Speech at ECWA's 20th Year Celebration

20 years after its founding, the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association threw a party as part of its annual meeting. They invited me to address the membership, to tell my story. Below is what I came up with to say. More on the organization's history can be found at this link, and I did a brief writeup on the event at my Princeton nature blog. 

SPEECH AT ECWA’S 2019 ANNUAL MEETING AND 20^TH YEAR CELEBRATION

Steve Hiltner, founder of ECWA

NOV. 17, 2019

 Hi. My name is Steve Hiltner, and I founded ECWA 20 years ago. What I will aim to do in my ten minutes is to tell you something about my own story and about ECWA's early years.

I'd like to begin with a show of hands if I may. How many of you grew up in Durham? (a few hands went up) And how many of you moved here from somewhere else? (the great majority of the audience raised their hands) Now, I would say, and I think you'd agree, that Durham has a special feel that is deeply rooted and enduring. But of what is that feeling made, if so many of us began our lives somewhere else? That is one of the enigmas of Durham. All I can say is that though I grew up in Wisconsin and Michigan, I didn't feel like I'd found my home until I moved to Durham. And that feeling hasn't changed since I left, even though I'm happy in the town where I now live.

Standing here, I feel joy in all the faces I recognize, but also in all of you who I have yet to meet. If there are many of you I don't know, it is a testament to the fact that I am not alone in being hard-wired to Ellerbe Creek. Though it is fortuitous in many ways that I came to Durham, it is equally fortuitous that I left, because it made more room for others to develop a similarly deep connection to ECWA and the watershed, others much better than I at building the organization that I had begun.

My story is in some ways an immigrant's story. We think of immigrants as those who move from one country to another, but it is also true that even we native borns take on the aspect of an immigrant when we move from one town, or one state, to another.

When I moved to Durham, I had no ambitions other than to explore the new territory. I knew nothing about nonprofits, and had little awareness of watersheds. The only organization I had ever led was an 8-piece jazz-latin ensemble. Mostly I was grateful to my wife, Gabriela, for having extracted me from my life in Ann Arbor, a town I liked very much, but where I didn't feel particularly useful. As a plant person, I had a desire only to bloom where I was being transplanted. Gabriela was beginning her career as an professor at Duke University. In Michigan, I had collected a couple degrees in botany and water quality, had played saxophone in jazz bands, worked part time as a horticulturist, had taught piano to kids. When we moved to Durham, I had no particular career, but I did have for the first time in my life a clear purpose for being here on earth, as father to our new daughter, Sofia, born just two weeks prior.

Fatherhood was fortuitous in many ways. I like to think of my daughters as good luck charms. It was Sofia who led me to the creek, and later led me to the people who would help to get the organization going. And it was my wife's job as a professor that provided me with some latitude to pursue less remunerative dreams. What I brought to Durham, as an immigrant of sorts, was fresh eyes. Once I discovered Ellerbe Creek, I could see it not as the ditch so many considered it to be, but as a place of undiscovered beauty and possibility.

Back then, the creek often flowed brown with sediment when it rained. In the late 1990s it was sustaining deep wounds in the headwaters, where the DOT was beginning to widen I-85. I didn't know what to do about that. At first I hardly knew where Ellerbe Creek came from or went. But in my new neighborhood, I found things I wanted to do. 

As a botanist, I could see that the parks and abandoned floodplains along the creek had become dominated by invasive species, and lacked many of the beautiful native plants I was encountering in my walks with Sofie at NC Botanical Gardens and at the Blomquist Gardens at Duke University.

It was my daughter Sofie who got me making frequent visits to Indian Trail Park, and it wasn't long before I began planting what I called "wetland gardens" in the wetter, sunnier areas of the park. These clusterings of native wildflowers were appreciated by others in the neighborhood, and I began wondering where else I could plant them. At some point, I became aware that the creek flowing through the park was called Ellerbe Creek. I discovered a woodlot across the road from the park, and got the idea of replacing its tangled jungle of invasive vines with native plantings and trails. 

