ENCHANTED FOREST
& PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE
Habitat Restoration
This area has been severely impacted by invasive species. Starting in 2022, our Weed Warrior volunteers began referring to this area as the “Enchanted Forest” because of the many “twisted, tortured trees” misshapen by the invasive vines. Our work in this area started in Spring of 2017 and is ongoing.
March 2017: Pushing back the invasive thicket
These two images from Google Earth illustrate the work we undertook. The first image is from April 2016, and the second image from after our March 2017 volunteer day. The area cleared (indicated by the yellow straw in the second picture) was a mass of non-native invasive species including Himalayan blackberry, wisteria, English ivy, porcelain-berry vine, and Japanese honeysuckle vine, as well as a great deal of the native (but nonetheless invasive) giant ragweed. Each year the invasive thicket encroached further and further into the field.
Our goal in the Spring of 2017 was to push back the invasive thicket to the treeline. We relied on the City of Richmond Parks and Recreation Department to clear the thicket with a small bulldozer, generating 10 dump truck loads of debris they hauled away.
At our March 2017 Volunteer Day, volunteers raked the remaining vines and debris out and then distributed meadow grass seed, covered the seed with straw, and fenced the area off to protect it.
By the beginning of May, the grass was up and we had removed the fence.
The “after” photos from this phase also serve as the “before” photos for our later efforts to remove invasives; although we had pushed the invasive thicket back to the treeline, all these photos also show the thick mesh of invasive vines underneath and climbing these trees.
May 2022: RVA Goats return
RVA Goats spent just eight days in this area in May 2022, but made a great impact. As indicated in the pictures above, the invasive vines formed a nearly impenetrable mesh that made it difficult to even see into the forest area. The goats, plus additional clearing work by RVA Goats personnel, allowed us and other park users a sightline into the forest.
What we saw were trees covered and being engulfed by wisteria, English ivy and wintercreeper, with too many trees already having been pulled down.
Here is an example of the extraordinarily thick invasive vines on a hackberry tree.
FOBFNP wanted to take action in this area, but we were uncertain what approach to take. We reached out to Deputy Director of Parks Shamar Young who arranged a field visit meeting with Laura Greenleaf and other members of the James River Invasive Species Task Force in October 2022. The advice was clear: First save the trees.
With help, advice, and training from members of the task force, volunteers have devoted hundreds of hours of work to saving trees. This work is far from done, but, as indicated in the before (Winter 2022 - Spring 2023) and after photos (Winter 2023 - Spring 2024) below, significant progress has been made. As you view these photos, note first the dramatic contrast compared to the “after” photos from Spring 2017 where there was no sightline from the field into the forest.
February 2023: Planting
FOBFNP spent $1,107 on 98 native plant bare root trees and shrubs and tree tubes and stakes to protect the plants. Of this total, 57 trees and shrubs were planted in this area. The native trees and shrubs planted included wax myrtle, arrowwood viburnum, service berry, American beautyberry, American beech, red maple, black gum, winged elm, mockernut hickory, yellow (tulip) poplar, and white fringe tree. All the bare root stock was protected from deer using tree tubes.
October 2023: Further planting
FOBFNP received a $3,268 grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry to fund planting additional trees and shrubs in this area. The grant required matching funding from FOBFNP in the form of in-kind volunteer labor hours. As with the February 2023 planting, FOBFNP volunteers also committed to water these plants for two years to get them established. (At least a gallon of water in each week of the growing seasons when we get less than an inch of rain.) The grant paid for the purchase of eight larger trees in pots, five American pawpaws and three American hophornbeams.
Plans for additional work
Although we believe that our progress in this area is remarkable, there is still a great deal more to do. Some invasive vines remain on trees we have already worked on, and so we need to comb the entire area to cut vines we missed in previous attempts and to cut any new growth. Further, in the area of the park North of the Ridgetop Recreation Association’s tennis courts lies a large area with a terrible infestation of wisteria. The wisteria have already brought down several large trees and they threaten a number of very old and very large loblolly pines. The photos below show the extent of the wisteria infestation.
