There was nothing but barberry as far as the eye could see. Dead trees, thick vines, large boulders were scattered around an inhospitable landscape. This is what I have to work with to create a therapeutic space.
It should be fun.
(I have to admit I’m a bit behind on my writing. Unlike the photo below, the ground is now covered with a over a foot of snow with the promise of another foot on its way.)
In a prior life I often looked at such circumstances as problems to be dealt with; now I see them as opportunities to exploit.
With the start of a new year comes a great opportunity to practice horticultural therapy with a new group of clients at Ann’s Place, a cancer support group in Danbury, CT, that will be opening its permanent headquarters sometime in the Spring. I have been talking with Wilda Hayes, the executive director, on and off for the past year but it wasn’t until this past summer where we got started in earnest. Wilda is a kindred spirit who understands the healing powers that working with plants can afford. One of the challenges, however, was finding an exterior space to work with clients. She didn’t see much hope.
“What about the property in the back?” I asked.
Wilda somewhat dismissed it while adding that there wasn’t much we could do as the landscaping/mitigation plan had already been approved by the town. Being naive about such things I asked her if we could arrange a visit with Dan Baroody, the official who dealt with mitigation issues for Danbury. I would propose to him a vastly different and expanded mitigation plan. And it worked. He liked the idea. Now I just had to design it.
The prior mitigation plan removed around 1,500 square feet of barberry and had 60 plants (five different cultivars) tightly planted. My revised plan removed over 7,500 square feet of barberry and has nearly 140 plants (26 different cultivars) planted in both tight and spaced out configurations. In removing all the barberry, we discovered abandoned stone walls, one of which I rebuilt, and very interesting spaces that we could use for therapy.
We spent much of October and November removing all of the invasive species as well as dead trees. After a rough grading and the construction of nearly 300 feet of nature trails, we started to plant.
I was torn between all the different trees and shrubs to consider. On the one hand I wanted to have a wide array of native species. On the other I didn’t want to serve up too much deer salad. So I stayed (mostly) with cultivars and species that are theoretically distasteful to deer. They include black chokeberry, red osier dogwood, winterberry, spiraea and American cranberry. I broke this rule in selecting some mountain laurel as well as low- and high-bush blueberries though I am hoping that their position will minimize predation. After two days of digging and planting we were mostly done.
In the Spring, we will seed the area directly in front of Ann’s Place with a no-mow native fescue grass seed and the remaining areas adjacent to the wetlands with a New England conservation/wildlife seed mix that contains many native grasses and flowers that used to be all too common in this area.
Another area was planted with daffodil bulbs: about 3500. Because the ground was so full of ledge rock, I roughed up the soil a bit, put the bulb down on its stem and then put 6 inches of topsoil over them all. If the bulbs hit any rocks with their roots, they will just push themselves up a bit through the loosened top soil over time. At least that’s the theory. This will become the basis of a memorial garden that we are building.
We have lots of plans for other spaces, but we ran out of time in early December when an early hard frost made the ground like concrete stopping any further work. We will continue in the spring.
The idea of virgin territory is just that, an idea. So much of the Northeast has been altered and invaded since settled over 300 years ago that whenever a new space is examined it must be done through the lens of transformation and mitigation. I’m hoping that the spaces the we are creating at Ann’s Place not only restore native plants to an old home but also happiness for a troubled client base.
I’ll keep you posted.
