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.
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.
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