Over time, I began to see how Ellerbe Creek could become a unifying element in Durham, connecting diverse neighborhoods and peoples to one another, and how the creek's many abandoned floodplains could be turned into mini nature preserves. I wanted to bring the beauty I had encountered along the Eno and in botanical gardens into the neighborhoods where people live.

I searched for another organization that would show interest in preserving the undeveloped lands along Ellerbe Creek, but the small urban parcels did not fit the interests or mission of any other organization. It was like the story of The Little Engine That Could. The only way for the vision to become reality was to start a new organization.

Ellerbe Creek, and the power of the vision it spurred in me, presented a great personal dilemma. What I had brought to Durham was different forms of love: love of family, love of plants, love of music, words, and learning, but I had yet to develop a deep love of people. And yet it was people I would need in order to create places for plants to flourish along the creek. Thus, the evolution of ECWA involved also an evolution in me, from introvert to someone who became engaged in the community. I'm sure many of you have experienced your own personal transformations as well, through community work.

When a nonprofit starts out, it survives on a thread, on a shoestring. Each new board member, and you know who you are or were, is a godsend. Collaborators are so important. Taking on a community project alone seldom happens because it feels so very lonely. 

I do want to at least speak some of the names of the people and organizations that made it possible to turn an idea into an organization and sustain it through its fragile early years.

The Watts Hospital Hillandale Neighborhood Association and the Durham Environmental Affairs Board were early sources of inspiration and mentoring. The retired Duke botanist Lewis Edward Anderson and his wife donated a key acre of land, the value of which allowed us to get a Durham County Matching Grant to acquire our first nature preserve. Leslie Nydick helped apply for nonprofit status. Mike Shiflett and Don Moffitt were among the many neighbors who were early supporters. Key early board members were Lou Perron and David Lilley, followed by Steve Williams, Robin Kirk, and Chad Hallyburton. Another generation began with Larry Brockman, Jane Finch, and Perry Sugg. And then came webmaster Tony Tchopp, Julie Holmes, our treasured treasurer Candace Turney, and naturalist extraordinaire Josh Rose.

Like the vision for Ellerbe Creek, ECWA's first paid staff position also grew out of caring for wetland gardens in Indian Trail Park. One day, when I was weeding one of the native gardens, a woman named Barbara Newborg, who liked to walk along the creek, came by and asked me "Does anyone pay you to do this?" I said no. She happened to have a foundation, and offered to pay me $10,000 a year for my work. Dr. Newborg was our first angel donor, and her BIN Foundation continues to give to this day.

What I left behind in Durham, along with a lot of friends and a city where I had felt more at home than anywhere else in my life, was a watershed association, of course, but also a lot of plants that I had been taking care of in the parks and preserves. I am forever grateful to Larry, Steve Cohn, Chris Dreps and all the others who have done so much to help ECWA prosper and grow since then. And I am so very grateful as well to Cynthie Kulstad, Perry Sugg, and others who have tended to the many plantings and habitats--the wetlands, piedmont prairies, and oak savannas whose continued health, diversity, and ongoing restoration owes to their knowledge and hard-wired caring. 

I am in some ways, real and metaphorical, a scavenger, taking an interest in what the rest of the world has deemed unworthy of attention. My muse composts experience and turns it into music and writing. Wherever I live, I look for gaps to fill in the community, and try to make something special out of what has been abandoned. One of those abandoned things was Ellerbe Creek. 

Yesterday I met ECWA's new executive director, Rickie White. Appropriately enough, we met on Durham city's West Ellerbee Creek Trail, which has played such an important role in ECWA's growth. Talking to Rickie, and seeing all of you here today, I feel it is safe to say that the Ellerbe Creek watershed is abandoned no more, is receiving the love and attention it so richly deserves, and is giving back to us in abundance. 

