THE RICH RAVINES OF THE LOWER SUSQUEHANNA, PART TWO, SPRING 2013

The Virginia Bluebell, Mertensia virginica, at Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, as fresh and blue as can be!

Winters are so much longer than Spring, so we are looking for ways to prolong Spring, to extend it somehow, so we can appreciate all of the changes, each one at a time, flower by flower, and every bright blue day and every rainshower!

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

The Virginia Bluebells on the hillside, in the Susquehanna afternoon. We found the bluebells growing in massive quantities on the Susquehanna floodplain, along with the white variety and the pink varieties, all naturally occurring. We found Virginia bluebells growing alongside Mayapples and Spring Beauties, Dutchman’s Breeches and of course Trilliums. We found them blooming along the Schuylkill and the Delaware, and blooming in our own back and front yards, where we planted them, and now they are spreading and re-seeding themselves, covering once barren ground, damaged by invasives and disturbances, these cultivated Bluebells are now creating Spring, and extending it across the weary and torn urban soil.

We come to Shenks Ferry and we are reminded of our own yards full of Bluebells, how hard we have worked to repair the degraded gardens and restore them to a state of natural beauty. We gain confirmation of the conditions of natural beauty in a place like Shenks Ferry. These are conditions we want to have more of in our lives, close to us as the garden is, because natural beauty does not have to be something that is visited upon, when it can so easily be lived in, even in cities.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

An inviting path through Spring itself- a walk into Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve.

It is perhaps especially in cities that the natural world can not only be preserved, but maintained- preserved by neglect to some degree, where agricultural practices have ceased in favor of development, leaving fragments of land untouched altogether-and maintained by urban dwellers aware of the needs of a natural area and eager to volunteer their efforts at upholding it.

The suburban model of land use is antithetical to natural lands conservation. Vast portions of land are dedicated to lawns. In effect, the suburbs use up much more natural lands than do cities per person. Housing development is consuming more and more land by the day.  Maintaining these lawns requires fuel resources that require more destruction to the environment. These lawns do not contribute to the natural ecology of the region and if homeowners do not maintain them, often they can be fined!

Driving to Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve we pass miles upon miles of mowed lawns and monolithic agriculture and the unmanaged lands we pass are just dense with invasive vines and weeds.

Arriving at Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve is so pleasant and inviting. It has that Home aspect to it, as if we are at a place we can relax and enjoy the beauty of the flowers, the walk and the views.

It is really neat to see all of the same plants we have in our  Philadelphia gardens, growing in a natural setting.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

This woodland Phlox was in peak bloom at Shenks Ferry, lining both sides of the path, up and down the hillsides.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

 

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

 

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

Above, the whole plant, from the ground level.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

What has become very clear in our travels throughout the region in the past few years, in combination with our restoration efforts in Morris Park and our gardening adventures (most importantly), is that the beauty of a wildflower preserve can be re-created in our yards in a simple, easy way with no complications.  In fact, the pictures in the above photographs, for the most part, could have been taken in our Philadelphia rowhouse back yards, because we have have planted and cultivated the same wildflowers. We have been able to bring this enchanting springtime forest of blooming wildflowers home to our yards. We were able to purchase these plants at the local native plant nursery, and the numerous plant sales that happen every spring.  Like-minded friends with native plant gardens have also been generous with us,  sharing their plants.

From lawn to garden, the richness and beauty that this transformation culminates into when the birds come with their sweet springtime songs and bright colors as they feed upon and inhabit the garden is completed. This beauty is made from your hand that sculpts the rich garden from the desolate lawn. These exquisite songbirds that grace our soundscape in the early morning are completely dependent on the plants that grow in Shenks Ferry wildflower preserve- a stunning array of plants, trees and shrubs, all of them indigenous to the region, ecologically relevant and biologically connected to an ecosystem of thousands of species of plants and insects, all of them having co-existed here for millennia.   What a better place for the songbirds to rely upon for their life’s sustenance than the place their species has been going to for millennia. They are also potentially dependent on plants that you may have in your garden!

