Category Archives: Native Landscaping

Botany, Invasive Species, Native Landscaping, Uncategorized, Water Quality

Lesser Celandine – a Temptress

Lesser Celandine

When lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) came up in a shady moist part of my yard, I admit, I did not promptly rip it out, though I do know it is a confirmed Invasive Plant Species, on the official Connecticut List.  I realized that this patch  probably originated  from a bulblet that I had tracked back from the floodplain after field work, likely stuck in a boot tread.

Its glossy, yellow petals were  like those of a buttercup or marsh marigold, only there were more of them (eight versus five).   The  dark-green,  scalloped  leaves were shiny and heart-shaped, and formed a full,  weed-free ground-cover, though spreading far less  than the patches I had seen on the Quinnipiac River and Wharton Brook floodplains.  I rationalized that this species  was invasive in wetlands, not upland yards, so… I might as well let it grow and study it. When seed set  failed altogether, I was reassured that seeds could not disperse to the Ten Mile River floodplain, only half a mile away.  As a spring ephemeral, the lesser celandine  dwindled as the tree canopy expanded, and by August I saw only a few yellowed leaves- and many bulblets. I erected a barrier of logs and brush  so no one would walk there and pick up bulblets in their shoes.

Ranunculus ficaria  spreads aggressively by bulblets in river floodplains, where floodwaters move the buoyant bulbs around, but   I had rationalized that my patch  was innocuous as a small sterile clone in an inland, upland setting.  Two years later, my friend Jeanne Chesanow showed me a similar, small sterile patch of lesser celandine in her yard, also  in shaded, mesic upland soil. She lives about  a mile south of my house. I started to wonder, just how far do bees fly?

Lesser Celandine is reported to produce fertile seed erratically. Seeds may not have not formed in my and Jeanne’s  clones because the female flowers must receive pollen from a genetically different mating type, and none grow nearby.  However, with cross pollination between lesser celandine patches in multiple gardens, how soon will a threshold of abundance be reached, such that lesser celandine starts setting more viable seed? If that happens, will this plant “take off”  in mesic, upland habitats, as well as river floodplains?  Purple loosestrife spent many decades in the twentieth century, as a well behaved  garden plant,  producing few fertile seeds…. until that abundance threshold was reached and self incompatibility was no longer limiting. Only then did it start proliferating in a wide range of wetland and moist habitats.

This is a particularly tempting invasive, the more so because it forms a natural, attractive ground cover, and  is hardy and carefree. It is widely sold!  Most gardeners are probably unaware they are harboring an invasive species, may think it is Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris).  I  wondered, just how many other yards in Cheshire also have celandine patches.  It was time to stop playing around. I dumped a thick layer of mulch over my patch, and Jeanne got rid of hers as well.  Digging it is risky, as bulblets are dispersed.

A year has passed, and it is early spring, mud season. My garden has no yellow celandine flowers. As a weekly erosion inspector at a school construction site,  I am trying to persuade the contractor to spread hay over the idle bare soil, to reduce the export of fine sediment and phosphorus to the Quinnipiac River.  I wonder, could the yellow-dotted carpets of Celandine over bare, floodplain soils actually benefit the river and Long Island Sound, by reducing phosphorus  loading to during the early spring season?   DSC09978ClaytoniaHowever, especially in moist floodplain habitats, large mats of lesser celandine obliterate other  delicate spring ephemeral  wild- flowers like trout lily, wild ginger,  and spring beauty, and  also compete with perennial sedges and spring-germinating annuals.

However, lesser celandine  is reported to be much less less invasive in uplands than floodplains. Could this plant  be useful as a spring ground cover for landscaping, in well-drained soils, until other garden perennials  have reached summer biomass?    Could it help reduce lawn areas and turf chemical use, to protect downstream water quality?  More funding is needed for applied research,  to more precisely understand which habitats are most vulnerable to a given invasive species, and also to study breeding systems.  Is increased production of fertile Lesser Celandine seed really a threat?