ECWA Began as a Wetland Garden in Indian Trail Park

There are many origins for a creek and for a watershed association. To a considerable extent, the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association began as a garden planted in the floodplain of a city park that straddles the creek. In 1996, when our daughter Sofia was still in her first year, we bought a house near Indian Trail Park, and I would often take her there to play. Being a botanist and a gardener, I was struck by how few native plants were growing in the park. While nonnatives like english ivy and multiflora rose were thriving, it seemed like a majority of native plants had for the most part been relegated to places one had to drive to, either in the Blomquist section of Duke Gardens, or at nature preserves outside of town. I wanted them to grow where people could see them every day, so I got permission from the city, went to plant sales and began planting native shrubs and wildflowers at Indian Trail Park.

Of course, what followed was a very long drought, during which I became a one-man bucket brigade, as the new plants wilted in the heat. Those that survived, I observed, were the ones planted in wet, sunny places, away from greedy tree roots and where the soil collected a reservoir of moisture that plants could draw from during droughts.

Some areas of lawn in this floodplain park were wet for such long periods that they were of little use for recreation. The mowing crews struggled through the mud, and in fact some native wetland plants like sedges and soft rush were already growing there, needing only to be left unmowed to achieve their attractive mature forms.

These were the spots I arranged with the city to stop mowing, while I replaced the monotonous turfgrass with native sedges and the sorts of floodplain wildflowers that don't mind periodic inundation.

I happen to be hardwired to care for a garden the way a parent cares for a child. That steady application of attention, along with an increasing awareness of all the beautiful native plants I saw growing in the wild and at the NC Botanical Garden and Blomquist Gardens, led to some very attractive and diverse wetland gardens at Indian Trail Park.

It mattered little how rich the soil was. The plants largely built themselves out of air, sun, and water. In fact, poor clay soil was ideal, causing the water to linger and discouraging most weeds. By the time the next drought came, the plants had rooted themselves deeply and could tap into the underground reservoir of moisture accumulated from previous rains.

The first wetland garden was planted next to the park's playground, where I could tend to it while keeping an eye on Sofie. Joe-Pye-Weed, lizard's tail, jewelweed, groundnut--these were informal gardens but could be kept attractive if well weeded and given a clean boundary.

Other parents in the park took an interest, and the "I" shifted more towards "we", as others helped tend to the gardens on periodic workdays.

They say that wetlands were common in pre-colonial America, so it makes sense that there are so many native wildflowers adapted to grow in wet habitats. Many of them are tall: Joe-Pye, wild senna, ironweed, Hibiscus,

and boneset,

After a couple years we hatched the idea to add bluebird houses, which were quickly utilized by purple finches and chickadees. In the spring, I'd walk by a birdhouse to pull a weed and hear the commotion of expectant hatchlings thinking a meal was coming.

Though lawns are an important part of parks, the wetland gardens hosted all sorts of life not found in a lawn. One day I encountered the beautiful web of an Argiope spider, with a design woven in that was almost word-like, and it occurred to me that E.B. White might have gotten his idea for Charlotte from such a spider.

Another discovery was how attractive a sedge could be. For those who don't know what a sedge is, it is a grasslike plant with triangular stems. "Sedges have edges" is the memorable way to describe the way a sedge feels when you twirl its stem between your fingers. They typically grow wild and unnoticed in ditches or next to streams. Though they generate no color other than green, their seedheads have different shapes, and in the spring they form attractive vaselike shapes that provide a rich texture for the surrounding wildflowers. This particular one is called fox sedge, and behind it is a nodding white flower called lizards tail.

All of this was going very well. I had gotten the gardens to thrive, and once they were thick with natives there was much less weeding to be done. People would tell me how much they liked seeing the gardens growing and changing, one day to the next.

And then one spring day, when the sedges had achieved their lush forms and the gardens were rich with the promise of another summer of blooms, I arrived in the park to find one of the gardens mowed down. It was like a punch to the gut. Undoubtedly, someone new on the mowing crew had mistaken the garden for a weed patch. It was a shocking reminder that I was growing a garden on land that was not mine, and that those charged with maintaining parks tend to see their world as consisting of trees and turf, with little inbetween.

I learned a lesson. Visual cues needed to be more clear. As we expanded the gardens, I put in stakes to signal that the sometimes subtle plantings were intentional and to be left unmowed.