It is now possible to quantify which plants host certain species and which do not, and this creates a system of ranking, where certain plants may be nearly useless to their contribution to a habitat and some may be even harmful, and many being very productive, interacting with and sustaining many species of insects and the songbirds that rely upon those insects, for one example. As it turns out the plants that do the most harm or are nearly useless are from other continents and have evolved in an ecosystem with non-relevant species than the one they were recently introduced to.

What happened to the birds who relied upon the area of a suburban development that bulldozed the ecosystem and built houses with lawns?  As with all of the plants, possibly birds also experienced something called extirpation. Extirpation is something like extinction in that it means that a specific area of land or a region has experienced a loss of a species.  For any given area, an extirpation is very close to extinction. For a species to return to that area, the conditions would have to return to a former state, and hopefully that species extirpated would still be around to re-inhabit that area.

This can happen and it has. However, often an area that has experienced an extirpation needs to be restored to a state that can support the extirpated species, which will return as soon as it can. This is where we come in, we humans, gardeners, lovers of nature, wondering what we can do to help out, possibly questioning the lawns, thinking about ecological sustainability, loving songbirds, flowers, springtime, wishing we could be at Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve!

Reversing extirpation

We can do it! Humans have created the conditions that have resulted in extirpations of species, we can also be the agents of change in the restoration. At Shenks Ferry, we can see the great variety of plant species before our eyes.

Extirpation is often granted status at the state level, such as the species that have been extirpated from New Jersey. Considering that states have many sizes and can cover multiple ecological regions, it could be beneficial to the understanding of this process to view it on a smaller scale, especially if an extirpation truly occurs in a county, township, small park or natural area or a specific piece of private property, these need to be measured and given status. Consider Morris Park, Philadelphia, where sections of the park have been infested with invasives for a long enough time to crowd out the native flora, to the point that these plants no longer grow in the area they used to. These plants were locally extirpated from their ecosystem.

By removing the invasives in these areas, we have witnessed the self re-introduction of native species of plants, which now thrive in these formerly uninhabitable areas. Species such as Spicebush, the sole breeding-ground plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly, which now grows where it did not before.  This is where our garden and perhaps your garden comes in: after we cleared away the invasives in the garden and planted Lonicera sempervirens, the native red-blooming honeysuckle, which does grow in Morris Park, just next door, the Ruby Throated hummingbird began to visit our garden for the first time in our recollection!  We now have planted the native scarlet-red blooming Lobelia cardinalis, the Red Lobelia or Cardinal Flower, and the spring ephemeral, Red Columbine Aquilegia canadensis,  as well as  Bee Balm, Monarda didyma,  and we have encouraged the tubular, red-flowered  Campsis radicans vine to grow on a large brick garden wall that was crowded with the invasive Porcelain berry.

Except for the invasive exotic Porcelain berry vine, These are all plants the hummingbirds need for their survival.

We have witnessed the Hummingbirds visit these plants in our yards numerous times. Where before we had these plants there were no birds and now there are these Hummingbirds, we can only surmise that we have reversed the extirpation of this species in our own backyard. That and the Black Oaks, Tulip Poplars, Bloodroot, spicebush and the spicebush swallowtail butterflies that are now living in the area of the Park that was nothing but the invasives Multi-flora rose and Garlic mustard!

Reversing extirpation can be done, and it is so much fun and very easy, one little bit of place at a time…

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

The sun has begun to set in the beautiful Lower Susquehanna Valley, and we have chosen Shenks Ferry Wildflower preserve as the location to enjoy the golden light of Spring. Hillsides covered with blooming spring flowers and the canopy of trees green with the promise of a lush summer ahead, it is very quiet except for the sweet sounds of a few songbirds.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

The path through Shenks Ferry is enchanting in the  Springtime early evening.

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013
SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, MONDAY, APRIL22ND, 2013

 

SHENKS FERRY WILDFLOWER PRESERVE, APRIL 14, 2013

There is a small hillside in our garden that gets plenty of Spring sunlight and is covered in Trout Lilies, Spring Beauty, Bluebells, Dutchmans Breeches, Mayapples and Trilliums. Bloodroot blooms white and bright in the early Spring. We call this section of the front yard Shenks Ferry.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Our Bluebells are in full bloom, often bluer than the sky, the colors are so rich, especially in the evening. The patch is thick and the luminescent blue is so striking against the white flowers of our Trillium erectum var. Album, which we purchased at our local Native Plant Nursery , Redbud Nursery. Only guessing here, but the seed stock for this particular trillium was most likely collected with permission at or near Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, being that the white flowered version of this usually red Trillium is found primarily in the vicinity of or at this specific site.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Every year our garden bluebells grow in size and are re-seeding themselves, making our garden look more and more like Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve .

