The hard work of hundreds of volunteers working countless hours to clear invasives non-natives and plant almost native 1,000 wildflowers has paid off! The meadow at Norwood Park has been blooming all summer!
The first flowers we saw were Old Man's Beard (Penstemon digitalis) followed by a lot of grasses. The Norwood Meadow is almost 50% grasses to provide winter habitat for small mammals and food for birds. Next we saw Sweet Cecily (Osmorhiza claytonia), a native wildflower that came up on its own!
June brought more grasses with beautiful seed heads and a few black eyed susans, as well as mint. We planted 3 kinds of milkweed in the fall and they all came up, but none of them bloomed. This is common for first year milk-weed.
Finally, the meadow is in a riot of bloom with woodland sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus), goldenrod (three varieties of Solidago) wild lettuce, purple mistflower Conoclinium coelestinum) and boneset (Eupatorium serotinum).
I have been going through old pictures and it's gratifying to see the before and after photos.
Before
After
Our work, however, is not over and we have another planting day planned for November. We also need a lot of help weeding as mile-a-minute and porcelainberry are aggressively returning. There is a weeding work day scheduled for Saturday, September 19. Details are on our website.