Ranunculus ficaria Long Island

 

Energy efficiency, food chain, Native Landscaping, Soils, Water Quality, Wildlife Habitat

Water Woes on Drumlins

What is a drumlin anyway?  A gremlin with an aptitude for percussion?   Seriously, a rounded, elongated hill in the Connecticut landscape is probably a “drumlin”. The best known is Horsebarn Hill on the eastern side of the UConn campus at Storrs. Landing Hill in East Haddam was  in the local limelight several years ago. Lately I’ve been working on Meetinghouse Hill and Misery Hill in Franklin.  The Goshen Wildlife Management Area is another. The word “drumlin” comes from Ireland, where this land form also occurs.

The core of a drumlin hill is fine-textured, compact glacial debris, though bedrock may be underneath, poking through in a few places.   The compact “hardpan” layer (in common parlance)  may be over 100 feet thick, and dates from the prior Illinoisan glaciation (over 128,000 thousand years ago). Only the top layer, usually just a few feet deep, is sandier, looser soil, formed from the melting ice masses of the more recent Wisconsin glaciation, underlain by the compact till (scientists’ terminology).

These soils are seasonally wet.  Though the level summits seem, at first glance, to be well-suited to community development, they are challenging to develop, whether on drumlins or elsewhere, such as plastered onto the sides of traprock ridges. Most gently sloping drumlin hilltops in New England used to be productive hayfields, growing lushly in spring when soil moisture was available, going dormant in mid summer.  Pockets of wet meadow were rich in flowers, like New England Aster. Drumlin fields make fine hunting territories for raptors like barred owl.

Colorful wet meadow perched on top of drumlin.

Multiple seasonal seepage wetlands and headwaters streams flow down drumlin hillsides. They are a valuable source of clean water for the drainage basin if the drumlin is undeveloped, they but may become conduits for construction runoff.

There is more groundwater discharge on the nearly level sections of drumlin hillsides than on the steep sections. These are also prone to septic breakout.

Only a small percentage of Connecticut’s soils are compact tills but a disproportionate share of construction site fiascos and problem-plagued new subdivisions occur on hardpan soils. Wet, silty, sticky  hardpan  soils, on drumlins and also in other landscape settings,  can become a mire for heavy construction equipment because the snowmelt and spring rains “perch” on top of the hardpan. Saturated silty soils are highly erosive,  often an erosion control nightmare. Flooding problems are more severe than on absorbent soils, and water pollution from lawns and septic systems becomes a problem at lower home densities.  Break-out from home septic systems happens more often.

Typical complaints of drumlin residents: wet and moldy basements, icy sidewalks;  soggy, fungus-infested grass, burned-out grass, and dying shade trees; extended sump pump operation (not energy efficient), mosquitoes, and septic odors; and polluted down-gradient ponds.  These all become more of an issue for seasonally wet, drumlin soils, because more water stays at the surface, as it cannot soak into dense hardpan soil. (Runoff coefficients are higher, in engineering jargon.)

With careful home and septic system placement, curtain drains, and appropriate landscaping, one can avoid some of these problems – but only if home densities are relatively low.

Ironically, the loose upper soil layer of a drumlin is usually so shallow that it holds little reserve water during dry spells, so drumlin lawns need much irrigation in summer, though excess water is the problem in other seasons.   Solutions: small lawns, partially wooded yards, and/or a meadow landscape with drought-tolerant grasses like Little Blue Stem, a.k.a. Poverty Grass.

A Plea for Guidance

Could  CTDEEP and our Conservation Districts provide land use boards, planners, and developers  with more guidance on drumlins’  multiple constraints?  On-line mapping (Web Soil Survey or WSS) available from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) does show the approximate locations of seasonally wet, hardpan soil units, like the Paxton, Woodbridge, and Wethersfield soil series.

More guidance is needed to make sure fertilizers and pesticides are not applied before or after heavy rains.  This happens all the time in Connecticut suburbs!  Turf chemicals tend to run off drumlin soils, more than off more absorbent soil types, especially when the soils are already soggy.

Few understand that watercourse setbacks often need to be wider and  septic system densities need to be lower on compact till soils, to protect down gradient wells, headwaters streams, pools, and lakes from excessive nitrogen,  in nitrogen enriched groundwater and runoff. Because they reduce lot yields, these constraints need  explanation in an official DEEP guidance document, preferably also in a  CT Health Department memorandum!