Fortunately, the plants grew back after that first traumatic mowing. Accidental mowing is a temporary setback. Over the years, other public or private raingardens I've planted have been traumatized one way or another, and though such traumas still impact me viscerally, none has equaled that first punch to the gut. I have become toughened, my emotional connection protected by a thicker skin.

The same thinking that went into creating and tending to these wetland gardens at Indian Trail Park was ultimately extended to the whole Ellerbe Creek watershed. Find special places, protect and tend them for their distinctive native habitats, and build trails the public can enjoy. Integrate aesthetics and utility. Over time, through a lot of work and a lot of support by a lot of people, a "string of pearls" has evolved, as urban preserves have proliferated along the length of the creek. Wetland gardens were succeeded by stormwater wetlands and large-scale stream restorations, and now a big wetland planned for the site of the former Duke Diet and Fitness Center.

Other important goals, like improving the quality of the creek's water, have gained more attention along the way, but even these remain deeply connected to the plant world that holds the soil and captures the rain.

Stormwater and The Many Tributaries of ECWA

A creek has many beginnings, many tributaries that feed it, and so does a watershed association like ECWA. Some of those "tributaries" are pretty far down the main stem. ECWA had already been around for four years when I started wondering where the water from my roof goes. The downspouts fed into underground pipes, but there were no visible outlets for those pipes. Did the water just disappear somehow? I directed a hose down into those underground pipes, and then started scouting around the yard for where the water might come out. One of them didn't seem to resurface anywhere. After much searching, I finally found the water bubbling up one door down, in my neighbor's yard close to the street.

All that underground piping didn't seem to be working very well, and even if it did work well, it would serve primarily to expedite the water's flow off of the property, where the water then became someone else's problem as it added to flooding along Ellerbe Creek. The question became how to capture and utilize the water falling from our house's roof, so that it didn't add to downstream floods.

I did some calculations and realized that the popular rainbarrels only hold about 75 gallons of water, but my roof was generating thousands of gallons even in a one or two inch rain. What to do? I went to a farm supply store outside of town, and bought a couple cisterns, each of which would hold 200 gallons. That was a start, but even they weren't capturing all the water from their respective downspouts, and in reality I wasn't really making use of the water. I could save it for times of drought, but that would mean that the cisterns weren't empty to receive water from the next rain. And they weren't the prettiest things to look at.

Being an armchair inventor, I conceived of a rainbarrel that was inflatable rather than rigid, and would lie flat along the foundation of the house, swelling like the Michelin Man during rains, then would slowly drop back down out of sight behind the shrubbery as it released the captured water back into the yard over the next few days. Those imaginings were back in 2003, and as it turns out, these sorts of inflatable cisterns exist, and are given names like "water bladders" and "collapsible water tanks."

Ultimately, I shifted away from rainbarrels and cisterns, and began looking at how I could integrate water storage into the landscape. The result was that a couple downspouts got replumbed to direct water away from the house and into a backyard minipond.

The pond had more capacity than a cistern, and became an attractive feature in the landscape, feeding the plantings around it. Though most gardeners don't like thick clay, in this case the clay acted as a natural lining, retaining enough water to sustain the guppy-like mosquito fish that made sure no mosquitoes could breed there. The pond created a stable gradient of moisture that allowed for greater plant diversity. Some kinds of plants preferred to be in the water, others at the edge, while others preferred to be perched on the berm where the ground was drier.

Another approach, basically a raingarden, is to dig a depression in the ground that's only a few inches deep, and direct runoff into that. Within a few days, the collected water either infiltrates into the ground or evaporates, preventing mosquito larvae from maturing. Instead of breeding mosquitoes, it serves as a mosquito trap, foiling their reproduction, while creating a reservoir of water in the surrounding soil to sustain trees and other plants in the yard through any drought that comes along.

Floods, like climate change, are collectively created, with water contributed from every roof and road in a city. The aim was to slow down and minimize my home's contribution to urban water problems, and begin seeing stormwater as a resource.

A Little History of ECWA's Early Years

Founded in 1999, ECWA turns 20 this year. In recognition, the story of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association's founding and early years has just been added to this website.

