St. John's Wetland, By Rebecca Shaw

The man-made wetlands were created on a former pumpkin farm.

Julius Neill and Emily Grace
Sarver-Wolf plant a chinkapin oak
to restore the riparian forest.

Today our Ecological Restoration course traveled to just north of Lexington Kentucky where we worked on a wetland project for St. John's Catholic School. The goal of the management plan is to take a piece of rolling farmland and turn it into lowland wetland. This project was started last year and will provide an outdoor classroom for the St. John's school, it will serve as an educational tool to teach children about wild riparian areas and the importance of nature.

Karen Reynolds seeds the wetland
edge with a diverse mix of
native sedges and rushes.

Our class worked with Mason Howell to reestablish a riparian buffer, a tree line along river and stream banks, which will help to protect the adjacent river from runoff and sedimentation. We planted forty trees including scarlet oaks, chinkapin  oaks, northern red oaks, pawpaws, and silver dogwoods. It was a lot of  work digging all of those holes, but the soil was perfect for planting trees. The loose and mineral rich earth was a a great planting medium and knowing that all of those trees would really do well made the labor well worth it.

Emily Grace and Becca seed the edge.

We also prepared the banks of the wetland for grasses and rushes by raking back any dead plant material on the shoreline. Removing this dead fiber exposed rich loamy soil that was then seeded with a variety of native wetland grass, flower, and rush seeds. Plugs, which are plants grown from seeds in tall skinny pots, were planted along the shoreline to introduce native, water loving flowers. These plants included cardinal flower, swamp milkweed, blazing star  and obedient flower. These plants were placed in groups of 3-5 to encourage good pollination which will help the plants to reproduce and spread seeds throughout the entire wetland area.

Jordan Engel and Becca Shaw plant
"obedient plant," a native perennial
that is common along wetland edges. 

Throughout the day Mason Howell educated the class on native species, proper planting methods, the goals for St. Johns wetland, and countless other topics. We also learned about invasive species removal and worked to dispose of poison hemlock plants that have become well established around the entire property. After a day of romping in the mud doing heavy labor, under sunny and rainy conditions, I look forward to our next day at St. Johns Wetland, where we will be working on invasive species removal. We will be disposing of  more poison hemlock and Japanese Honey Suckle.

Julius Neill removes invasive poison hemlock.