editors at Gardenopolis.com are eager to fan out and swarm the extraordinary and quirky gardens of five neighborhoods this year. My tour last year included stunning water gardens and daylilies in West Park, and intimate, mysterious lakeside hideaways in North Collinwood.  I’m looking forward to touring (and photographing) in Slavic Village, Detroit Shoreway and Little Italy this year.

This year’s Garden Walk Cleveland continues the tradition of a free, self-guided tour of selected, and possibly unfamiliar neighborhoods around the city. There are also a couple of changes, just to keep things interesting!

  1. LITTLE ITALY is the new neighborhood on the tour. Cleveland’s distinct and varied neighborhoods are some of it’s proudest features. Little Italy has a European character, with many restaurant patios and pocket gardens on display.
  2. SPLIT SCHEDULE! Gardens in West Park and Detroit Shoreway will be open for touring on Saturday July 7 from 10-5pm ONE DAY ONLY.The gardens of Little Italy, North Collinwood and Broadway Slavic Village will be open on Sunday July 8 from 10-5pm FOR ONE DAY only.
  3. REFRESHMENT STATIONS for picking up map guides, raffle tickets, etc. will be at selected gardens (three in each neighborhood), where you can also get snacks and beverages. Refreshment stations are indicated in the guide with red dots, and by a colorful banner in front of the garden.
  4. The raffle prize is a collection of garden items and gift certificates worth over $600. Tickets are one for $5, five for $20, and available at refreshment stations.

You can find the interactive garden guide and lots more information online at gardenwalkcleveland.org (click on the “Guide” button at the top of the page) or pick up your free map of the garden locations at Dave’s Supermarkets around Cleveland.

Take advantage of this open invitation to explore Cleveland’s colorful gardens and unique places – you’ll be amazed and inspired by the creativity and originality of your neighbors and fellow gardeners.