Spring Cleaning in a Wetland Garden

(I'm going through old photos, posting them regardless of season.)
Signs don't always have power to dictate reality, but at this spot in Durham, on a sunny day in mid-April, 2006, reality reflected very well the sign's brave pronouncement.

A wetland garden needs little care, but for a couple key points in the year. We leave the previous year's growth in place through the winter and early spring, so the city mowing crews have a clear visual cue as to the boundaries of the garden.

Then, when spring's new growth was high enough not to be mistaken for grass, ECWA board member Steve Cohn and family pulled out the old, dead stems so they wouldn't shade out the new growth.


Before long, any remnants of last year's stems will disappear beneath the lush growth of Iris, Amsonia, cutleaf coneflower and other showy native wildflowers that thrive in this wet ground.

The wetland garden is located at the Durham City reservoir, just down the slope from Hillsborough Road.

Each Bench Must Have Its Tree

In 2000, the West Ellerbee Creek Trail was born, and with it a bench to rest the weary traveler. Round this bench, the city planted some Korean dogwoods, well-developed and probably expensive, to make for an instant effect. Being a species of very modest size, however, they would never have grown tall enough to spare the bench the scorching heat of a North Carolina summer sun, even if most of them had survived subsequent neglect.

These fundamental things apply. Each bench must have its shade tree, and so I planted one just south of the bench--a fine river birch that, as time goes by, will cool the pavement and bench beneath its vaulted spreading limbs. It seemed like the obvious thing to do, yet you'd be surprised how many new benches, swings and jungle gyms get plunked down in parks without any prospects for future shade.

Only gardeners, perhaps, have an imagination trained to anticipate the scorching metal of summers to come, and the patience to plant a tree whose gift of shade may begin ten years down life's trail.

One other fundamental thing applies, often forgotten. Each planted tree, no matter how well placed, must have its caretaker to see it through the first year or two or even three, given the NC piedmont's extended droughts.

And so this tree owes its life, and the bench and all who sit in it in years to come owe its shade, to Tony Tschopp, who lived up the street and kept it in mind, and watered it through the droughts of its early days. I don't get to Durham very often, but one of these times, I'll sit on that well-shaded bench on a bright summer's day, and think of all the simple acts of caring of which future comfort is composed.

Update, June 21, 2012: I visited this site and found the tree to be thriving but the bench nowhere to be seen. I suppose it must have been stolen, or else moved during the stream restoration and not replaced. Irony is alive and well.