In this photo from the early days, Sofia Hiltner draws a meandering creek along the front walk of her home in the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood. The founder's first encounters with Ellerbe Creek were in the park where he took Sofie to play.

Irreplaceable Ellerbe Headwaters Land Threatened With Rezoning

Update: The rezoning request was defeated, providing a reprieve of uncertain duration for this oasis of beauty and biological diversity in western Durham.

A developer is proposing to bulldoze this land, the prettiest and most biologically rich in the Ellerbe Creek headwaters. The 270 proposed units, which in the developer's presentation were referred to as "product" and appeared unattractive and of cheap construction, would obliterate the natural features and impose a massive increase in impervious surface on a headwaters site that biologically and hydrologically is essentially pristine. There are salamanders within a stone's throw of the meadow of undisturbed native, deep rooted grasses, with Atamasco lily in the swale.

In addition to being a window into Durham's rich biological past, the land also shelter cultural history. A section of the colonial Fish Dam Road, dating back to 1600, and an important Indian path prior to that, is still visible in the woods, running parallel to Berini Drive.
There's another beautiful view where the land drops off to the south and east, with mature hardwood forest and deep rooted native meadow.

The land borders the Berini Drive neighborhood, which lacks a park. The proposed dense development would add to the number of residents who will have to drive to find a park for their children.

Chad Hallyburton's Fish Survey of Ellerbe Creek

In 2000, a year after the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association was established, ECWA board member Chad Hallyburton, who was working at the time at the NC Museum of Life and Science, surveyed fish populations along the full length of Ellerbe Creek, from the headwaters in western Durham easterward to Falls Lake. It was a singular effort, as no surveys have been done since then, to my knowledge. He also invited residents along the creek to participate, giving us an opportunity to learn fish seining techniques, and get our feet wet, so to speak.

As the list below shows, he found a surprising diversity: 37 species, 29 of which are native to the area. It can also be found on page 122 of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Plan that we put together in 2003.

I remember Chad being excited about discovering what he thought to be the remains of a nest built of stones by some species of chub. The location was just up Goose Creek from its confluence with Ellerbe Creek, several hundred feet upstream of the East Club Boulevard bridge. I also remember seeing bright red fish in spring, not in Ellerbe Creek but clustered at Fews Ford on the Eno River, north of the Ellerbe, which may have been chubs in mating season. A brilliant mating display like that can give a small glimpse into the abundance and beauty that must have been present in these piedmont streams at one time, and serves as inspiration for work to return Ellerbe Creek to a more healthy condition. Here's a link to info on nest-building chubs.

In the list, the tolerance rating refers to how tolerant each species is to pollution. Being polluted by urban runoff, Ellerbe Creek is populated only by tolerant or intermediately tolerant species. If and when fish species with less tolerance for pollution are found in Ellerbe Creek, that will mean the water is getting cleaner.

Chad's fish survey was a great contribution to knowledge about Ellerbe Creek.

Glennstone Detention Basin Clogged

The nicest entryway into ECWA's 82 acre nature preserve at the Glennstone development is next to one of the sediment ponds that catches and temperarily holds runoff from the houses and streets. The developer, Craig Morrison, built a nice shelter there with sidewalk and plantings,

overlooking what in 2008 and through to last year was a healthy pond with cattails, soft rush and lots of pickerel weed that blooms all summer.

It was surprising, then, to return this year to find most of the cattails and other vegetation dead, and the view from the pergola quickly being obscured by fast growing willows.

What could have caused the dieoff? Are a lot of herbicides washing off nearby yards?

First thing I noticed was the ring of dead grass around the pond,

and the pickerel weed is doing fine along the edge. What's likely happening is that the drain in the back of this photo is blocked. Storm runoff is supposed to collect in the basin, then slowly drain down until the water is shallow again. If the drain gets blocked, water will remain high for too long, the grass along the edge of the pond will die, and even cattails will drown.

The detention basin likely needs some maintenance to free the drain of debris. Interesting to see that the cattail is killed by high water, because its tendency to take a pond over completely may make future flooding a good option for reestablishing some room for other aquatic plant species to grow.