Clear-cutting may seem to be  more economical for the developer, who should be warned that this is not wise on a drumlin!  To minimize future “water woes”,   maximize  remaining tree cover when subdivisions are built. The reason is two-fold: 1) to slow the velocity of the falling rain, and 2) because trees spew thousands of gallons of water into the air as water vapor (transpiration), helping dry out those surface soils.  After clear-cutting, a drumlin hillside that used to be wet only in March and April may stay wet to the surface though June – and before long, one will see the tell-tale mottles and grayish matrix color of a jurisdictional Connecticut wetland soil.

Some, but not all engineers use underdrains and clay stops  to prevent frost heave damage to roads and utility pipes, and to allow shallow groundwater to continue to seep down slope to wetlands that depend on this water source – instead of being shunted along  roadbeds and sewer lines.  Guidance is also needed in this area.

Once aware of drumlins’ constraints and resources, town  zoning boards  will be able to  guide development more appropriately,  protecting valuable vernal pools and hillside streams, and at least a portion of the productive forests. For expansive overgrown fields on flat-topped drumlins, if the alternatives of farmland or grassland wildlife habitat are not possible, at least the damage to down-gradient headwaters resources,  from a  low density, large-lot residential community, with small lawns,  will be  much less than from a large, dense subdivision.

(First version of blog posted on 9-6-08)

Energy efficiency, Invasive Species, Native Landscaping, Soils, Uncategorized, Wildlife Habitat

Ailing from Indoor Air Pollution? Go Outside!

This afternoon I heard on public radio (Faith Middleton Show) that  health problems from indoor air pollution are worst in the most energy efficient, air-tight homes (LEED- certified).  I also heard that on average Americans spend less than 95% of their waking day indoors. The Yale PHD interviewed praised his own leaky windows, for the healthy outdoor air they let into his house. (Research was done by Environment and Human Health, Inc. )

This is a very real problem, a major contributor to childhood asthma.  I have heard that it can be addressed without squandering energy by systems of ventilation that include heat exchangers – and by choosing building and decorating materials for minimal off-gassing- like wool rugs – or straw mats, rather than synthetic carpet with backings and  adhesives that generate unhealthy gasses.  It would be great for sustainable farmers to have a stronger market for sheep wool! Faith Middleton pointed out that better labeling of materials is needed, so that homeowners and contractors can make informed choices.

If structural changes are not possible in the short term, it helps to periodically open multiple windows to air the house, on warmer days in winter, and to spend more time outdoors.  My mother did not give me and my siblings a choice; we were sent outside to play and did indeed find interesting things to do.   A diverse natural environment with some wildlife, insect life, and wildflowers will hold your childrens’ interest longer!  Obviously we  breath fresh air while hiking and walking the dog.

Consider also that time spent working in the yard, is time breathing healthier air- typically also with less dust and mold spores than indoor air.  Pulling out lawn weeds, trimming bushes and raking weeds by hand is more time consuming than using power -tools.  It seems to me that the yard would be more inviting to many adults, with greater variety of plantings – and self-seeded plants –  native and non-native,  to keep track of and tend. My husband is not a trained horticulturalist or ecologist, but enjoys spending time outside with me, following my lead, and listening and learning as I point things out.  He now is able to recognize and mow around attractive native perennials – like buttercups and daisies – that crop up in the lawn, even before they bloom!

The outdoors is also more welcoming in summer,  if indoor and outdoor temperatures are similar. At our house in Cheshire, Connecticut, in lieu of air conditioning,  we use airflow drafts though open windows and screened doors, and  shade from an “umbrella” catalpa tree (pruned each fall) on the south side of the house.  Our extended family’s vacation house on Long Island is shaded to the south by two large hemlocks.  It has a long, narrow shape with many windows on both sides, allowing  for excellent cross ventilition. A screened second floor sleeping porch sleeps up to five (on cots) and is a pleasant place to spend time (read, sleep, or just rest and listen to the birds outside)  even in very hot, humid summer weather,  typical of Long Island.

Tomorrow, June 12th,  is the birthday of my brother, who believes lots of  work and play outdoors is the key to good health. We’ll be touring three demonstration alternative “organic” lawns in Newton, Massachusetts (Ecological Landscaping Assoc. http://www.ecolandscaping.org/), one with a solar house.   I expect to learn more ways to spend time outside on my piece of land, and have a fine-looking, dog-safe and wildlife-friendly, “organically ”  landscaped property – fodder for a future blog post. One way I know from childhood is to welcome black locust trees* and clover, which take nitrogen out of the air, by means of symbiotic rhizobium bacteria – free fertilizer! See photo below.

