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Upcoming events at Edgewood Preserve:
Help Needed with Native Plant/Educational Gardens at Edgewood, June 5, 9:30 to 12:30pm.On Sunday, June 5, in honor of World Environment Day, we will begin the long-awaited planting in the fenced areas in the parking lot. On Earth Day our wonderful volunteers cut, dug and pulled mugwort and then covered the areas to prevent the weeds from growing back. On June 5, we will turn over the dirt and plant some native grasses and flowers purchased from the Long Island Native Plant Initiative based in Riverhead. Patricia will be purchasing these seedlings this Friday with another Edgewood volunteer.
These are big areas. We will plant approximately 30 seedlings in each area and will watch them carefully as they grow (and would love help with this!). If necessary, we will plant additional seedlings next year. But it is a good start in keeping the mugwort out and finally making the parking lot attractive with plants native to Edgewood and Long Island.
We would love 10 volunteers per fenced area, so 30 volunteers would be awesome, but the more the better. We know that the Daisy Troop that cleared one of the areas will be coming out to help plant, and we already have a volunteer who will help us water the plants for a week or so after planting to help the seedlings get established. We need people to volunteer to weed the areas, since some mugwort is sure to grow back and we want to pull it as soon as it does.
Families, students, gardeners and scouts — we need you! Please consider helping with this wonderful project — which has taken many years to finally happen.
Field Work Continues
If anyone would like to help Patricia in the field a few hours a week to dig mugwort, please let her know. The good news is that a large area that was tarped last year has not grown back with the same vigor and in one entire area, it has not grown back at all. This is really encouraging. It is quite overwhelming when one is in the field, surrounded by what looks like acres of mugwort, but as the saying goes — keep calm and carry on. We will not get all the mugwort dug before it gets too hot (and before Patricia takes her much needed respite for the month of August), but inch by inch, we will restore this field to what it should be and what it once was. Even an hour or more per week of digging and pulling is helpful. Please call or e-mail Patricia at 242-7402 or patricia@friendsofedgewoodpreserve.org
Trail Work
The West Babylon Troop did a great job on their trail. The Block Family recently spruced up their adopted trail — The Pretty Path, and Mary Beth and Paul Tomko will cover the Blueberry Trail. We recently trained another long time Deer Park family — the Malusas — who have agreed to maintain the entire “Fern Trail”, which goes from Old Commack Road east to the bluebird nest box field area by the spur. We still need help with the fire trail and one other trail. If you would like to help in this way, please let us know. We provide gloves, bags, pruners and guidance.
We will be showing the film “Fuel” (about our dependence on oil and how this dependence hurts our environment) at the Deer Park Library on Thursday, June 9, at 7pm. Free. Please join us!
Related articles
- Edgewood news 05/17/11 (www.onthewilderside.com)
- Earth Day: Do something! Help clean up Edgewood Preserve (www.onthewilderside.com)
Filed under: activism, babylon, Calendar, Ecology, Environment, events, film, local, long island, nature, suffolk, suffolk county, sustainability, sustainable Tagged: | earth day, Field work, long island, Plant, Seedling, united states, World Environment Day
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