Ellerbe Headwater Prairie Provides Seed For Eno Refuge

Up Shoccoree Drive, in the headwaters of Ellerbe Creek, a beautiful prairie stretches beneath the three WDNC radio towers visible as you enter Durham on I-85 from the west. I happened upon this prairie back around 1999, and realized that, unlike most meadows, it was packed with native grasses and wildflowers. Milo Pyne helped me with an initial inventory of its native plant diversity. The site was later included on a tour of local prairies during an Eastern Grasslands Conference.

More recently, the NC Botanical Gardens took an interest in the site and got permission from the broadcasting company to harvest seed, for use in restoring prairies at Penny's Bend along the Eno River, and also at Mason Farm in Chapel Hill.

On March 16, the botanical garden crew conducted a prescribed burn at Penny's Bend, as part of its management of prairie and savanna habitat there. Into the ashes they will scatter seed collected in Ellerbe Creek's headwaters. This project underscores the importance of preserving those places in the Ellerbe Creek watershed where exceptional native biodiversity has, through serendipity, survived.

Prescribed burning: For any readers surprised by the intentional burning of a landscape, fire once played an important ecological role in sustaining diverse native landscapes. The careful application of fire by trained crews aims to replicate natural conditions and sustain rare species like the smooth coneflower. The WDNC prairie has survived because it has been consistently mowed once or twice a year, imitating to some extent the fires that would formerly have prevented succession to forest.

Penny's Bend: Where the Eno River runs into a massive protrusion of diabase rock, northeast of Durham, it takes a sharp turn known as Penny's Bend. As part of the construction of Falls Lake, the land within this bend was bought by the Army Corps of Engineers. Management of its rare habitats and wildflowers was turned over to the NC Botanical Gardens. I'm proud of having been part of the committee, led by Johnny Randall, that oversaw management and re-instituted prescribed burning of the prairies there. Since then, more of the special diabase-rich lands have been preserved and carefully managed for biodiversity.
         The preserve is out Old Oxford Rd, and is open to the public. (Photo collage of recent Penny's Bend burn provided by NC Botanical Garden.)

New Invasive in Durham's Duke Forest Neighborhood

Here is an exhilarating but scary detective story about a pretty but ecologically dangerous plant. After finding Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria, also known as fig buttercup) in a yard in the Ellerbe Creek watershed, which feeds the Neuse River watershed, I described the plant to my friend Perry, who knows Durham and the NC piedmont very well. He said he had seen the species in a backyard in the Duke Forest neighborhood, which drains into the Cape Fear River. He had at first wondered if it was a rare wildflower, until he later saw it running rampant over a stream restoration site in Greensboro, NC.

When he showed me the plants he had seen in the Duke Forest neighborhood yard, I began tracking them upstream, using the instinct I had developed in tracking the similarly invasive Garlic Mustard in the Ellerbe watershed.

Close up, the plant looks like this. These flower stalks seemed longer than those in the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood yard.

Upstream were a series of larger patches. I felt like a sleuth in a detective movie, or maybe it was the primal rush of the hunt--something our minds evolved for but seldom have the chance to do.

When the brush became too dense, I returned to the road to explore further upstream. At Pinecrest and McDowell, I found one of the plants growing on the curb, an odd location since the rest of the infestations had been down along the stream bank. Note the storm drain that feeds straight into the floodplain of the creek this road crosses.

I looked down into the woods near this curb, and found the floodplain blanketed with the invasive, showing just how dominant and exclusionary of any other low-growing species it can become. Lesser Celandine has the potential to outcompete the many native species of spring wildflowers, and thereby impact the wildlife whose taste buds have not evolved to eat exotic plants.

Though the neighborhood has the protection of speed limits and Neighborhood Watch, there has been no one looking out for exotic plants that are able to invade gardens and speed downstream to infest natural areas.

Upstream of the intersection, the trail went cold, meaning that the infestation must have been entering the creek there from one of the side streets.

I followed a false lead to the left, then headed up McDowell Street. Near the top of the rise, I saw a hillside of yellow and knew I'd found the source of the infestation.