Sleeping porch: comfortable on hot LI nights- and days- in a pre-airconditioning house

*Black locust is on the invasive species lists of some states. It can spread aggressively, fertilize, and change,  sandy infertile natural habitats, as on the Cape in Massachusetts, but in a home landscape , in a pasture, or as a street tree, it is just fine, in my opinion (and that of other Long Island “natural resource professionals” and farmers).  Its abundant nectar is valuable for bees. Black locust  is in fact native to the US –  is from further south and west than Long Island and southern New England.

Invasive Species, Native Landscaping, Uncategorized, Water Quality, Wildlife Habitat

Zig-zag Dog Walks

When walking my dog Mackie in our tidy, suburban neighborhood, I zigzag back and forth across the street,  trying to avoid lawns that are aggressively chemical-treated, as Mackie is always “nose to the ground” unless he hears something of interest in the distance.

Mackie and I zig zag between sidewalks that border  apparently safe lawns.   I look for  clover leaves, variably green color (not evenly dark  green) ,  and small, low-growing patches of lawn wildflowers.  This odd behavior is  based on convincing anecdotes I have heard of repeated cases of the same cancer occurring among different dogs with similar exposures to pesticides.  It is also based on my reading of the results of epidemiological studies, summarized in the informative publications of Nancy Alderman’s non-profit, Environment and Human Health, Inc. based in North Haven.  Dogs are even more vulnerable to cancer than children, and we have already lost two family dogs to cancer: Tejana and Poka.   Poka died at Age 11 of jaw cancer, and would have died at 10, without expensive surgery.  Tejana lived to 15, but then during her first five years she was walked in urban vacant lots and on beaches, not in suburbia.

I began zig zag dogwalking after I heard several stories from the most dynamic trainer of organic landscapers in southern New England, Chip Osborne, out of Marlborough, Mass.   He was the keynote speaker at an Ecological Landscaping conference in Springfield, a few years back.  He told the class that he used to work in a greenhouse. His dog would lie under the potting table, with occasional drippings falling on them (with dissolved fertilizer, fungicide, etc.)  The dog, and then its successor, died of the same cancer.

He told a second anecdote: a  lady in a new residential community/cum golf course walked her dog on the lovely course every day. Her dog died of a nose cancer. She got a new dog, and walked the dog along the same route. Her new dog also got cancer, the same type – and she moved out. Of course dozens of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides are applied to golf courses, so it is very hard to know, without a real epidemiological study. The story teller quit his propagation occupation and went on to start a successful organic lawn care business, and also teaches many training workshops for other landscapers, transitioning to this approach.  He testifies for citizens groups as well.

The man believes in what he teaches; he knows that the organic approach to landscaping is not only better for the bees and other insects and wildife; it is safer for people and dogs.
As John Stuart Mill (1806 to 1873)  said:

“One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests”

I heard Chip give an articulate presentation to a Westport land use board,  explaining how one achieves sustainable  affordable lawn care without chemical applications, refuting advocates of tire crumb athletic fields for children.

Besides the  health of children and pets, lawn care practices can affect our water resources.  My  subdivision was built before the days of stormwater management.  Whatever folks apply to their lawns    (e.g., excess fertilizer and pesticides) may also wash over the curb along the pavement into the catchbasins, and thence into the River.

When walking the dog, we use a pooper-scooper or plastic bag, not just to avoid being  verbally attacked by my neighbors, but also to keep the feces from being washed by the rain into the extensive system of catch basins, which dump directly into the streams in our neighborhood.

Not only does our neighborhood have fewer  wildflowers, wild bees and beetles than it used to;  the  tributary streams fed by runoff  (2 mg/l of nitrate last time I tested our stream ) are nearly devoid of life.  The Ten Mile River, dowonstream  also has  fewer aquatic insects to feed  trout , dace,  suckers, and wood turtles.

