Thank you to yesterday’s volunteers

Six volunteers showed up for our first planting day yesterday.  We planted fifteen bog-tolerant shrubs–native inkberry holly and summersweet cultivars–in the soggy area near the gate.  Many, many thanks to all our volunteers, each and every one of you did a fantastic job!

Future work plans:  Good news/bad news

Bad News:  Our first two workdays spent digging deep into the garden to remove invasive vine roots revealed that, not only do we have a frequently boggy area right at the gate, but in other areas there are very large chunks of asphalt and also parking lot gravel in concentrations that will make planting difficult or impossible.

Good news:  We met with Dave DeAngelis of LM Parks department and with our site designer, Harriet Cramer of Cramer Design Associates, to discuss how to address this situation.  The Township has once again come to the rescue.  Township crews will dig out the asphalt and parking lot gravel and fill in with new topsoil.  They will also change the location of the big maintenance gate and will add a small gate for public access, so that no one has to wade through a bog to enter the garden.  In addition, Cramer Design Associates will redesign the site plan to account for the change in gate locations.  Thank you Dave and Harriet!

If all goes well, the Township’s site preparation work and the redesigned site plan will be done next week.  The  Township will also provide a water tank and a pile of mulch so that we can carry on with our original plan to do more planting and apply cardboard/newspaper and mulch as an organic weed suppressant.  In view of these developments the June 1 work day is cancelled.  We will let you know the date and time of our next volunteer work day as soon as possible.