Having gotten to warm-up my plant ID skills yesterday with Jessica and the NYBG interns I am ready for my first day with the NRG and my supervisor Ferdie Yau.
I toss my backpack in the back of the huge pick-up parked outside of the office. The fancy buildings of 104th and 5th Ave. seem like a comical backdrop for the beat-up monster of a truck we are climbing into. As Ferdie expertly weaves our truck in and out of New York City traffic the truck transforms to a sporty racecar. He explains to me that we are headed up to the Bronx to meet up with some members of the Bronx River Alliance.
The Parks seal on our trusty all-terrain vehicle.
Started in 2001, the Alliance’s mission “serves to protect, improve and restore the Bronx River corridor so that it can be a healthy ecological, recreational, educational and economic resource for the communities through which the river flows.” They achieve this with river clean-up and restoration projects, as well as education and outreach.
Beatiful Bronx River with visible knotweed creeping along the bank. Photo from:
http://bronxriver.org/?pg=content&p=abouttheriver&m1=11&m2=15.
When we arrive at the Alliance office in the Bronx we meet with Elaine Feliciano and Robin Kriesgerg. I am immediately drawn to Elaine. She has a very warm, welcoming way about her and I can tell from talking with her that she is passionate about and driven by the Alliance’s mission. Elaine has been at the Alliance for nine years, almost from the beginning of the organization, and she clearly knows her stuff. As we begin our tour of the Bronx River and the areas managed by the Alliance, she can point to an oak and tell you when it was planted and who planted it with her.
The purpose of our tour today is to help the Alliance create a map to prioritize areas for restoration. The Bronx River spans 23 miles, a huge area, and the Alliance staff is small. They need to be organized and methodical in their approach to get stuff done. Our first stop is Shoelace Park. As we tour the park there are people stationed on benches, dogs out for their daily jaunt around the park, and children playing on the jungle gym, though this park doesn’t resemble the beautiful, manicured parks of Manhattan. The river’s natural beauty is masked by steep erosion tumbling into the water and the tall knotweed that obscures any view of the river.
Locals enjoying the trails along the Bronx River. Photo from: http://bronxriver.org/?pg=content&p=abouttheriver&m1=11&m2=15.
This park represents the intersection of two of my growing interests in horticulture and ecology. Along the river, the Alliance is primarily concerned with ecological restoration. This involves controlling the knotweed, replanting with native trees, and controlling the erosion and storm water overflow. The second part of the work for this park is concerned more with the function and aesthetic considerations, so plantings have more of a landscape architecture or horticultural purpose than ecological.
This park reminds me a lot of the way Lynden Miller, describes Central Park and Bryant Park before they were taken over by Lynden Miller, redesigned and replanted.
I greatly admire and appreciate Lynden’s projects but they are mostly finished projects-- the gardens have been planted and have been given the infrastructure to continue to beautify the space for years to come.
What is so exciting to me is to see a park like Shoelace with the potential to have the same transformation--and for me to get to be a part of that process! Robin is quick to keep my feet on the ground; when I express my excitement to her she reminds me that projects in Manhattan receive much more money and publicity than their neighbors in the Bronx. A harsh reality, but I am excited to be a part of the team tackling this challenge.
Our next stop is Muskrat Cove where we actually get to see some other Alliance crew members working out in the field, planting trees on a bank where they have just removed the Japanese Knotweed. As exciting as it is to see the crew in action we quickly become discouraged when we come across a plot that was planted only a month ago. When the crew removes knotweed they put down a black fabric to block light and suppress growth of the knotweed. While this method is temporarily effective, in this plot knotweed has wasted no time growing in and around the holes cut to plant trees. Because knotweed grows via rhizomes, once it has established itself, it is hard to stop. Additionally, at each site where the water comes up the bank it washes away the fabric and the knotweed takes over.
Bronx River crew member standing over a recently cut "knotweed cemetery".
Crew members spreading out black fabric "geotextile" to block light and hopefully prevent Japanese knotweed seeds from germinating.
Before we head back to Manhattan Ferdie wants to check on some plots he has set-up for knotweed research along the Bronx River in the Bronx Forest. Before we have even put the truck in park a girl and two men knock on our window and ask us to call the police. Two men with knives just ran through the park and robbed one of the men in front of us. As Ferdie calmly gets the full story and contacts the police, I marvel at yet another aspect of urban ecology that I have not encountered up until this point. Armed robbery in the Forest, go figure, I guess I have a lot to get used to. After contacting the police and cautiously driving through the forest with one eye on our plots and another eye out for the alleged robbers, Ferdie and I wrap up the day. Back at the NRG office our tank of a truck is returned to its rightful spot in front of the ornamental wrought-iron gates of the Central Park Conservancy.
Our neighbors, the regal gates of the Central Park Conservancy.
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