Tag: <span>Southeastern Pennsylvania</span>

THE BACKYARD HAS FINALLY BEEN TRANSFORMED FROM A NEGLECTED MENAGERIE OF NOXIOUS INVASIVE WEEDS INTO A PLEASANT AND INVITING SANCTUARY OF NATIVE HERBACEOUS PLANTS, SHRUBS AND TREES AFTER THREE YEARS OF WORK

The native plant garden of the Sanguine Root, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, Philadelphia Pennsylvania

Welcome to our backyard! This neglected piece of Philadelphia shares a border with Morris Park, which is on the other side of the fence. For years inappropriate plantings have been escaping this yard into the park, and Â invasives from the Park, escaped from other inappropriate plantings have found their way into the yard. Â What a mess! Â Noxious weeds such as Mile- a-minute, Multiflora Rose, Burning Bush, English Ivy, Porcelainberry, Japanese Stiltgrass and Garlic Mustard. Even the native plants were out of whack. Â Violets, Poison Ivy and Pokeweed Â were running rampant. Â Non native garden plantings, not considered noxious weeds were showing signs of aggressive growth such as Rose-of -Sharon and Snow drops.

The native plant garden of the Sanguine Root, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We tilled the soil and planted all native in the backyard over the last 3 years, and have been weeding out the non-native all along. Isabelle created a garden plan that involved an oval shaped area of grass surrounded by beds of plantings. Â The fact that the property directly borders Morris Park, a natural woodland area, has further inspired us to stick with native plants, especially ones native to the region of Philadelphia. Whatever we plant will eventually escape into the Park, and we would like that to be a plant that will not harm the natural area. Ideally, any plant we put in our yard would have originated from a local seed source, and we do try to search these plants out. Â Because of its proximity to a natural area, our yard is something of an extension of a natural area, yet it is a garden.

Joe Pye Weed, The native plant garden of the Sanguine Root, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Here we have confronted the situation at hand: we have this unique situation of bordering a natural area, and being enthusiastic about native plants, and wanting to create a beautiful garden in an area infested with invasives.

We found that by being limited to the native plants of Philadelphia, we were at an advantage: our clearly defined scope allowed us to focus on our planting choices, and the sun exposure and soil conditions gave us even more focus. The limiting choices of plant material has actually enhanced our sense of garden design. It has given it a purpose; an ecological sensibility and the challenge of a horticultural translation from raw nature to an ornamental garden setting.

There is an enlightenment to be had from the restrictions of native plants that only grow in this very specific region. Â We can focus on these specific plants, we can learn their habits, latin names and their place in the botanical classification, where they become members of a global family of plants that go back millenia. Suddenly we realize that we are participating in nature itself, that we are attuning ourselves to the botanical evolution of Southeastern Pennsylvania, we are truly embracing the sense of place, the home of the plants we choose, we are becoming involved as closely as possible to the millions of years of Â botanical evolution that have occurred right at our doorstep. Â What an amazing breakthrough!

Our sense of time has been transformed. We go out into the park and take close notes on the plants just growing, and we see them as the genetic blueprint of our natural lands, the area of the world we inhabit. We want a garden in our yard, we want to celebrate these local, indigenous plants, to highlight them, to conserve them, to share them, exalt them above the introduced versions, the aliens, the ones that are are inappropriate to our place. We want our sense of place to be reaffirmed and we want to have a grasp of our sense of time, the years, the seasons, the many skies that pass over us, that we are somehow a part of this natural phenomenon.

Here, we have a chance to participate botanically in the world of time and the immediate sense of place, here in Overbrook, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, here and now, we watch our plants grow and flower, and we ponder over the red, tubular flowers and the Hummingbirds that visit hourly, the moths and bees, the bright yellow flowers of the Sundrops, the Oenothera fruticosa,Â and we really feel our sense of place and time in our little spot in the world, our small urban garden in West Philadelphia. These plants we have chosen, guided by such scientific volumes as the The Vascular Flora of Pennsylvania, an Annotated checklist and Atlas, are the plants of our place. These are the plants that tell us where we are in the world, they tell us where the sun is, the rainfall, the soil conditions, where the nearest stream or wetland area is, or where the nearest tree is, how high in elevation, what the weather is.

We started with the books and have just gone ahead and planted them and watched them grow or die. Â The garden is a place where we Â have been trying to learn about nature first hand, in a semi controlled setting. We have watched our plantings wither and wondered why. Â We have watched other plants flourish with great delight. The native plant garden has captured us emotionally, we are made happy by the success of a species and made sad by the failures of another. Its a ground of learning, a new territory of exploration.

The idea of a garden being a place of botanical exploration is ideal. We recommend this journey to be one of native plants to your region. limitations, especially ecological ones, will prove to be the most rewarding. Putting boundaries on enlightenment may seem counterintuitive at first, but when we can grasp a solid sense of place by our restrictions, and really feel that we are somewhere, and this somewhere is magnificent and is the place, then we are enlightened.

We dream of visiting other parts of the world,such as the mesic forests of central China, where we can see the Tree Of Heaven, the Ailanthus altissima, growing naturally in its habitat. Â This tree is a noxious weed in the U.S. and in western Europe. It is a horribly problematic tree, but to see its native habitat could give us a sense of global place; will we understand better the value of our own habitat, our micro region, our garden?

To us the garden is more than a place we can kick off our shoes and Â rest under the canopy of a nice native shade tree and appreciate the beauty of nature, and see the flowers of our plantings we have worked so hard to create. Â The garden is a place of learning, an ongoing adventure of questions asked and answered.

Tall Meadow Rue, The native plant garden of the Sanguine Root, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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In the springtime, down by the Susquehanna River, there is a place we like to go called Shenks Ferry. Â 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

Shenks Ferry has captured our imaginations of Spring and has helped us cultivate our sense of place here in the piedmont of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Â 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. Â 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 Â 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 Â 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 Â 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?