Globes and Killing...Sustainability and Remediation

We just got this cool globe from the US Botanic Garden, it is the "Green Globe", one of a series of more than 40 globes that are part of an exhibit focused on sustainability: One Planet--Ours!. In case the scale isn''t immediately apparent, this is a big globe. We anticipated its arrival with some trepidation, both because of its weight and size and the fact that it had to fit through the double doors in the background. All went well. I guess! Anyway there it is. We were gifted with this particular globe to reinforce our own exhibit, Power Plants, that will be a walking display of different plants that are potential alternate energy sources. The exhibit is in development now and will officially open June 21 between the Herb Garden and the Friendship Garden.

Today, in our continuing effort to control invasives in non-curated areas, I spent a bit over half the day spraying Triclopyr on woody plants in the wet meadow above Beech Spring Pond. Where the grass is tall and away from tree circles, things are pretty good, but under the trees it is another story; English Ivy, Oriental Bittersweet, Porcelain Berry, Japanese Honeysuckle, Bush Honeysuckle, Callery Pears, Tree-of-Heaven, all invasive aliens, are the major culprits. We control a few natives too, so that the meadow may remain a meadow and not turn into a forest, mainly Black Walnut and Blackberry. I worry sometimes that I am desensitizing any healthy qualms that I may have about broadscale applications of herbicides, but they just work so darn well. Absent dozens of additional employees, they help us keep our heads above water. When all is said and done, I feel good about today. I expect that I killed more than half of the plants we don't want in that meadow, and weakened more. The thing is that I was only able to work on that area because of the generosity of the Fern Valley Curator, who lost 5 hour of labor in her collection but did a good thing for the community. These plants are not called invasive for nothing; if no one gets back within the year, we lose all the gains we have made over the last several years. But I expect someone will get back!