Take The Challenge: Plant a Yard in Your Yard

Now that Spring has arrived, the growing season will be here soon!  At URWA, we've become especially interested in supporting native pollinators in recent years.  In fact, the speaker at our upcoming membership meeting (Monday, March 28th at the Clarence Dillon Public Library in Bedminster at 7:00 p.m.) will feature Dan Cariveau, a Rutgers scientist who is investigating the outcomes of pollinator restorations implemented on private lands in New Jersey.

It makes a great deal of sense to include plants that attract and feed native pollinators in our landscapes at home, on school campuses, in public parks and our places of work.  Native pollinators (bees, butterflies, moths, birds and even bats are included in the long list of native animals that carry pollen and thus help fertilize both ornamental and commercial plants in our state) play a tremendous role in fruit and vegetable production, so they provide benefits to all of us who enjoy fresh New Jersey produce!  In fact,animal pollinators are needed for the reproduction of about 90% of flowering plants and one third of human food crops.

If the concept or planting a garden patch specifically designed to attract and support native pollinators seems daunting, we have an idea for you.  Consider starting small -- how about planting just a yard in your yard?  By that we mean taking a one square yard patch of lawn and converting it to a garden for native pollinators.  Dig up the grass and plant a few varieties of flowers and shrubs that will bloom throughout the spring, summer and early fall months in your new little garden.  You have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting what plants to use -- of course you'll want to make sure they are native to our region.  An excellent resource to consult is Selecting Plants for Native Pollinators:  A Regional Guide for Farmers, Land Managers and Gardeners in the Eastern Broadleaf Forest.  This guide describes many native plants, what they look like, what conditions they need (sun,shade and the like), when they bloom and which pollinators they support.  using it will help you quickly select which plants you want to include in your "yard within your yard". 

Your new pollinator patch will undoubtedly provide you with a great deal of pleasure.  From the colorful flowers on the plants to the fascinating and often beautiful pollinators that visit them, you'll enjoy watching what goes on as the months go by.  In fact, we won't be at all surprised if you get hooked and decide to learn more about gardening with native pollinators in mind, sign up to participate as a citizen scientist in the Great Sunflower Project, and/or devote more yards of your yard to pollinator habitat next year!  

For more information about native pollinators and what you can do to support them, vjoin us on Monday evening at our membership meeting and visit one or more of the web sites we've mentioned already, or one of these below:

The Xerces Society
The Natural Resources Conservation Service

Another Habitat Transformation Project Will Soon be Underway at Fairview Farm

We will soon be removing some of the trees and other wooded plants at Fairview Farm to create a scrub-shrub habitat as part of our Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP). Visitors will easily notice our work, as the transformation will occur in an area to the right of the driveway at the entrance to Fairview Farm. This portion of our grounds is currently dominated by eastern red cedar, and it also has a good mix of oaks, beeches, and pines. A scrub-shrub habitat is limited to 30% wooded flora, so many of the trees will be removed. Scrubland habitats are usually the result of a disturbance such as a fire, flood or strong wind. Our disturbance will be in the form of chainsaws and a bush hog.

The red cedars are our primary target for removal because of their abundance in the area (approximately 80% of the trees are eastern red cedar). There are also some invasive plant species present in this vicinity that will be removed to create a purely native habitat. The wooded vegetation will be replaced with a mix of grasses and forbs.

Creating a scrubland is an important project for URWA because this habitat is absent on Fairview Farm; therefore, a new niche will available for our wildlife to use. We might also entice new creatures to make Fairview Farm their home. Scrub-shrub habitats are great for song birds, game birds and many predatory birds. You can also expect deer, rabbits and other animals to use this habitat for grazing or hunting.

The red cedars that we remove will be turned into posts for deer fencing and trellises – we’ll even host a workshop on may 15th where you can make a garden tower for your garden, and we expect to have more than we need for use at Fairview Farm, so please let us know if you’d like to take some home after we’ve finished our project. The invasive plants will be removed and added to our brush pile and we’ll turn all the other wooded materials into wood chips.

They're Back! Woodcocks are Singing at Fairview Farm

Photo:  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The American Woodcock is a forest-dwelling shorebird that lives in much of the eastern United States.  It migrates to warmer climates for the winter and typically begins arriving back in our region as the temperatures start to rise in late February or early March.  The mixed habitats of forest and meadow at URWA's Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve attract a significant number of American Woodcocks each year, and in just the last week we've seen and heard them as we leave our office at the end of each work day.

This bird has a fascinating courting ritual that takes place on warm mornings and evenings in the late winter each year. The male woodcock begins his “peenting call” at sunup and sundown. To attract a female, he first struts in circles on the ground and then takes flight, circling and whistling 100 feet high. The whistling turns into a high pitched twittering, ceasing suddenly as the lovesick bird flutters to the ground, only to begin the dance again. The woodcock is so caught up in his romantic ritual that the observer can get close to this otherwise evasive bird!

The sights and sounds of the woodcocks are truely enchanting, and we'll host a special "Woodcock Watch" program at Fairview Farm this weekend to help bird enthusiasts become more familiar with them.  On Sunday, March 6th, we invite you to join us from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Fairview Farm (2121 Larger Cross Road in Bedminster) for a chance to see and hear them.  There is no cost to attend this program, but we ask that you call (908) 234-1852, ext. 16 to register.

Of course, we can’t guarantee a sighting, but the sunset at Fairview Farm alone is worth the visit and if the “Singing Field” is quiet you can listen to the sounds of the evening! Sunset will occur at 5:51 p.m. so everyone should plan to arrive no later than 5:30 to park your vehicle and walk to one of the fields while there is still light in the evening sky.

For more information, please contact Susan Brookman at 908-234-1852, ext. 20 or email sbrookman@urwa.org.