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

 

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

The magnifying glass can create a whole new dimension to exploring the plants in our garden!

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Our garden has inviting paths, that we can use without stepping on the plants. Being that native plants are losing so much habitat to development and exotic-plant dominated landscaping, as well as the invasive exotics that are running rampant through what is left of our natural lands and remnants,  stepping on a native plant in Shenks Ferry is to be avoided at all costs. So we practice not stepping on native plants in our garden, using our narrow but inviting paths.

IMG_9095

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Our reward for not stepping off the paths and crushing the plants is we get Trilliums growing right up next to the path that will one day grow to be 18 inches high and almost a foot in diameter!

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

The Trillium Erectum var Album growing in our garden will one day reach the soaring heights and broad span of this glorious specimen at Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve!

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

In our Philadelphia rowhouse yard, the Trilliums and Bluebells grow together, just like at Shenks Ferry. In fact, Shenks Ferry has been instructional in our garden construction.  We have ground up our leaves in the fall and created a thick layer of leaf compost in our garden to match the soil conditions of Shenks Ferry as best as possible. We pay close attention to plant associations so we may plant our Trilliums, Bluebells, Mayapples, Dutchman’s Breeches, Maidenhair Ferns and Christmas Ferns in a naturalistic way.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Even more inspiring for us was the one sunny Spring morning last year when our garden looked like a miniature Shenks Ferry Wildflower preserve! Thats when we named the little hillside alongside the front patio “Shenks Ferry”.  Even the Spring sky had that bright clear blue color and the ground with that fresh bright green of Spring Ephemeral wildflowers!  We had achieved the goal of creating in miniature what we find the most beautiful in our regional natural environment in just a few years.

When we started the native plant woodland garden, it was a monoculture of the invasives Japanese Pachysandra, English Ivy, Vinca vine and a few daffodils, all of this in the shade of a mature Pin Oak and Sugar Maple, both native forest trees.

There was a Japanese Maple in the middle of the yard, which we gave away after we ripped out, bagged up and trashed all of the invasives and brought in a few truckloads of leaf compost from The City Of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Recycling center.  The yard was a ‘pass’ and respectable from the standards of a city yard before hand, but to us it was completely unacceptable, uninspiring, boring, and useless to the local ecology. Robins would hop up and down in the adjacent Morris Park, but not in the yard.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Now we have many Trilliums growing in the our yard, and many of them flower every year.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

We also have a growing Trout Lily patch, but no flowering ones yet, its only been three years.  To get a flowering Trout Lily takes years and years of growing.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

The Bluebells are fast growers and generous bloomers and make a great garden patch!

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Above, the Spring Beauty blooms all Spring in our yard and creates a great border close to the paths.

 

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

While our yard will never come close to the natural beauty of Shenks Ferry, we have managed to recreate a satisfying miniature replica of it in our inspired efforts of cultivation. The replica has some of  the same plants, facing the sun in the same directions, protected, not from cliffs or steep hillsides, but from stone rowhouses, but protected nonetheless.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

When we drive the 78 miles from Philadelphia to Shenks Ferry, we see the landscapes that lack what it is we are searching for and trying to create: highways and developments lacking mature trees; invasive vegetation entangling our views for miles, the outright mis-management of land in general, from broad lawns to vast expanses of pavements to invasive weeds, the trip is exhausting to witness from our perspective.

Now, people are visiting Shenks Ferry in crowds, seeking the beauty of a place left alone for the most part since 1906, when there was a dynamite factory on the site that exploded, killing 11 people.

Shenks Ferry is an inspiration for us, as a place of beauty and a glimpse of the natural world of our region, just to appreciate as it is and to aspire to in our own habitats.  When we garden ornamentally, this regional habitat, ecosystem, forest, woodland wildflower forest-scape and natural ravine is the essence of what we aspire to.