It's hard to predict how the homeowners are going to respond when you knock on their door and let them know they have an ecological menace growing in their yard. But this time, the news was very well received. At first they were puzzled, then tremendously thankful for having someone explain what was going on with this super aggressive plant.

They had liked the flower at first, but had grown increasingly concerned as it invaded the Vinca minor they had hoped would populate the hillside. The blue flowers of the Vinca can be seen amidst the sea of yellow in the photo. Though Vinca minor can also be thought of as an invasive, it doesn't spread downstream to new areas like the Lesser Celandine does.

We speculated that the seeds or perhaps the underground bulbules of the invasive had been washed down the driveway, then down along the curb until they reached the creek at the bottom of the hill, where they quickly began to spread downstream.

I had to return to New Jersey the next day, but Perry said he would track the flower downstream to determine the extent of spread. This sort of invasives work benefits from a Swat Team mentality, where swift action determines whether the invasion can be stopped while still limited in scope. Once the plant stops blooming, it will be much harder to track. In another month or so, the plant will turn brown and "melt" back into the ground, where it will remain dormant and be invisible until it emerges again next spring.

Fortunately, the homeowner promised to spray the plants in his yard. He also said he'd remove the plant from his sister's yard in the headwaters of the Eno River, where he planted some before realizing how invasive it can be. In speculating how it might have gotten into his yard, he remembered having gotten compost from the Durham landfill somewhere between five and ten years ago.

This means a visit to the Durham landfill compost site, long since closed, is in order, to see if there is an infestation there. Still to be determined is how to deal with all the plants that have already spread down the creek.

A Wetland Garden Survives at Durham's Williams Water Treatment Plant

If you drive west on Hillsborough Road, past the Durham city reservoir, glance towards the reservoir and you will see a special but largely unnoticed feature with a long history. When it rains, stormwater from the road flows down this slope and settles in a circular area surrounded by lawn. Swampy, hard to mow, it proved a perfect place to put a wetland garden. The white sign, installed by the city and visible in this photo, says "This Natural Area Maintained By Volunteers From the Watts-Hillandale Neighborhood Association." Well, sort of.

On March 30, two volunteers showed up to give this wetland garden a much needed spring cleaning. Cynthie Kulstad lives in the Northgate Park neighborhood, and is preserve manager for the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. I'm a former member of the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood now living in New Jersey. It's fair to ask what's so special about this place, other than its location next to a beautiful, historic water plant. Why would two people descend on a drab-looking cluster of dried stalks to work on a hot spring day for two hours?

Here's one of them, the remains of the flower stalk of wild senna, a beautiful native wildflower that thrives in wet soils. Some years back, we planted this and other wetland wildflowers here, taking advantage of the consistently wet ground. Elsewhere on the reservoir grounds, a demonstration xeroscape garden was planted in the early 90's with grant funds. The idea was to show how to grow a garden that didn't need much water (and thus help prevent Durham from running out of drinking water during droughts). They also applied a fertilizer called Bull Durt, which was made by composting together mixed paper and sewage sludge--two materials that otherwise would have gone to the landfill. I'm sure the garden looked great at first. It won an award, then went in to steady decline due to poor maintenance by untrained city staff. After moving to the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood in 1995, I organized neighborhood volunteers to try to resurrect the gardens, which were in three "pods" over near Hillandale Road. We made some progress, but the dry conditions there made the garden susceptible to drought. One of them, I later realized, was located atop a buried old asphalt basketball court. 

After a few years of experience growing native plants in Durham, and after lugging many a bucket of water during extended droughts, I figured out that the easiest way to sustain a wildflower garden is to locate it in a wet, sunny area.

Thus, we finally got smart and moved the remaining plants to the lowest ground at the reservoir, where this brick-lined spring once quenched the thirst of golfers playing what used to be the third hole of Hillandale Golf Course. The water is muddy because the site now receives runoff from Hillsborough Road during rains. But I love this hidden historic feature, and the mystery of how a spring could have been so close to a ridge dividing the Neuse and Cape Fear river basins. (Hillsborough Road runs along that ridge.)