Friends say: why don’t you just walk your dog  in a park?   Here in north Cheshire, we do have lovely open space behind us, The Ten Mile lowlands are great for hiking and free runs  but only in the non-growing season, unless one is a bird watcher coated with bug spray. We can manage driving Mackie to a park maybe once a week, but not three times a day!  Fortunately traffic levels are low in our neighborhood, except in late afternoon and early morning, so zig-zagging across the much-too-wide road is pretty safe.

It is a relief to visit Ships Hole Farm in Long Island, with no dog-walking constraints related to pesticide anxiety.

Violets and a dandelion- early spring lawn wildflowers at Ships Hole Farm.

As a scientist I do  understand, that we are dealing with possible health risks,  and that the majority of applied chemicals are likely not hazardous to humans.  However, the other matter is that a sustainably managed lawn is a diverse and  interesting mini-ecosystem, and can be lovely as well.  It  dos not harm fauna, like Northern Flickers , song sparrows, flower beetles, honeybees, and moles.  …. more fun to walk past and look at-  and probably safer- than a lawn that receives an intensive turf chemical regimen.

Bluet is a lovely lawn wildflower, with grasslike leaves
Naturalized white violets, an attractive, even low groundcover

Flowering bushes buzzing with bumblebees may also indicate a safe lawn. Sadly,  it is years since I have seen a honeybee in my Cheshire neighborhood and the miniature solitary bees have also become very scarce.  However, I still do find honeybees on vacant lots (just yesterday on Broad Street in downtown Manchester) and in poorer neighborhoods.  On those properties  there is probably little use of expensive, beetle grub insecticides (imidocloprid is a neurotoxin that also harms a great many other insects, including bees.)

Native Landscaping

Beech parents

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Beech grove on hillside in Newtown, Connecticut, fall 2008

As it’s just a few days past Mother’s day, this blog has a parenting theme. Corny as it sounds, beech parents care for their children, and grow old surrounded by their families. American beech is one of our few full-size clonal forest trees, a good thing because beech nuts are so sought after by wildlife that very few ever germinate. In Connecticut one often comes upon a stately mature beech tree surrounded by young trees and saplings, all growing well despite the deep forest shade. The young beeches can’t make much food (photosynthate) , but their “mother” feeds them via root connections, until they are tall enough to get ample sunlight themselves. The network of shallow beech roots also excludes weedy competitors.

Seedlings from oak acorns have no such parental food source. If growing in a dark forest, they must remain stunted, barely growing, maybe for decades, until a sunny gap is created when a tree dies or tips over. Only then can they take off and become a sapling and then a tree.

The practical lesson here: plant seedlings of native forest trees like oaks, hickories, ashes and beeches in well-lit areas, not in deep forest shade.

Native Landscaping

Clonal Woody Plants

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Likely as not, a large thicket of many plants that all look alike is in fact a multitude of clones from just a few plants, thaSweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia), a clonal native shrubt have sent out root suckers. If one is willing to wait five to ten years, a low budget planting plan with clonal species can yield impressive coverage. Sumac clones can be twenty to thirty feet tall, and make a fine hedge. Scattered aromatic sweet fern (Comptonia) will coalesce to form a low spreading cover on a sandy slope. A few sweet pepper bush (Clethra) shrubs will become a a mass of white fragrant flowers in early summer. Patch-forming native woody species, that form large, even homogeneous masses are actually very well suited to formal landscaping,  contrasting with isolated specimen plants. Other excellent clonal shrubs for use in landscaping are gray dogwoods,  chokeberries (Aronia spp.) ,  and bayberries.

A knee-jerk reaction might be that with a few large clones,  we have few species and low genetic diversity, not a desirable situation, ecologically.  In fact these species form clones wherever they grow in the wild or human designed landscapes.  From the perspective of insects, tree frogs,  and birds,  larger patches make for more energy efficient foraging. A flock of cedar wax wings will settle down to feed for an afternoon on a sizable patch of  chokeberry or gray dogwood  and the nectar from a Clethra colony is a  significant food source for a bee colony.  Its easier than hunting for widely scattered fruiting or blooming shrubs!  Of course, taken to an extreme, a large monoculture or plantation often leads to pest infestations.  Landscaping with clonal native woody shrubs is not only economical for us, it is energy efficient for the creatures further up the food chain.