Shenks Ferry gives us that Sense-of -Place.

Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, Sunday, April 14, 2013. www.thesanguineroot.com

Every morning, in the Springtime, Robins now hop up and down in our yard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN THE SPRINGTIME, DOWN BY THE RIVER

In the springtime, down by the Susquehanna River, there is a place we like to go called Shenks Ferry.  This is a protected ravine where Grubb run cuts deep into the piedmont and spills into the wide and blue river. This is a place where the flowers bloom, covering the hillsides with color.

We have become enchanted.

It is in a remote area, full of charming farms and vistas containing dramatic river views. On April 8, 2012, we descended the piedmont towards Shenks Ferry and caught a view of the whole place. In just minutes we would descend further into the ravine itself.

The lower Susquehanna River valley overlooking Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve
The lower Susquehanna River valley overlooking Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve

Shenks Ferry has captured our imaginations of Spring and has helped us cultivate our sense of place here in the piedmont of Southeastern Pennsylvania.  We wonder at the amazing diversity of plant species. It is astonishing.

The beauty of this ravine in the Spring is brought forth by the carpet of green with the multitude of colorful inflorescence. The trees are magnificent; they still have their grand superstructures so apparent in the winter, but with a haze of green buds and flowers. The sun still reaches the flowers of the forest floor, providing them with the energy of a vibrant and fantastic Springtime life.

The leaves of these flowers are so elegant yet delicate. Each leaf is a map of the inner world of the plant. We can clearly see how much the herbaceous plants of the forest floor depend on the trees for their habitat, because when the trees leaf out, they will protect them from the harsh sun of late Spring.

The light of early Spring is distinctive. Once past the equinox, there is a true change in the quality of days, the mood of a morning and the height of an afternoon.  Our sense of place is once again made ever apparent celestially- our planet has moved around the sun at its usual tilt, but at this point in its orbiting travel, our section of the earth, the Northern hemisphere is more directly in the path of its light.

We are constantly moving, and there is change and revolution in Shenks Ferry.

The flowering herbaceous plants, the shrubs and the trees are rooted and beyond what we perceive as ancient. Their genetic provenance in this ravine is beyond our comprehension of time, like the rocks they grow out of are geological, these plants are botanical. In the sciences, time is measured and quantified with the greatest degree of accuracy possible. Everything is evidence based, and botany and geology are fused in time, like the fossil of a fern found in the layers of a sedimentary rock. Time has a physical manifestation we can understand and touch.

Looking at these plants and rocks in Shenks Ferry on a balmy April afternoon, we see a world that embodies time itself as our world has recorded it. It is a time-sense that is very difficult to comprehend, especially with the rocks. The beauty of these flowers and the whole place is in lock step with time itself. The blooming flowers reflect the past to us, many years beyond our sense of the ancient and prehistoric. Like the night sky, the light of the stars has finally reached us from a long ago past, the spring flowers before our eyes are also images from the distant past.

 

We stopped for lunch on a log, and wondered at the floral hillside beyond, reaching up to that blue spring sky, a hillside covered with blooming bluebells and trilliums, a hillside of Oaks, Maples and Beeches, with an understory of  Sassafrass, Dogwoods and Redbuds, we wondered about what beauty really is and where it is, and if it is measurable, like in Botany or Geology, or in contrast to the horrors of the world, that of war and environmental degradation, that beauty has been worn down to something as rudimentary as an aesthetic  sensibility subject to the whims of the creative observer, or is it something less complicated, like the passage of time itself, the rotation of the planets around the sun, the flowering of the ages, a Bluebell, what we call the Mertensia virginica, a flower bluer than the sky, a blue that we can hold in our hands, a beyond ancient blue, a seemingly timeless blue that we can plant, cultivate and regenerate in our own gardens, a blue that we can appreciate, photograph and a converse about in our  time, this is the blue of a Spring sky, the blue of time, this is the blue that is beyond our comprehension, yet it is the color of blue that inspires our imaginations.

While there may be aspects of the flower that are genetically complicated and worthy of study and research that will further our understanding and appreciation of the world, the simple beauty of the flower is the blue color. The sky is growing out of the ground! What is Spring without the plants mirroring the sky?