Along with the periodic influx of water from the road, this garden's longevity owes to it being cared for by knowledgeable gardeners rather than untrained staff with little interest in plants. City maintenance crews are good at mowing grass, however, and we are thankful to them for respecting the boundaries of this garden.

Since I now live in NJ, it's hard to do much maintenance myself. You can tell that no one in the neighborhood has yet fallen in love with this garden, because it was getting overrun by brambles, and one of the weed trees was ten feet high. It's a callery pear, a noxious, thorny invasive tree whose shade was a threat to the sun-loving wildflowers. We cut and treated the tree sprouts, cut, trampled and treated as much of the brambles as we could, flattened the old flower stems so they could rot back into the ground, and admired all the wild senna, cutleaf coneflower and iris emerging. Without this periodic selective weeding, the wildflowers would fade away under a wave of brambles and trees. In coming months, this wetland garden will bloom and provide food, water and cover for wildlife in what is otherwise a large expanse of turf.

The garden could use more attention. Even someone unskilled with caring for native plants could come by and pick up the litter carried down the hill by the stormwater. Its a fine destination for any neighbor wishing to combine an evening walk with a little care for the neighborhood. But in the meantime, Cynthie and I did the basic maintenance. A garden kept going by four hours of work per year? That's the magic of a wetland garden.

INVASIVE ALERT: Lesser Celandine Found in Watershed

While visiting Durham this past week, I was driving through the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood when I saw a blaze of yellow and thought "Oh, oh."

First time I saw this plant, in Princeton, NJ, I thought it was pretty. Then I saw how it was spreading rapidly through nature preserves, displacing native wildflowers as it forms dense, impenetrable colonies.

I happened to know the woman whose yard it was growing in, and stopped to knock on her door. She gave me a tour. She was quite proud of the yellow flower (Ranunculus ficaria--sometimes called Fig Buttercup or Lesser Celandine), and had received many compliments from neighbors on its beauty.

She had, though, noticed that it was starting to take over.

In the five or so years since it spontaneously showed up in her yard, it had spread along her walkway, made blotchy mounds in her front lawn,

and even started to push back on her english ivy.

It's hard to ask any homeowner who has been pleased with a flower to begin viewing it as an ecological threat to the watershed. Just beyond this quickly spreading patch in her backyard is a small tributary of Ellerbe Creek, which in turn is a tributary of the Neuse River.

If, or more likely, when, the lesser celandine in her yard gets in to the creek, it will spread rapidly downstream.

But it's pretty, one might say, and survival of the fittest is nature's law. But this exotic plant left its natural predators back in Europe, and so has an unnatural competitive advantage over native species. Since nothing appears to eat it, any floodplain or yard that Lesser Celandine comes to dominate will become devoid of food to sustain wildlife.

The best thing that can happen in this instance is to have the invasive sprayed, and replaced with plants that won't take over. If the homeowner can be convinced the lesser celandine is a menace, there's hope it can be stopped before it spreads to the creek.

For a fact sheet on this plant, go to: http://www.invasive.org/weedcd/pdfs/wgw/lessercelandine.pdf Note that the distribution map doesn't even show it as having spread yet to NC.

Painted Buckeye

Painted buckeye is a native shrub common on the low bluffs overlooking Ellerbe Creek at Glennstone. It blooms in early April.

Sun-Loving Prairie Wildflowers of Glennstone

Walking along the trails of ECWA's nature preserve at Glennstone, downstream from Durham, out towards Falls Lake, you will find many wildflowers that still flourish where trees have yet to cast their shadow. In the first photo is Carolina rose (Rosa carolina), a low-growing rose common at Glennstone. My most memorable encounter with this flower was in the middle of a very hot day when the landscape had already been parched by severe drought. Fortunately, I "stopped to smell the roses", and was rewarded by a fragrance sweet and soft, refreshing as a cool drink after a long trek through the desert.

Snowdrops, a kind of primrose, is another bright flower in May.

The last photo is of Round-Headed Bushclover, the native wildflower at Glennstone that I have encountered growing nowhere else in all my travels. It's discussed in a previous post on this website.