PINE GROVE

March 2019: Invasive Species

FOBFNP volunteers worked on the invasive wisteria and other invasive species in and along the Southern edge of the Pine Grove for 15 years. Volunteers made temporary progress, but the wisteria and invasives kept coming back and expanding their area and reach into the loblolly pines, eventually toppling a number of large trees.

These pictures show the extent of the spread of invasives in March 2019.

• The vines going up the trees are wisteria, very much alive but yet to bud out and continue their ascent up to eventually topple the trees.

• In the foreground is a thick mesh of other invasive species, including Himalayan blackberry and Japanese honeysuckle vine.

November 2020: Goats

The first step in getting the invasive species under control was that FOBFNP hired RVA Goats to come to this area for several weeks in November 2020 to eat the leaves and small stems – the picture also demonstrates how the invasives had become still more dominant between March 2019 and November 2020.

2021 and 2022: Further Work

After the goats did their part, personnel from RVA Goats along with FOBFNP volunteers then did a great deal of additional work to cut and gather the larger vines. Here are pictures from January 2021.

FOBFNP had expended considerable resources to win this skirmish, but if we had stopped there, all of this would have been in vain: The roots of all these invasive plants were ready to burst forth to retake the area with the coming of spring.

We followed a strategy we had implemented elsewhere in the park: secure our gains by planting meadow grass in this area. Regular mowing would suppress the invasives and allow us to concentrate on digging up the invasives that came up outside the mowed area.

The City of Richmond Parks and Recreation Department then came in to supply critical help. They used heavy equipment to scrape off the thick shoots and stumps along the ground, and they hauled away the excess material. (In other areas, we have left logs and dead vines to decompose, but in this case there was so much debris that this option was not feasible.)

By May 2021, the meadow grass had come up and the area looked like this.

Note that there were still the remains of vines on some of the loblolly pines, but they are dead having been cut at their base. A close look at the picture reveals that there is wisteria and other invasives coming up near the treeline, and volunteers, then and to the present, must persist in digging up these roots.

In 2023, we began planting native species.

February 2023: Planting

FOBFNP spent $1,107 on 98 native plant bare root trees and shrubs along with tree tubes and stakes to protect the plants. Of this total, 38 trees and shrubs were planted in this Pine Grove Area; the map below shows the planting areas.

Volunteers planted wax myrtle, arrowwood viburnum, American beech, American beautyberry, Red Maple, black gum, American hornbeam, and white fringe tree in the Pine Grove area. Watch this 15 second video of the Pine Grove area after planting was finished and notice the astounding difference in the area compared to when our efforts began in November 2020.

October 2023: Further Planting

FOBFNP received a $3,268 grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry to fund planting additional trees and shrubs in the Pine Grove and other areas of the park. 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.)

Forty shrubs were planted in the Pine Grove area including 20 black huckleberry, 5 each of Eastern ninebark, New Jersey tea, wild azalea, and swamp azalea.

2024: The pollinator habitat garden

An ongoing effort to establish a pollinator habitat garden. Read more about this project here.