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Forest Project Summer Collaborative intern bloggers Lidia, a high school 11th grader, and John, a high school senior, provide a primer on trail work.
This week the crews focused on trail work. What is trail work, you might ask? Mainly it consists of log hunting, making water bars and trail bars and creating woodchips. Mulching and planting are also important to trail work. To give you a taste of what these tasks entail, here are some stories we’d like to share with you. Consider yourself lucky you’re only reading about them!
Once upon a Tuesday, John and Lidia, members of the Canopy Climbers crew, set off on an adventure to gather mulch. Mulch consists of decomposing plants and bark and such. In order to gather it and take it back to our site, we had to use a wheelbarrow. The mulch pile is located at the bottom of Wave Hill’s Herbert & Hyonja Abrons Woodlands. The Woodlands are on a hill and our site happens to be on top of it. We had to push the wheelbarrow, and our two shovels, down a really rocky path to reach the mulch pile, where we shoveled mulch into the wheelbarrow until we thought it was full, and then pushed it uphill all the way around the Woodlands area and along that really rocky path again. Our crew leader’s reaction when we finally reached her: “We need more.”
Off we went again down the really rocky path back to the mulch pile. The shoveling recommenced.
“I think that’s enough,” says Lidia.
“No, we can fit in some more,” John answers. John spoke too soon. Once the wheelbarrow was filled to the brim, he struggled to push it up the path. Feeling guilty, Lidia asked if he needed some help.
“You can push it downhill once I get to the top.”
Satisfied, Lidia continued walking and John continued panting. We reached the summit and John put the wheelbarrow down at the start of the downhill slope, gesturing to Lidia to take over. It was so heavy! Before we knew it, the wheelbarrow was pulling Lidia down. Whoa, Lidia loses her balance! She had stepped on her pant cuffs and soon the wheelbarrow was on its side and the mulch was spread all over the road. John sighed, but being the gentleman he is, went off to find some hand shovels to fill the barrow back up. Radiating embarrassment, Lidia began filling it up by hand. We reached the crew once more. Our crew leader’s reaction to the new barrow full: “We need more.” The moral of the story: you will never have enough mulch.
It’s hard to summarize the ins and outs of trail work in just a few paragraphs. It is not necessarily something that can be taught. Most of it is trial and error and improvisation. All the tasks seem trivial, but when it’s all done and you take a step back, you can really see how the fruits of your labor result in a wonderful trail.
Log hunting is where trail work begins, because you need to find decent-sized, solid logs to lay along the sides of the trail. These are called trail bars and they mark the length and width of the trail, as well as helping to keep soil and leaf litter from washing onto the path. Logs are also used for what we call water bars, which are laid across the trail, angled strategically to divert water from running down the trail, or down whatever slope where the water bars are installed. By helping direct and slow the flow of water we are helping to prevent soil erosion. To put in the trail bars and water bars, we would dig log-sized trenches, place the logs in the trenches and then pack soil around them to hold the logs in place. In some cases, especially where logs were placed on a slope or steep edge, stakes would also be put in to keep the log from rolling out of place. These stakes we fashioned from the branches and limbs of fallen trees, or parts sawn off from our logs.
As we noted previously, mulch is used in large quantities. Along either side of the trail we planted native species to help beautify the trail and to replace all the invasive weeds and such that we pulled. These newly planted native species will help protect the trail because their roots take firm hold in the soil and prevent it from eroding as easily. The large amounts of mulch we used were placed around the trunks of the new trees we planted so that they could provide nutrients for the soil. This will help our plants adapt to their new conditions, as they were previously planted in pots and would need to get used to the change in soil. We had many plants which needed to be mulched, although we were careful to keep the mulch from being too close to the base of the plants, in order to prevent rot.
Most of the native species of trees and shrubs we planted and mulched were planted through jute mesh, a form of netting made of natural, biodegradable materials. We spread it over the soil and staked it in before making a hole in the mesh for planting. The mesh helps hold the soil in place. As it decomposes over time, it leaves a terrain that looks like it had never been worked on.
All in all, that is the tale of trail work. We hope you enjoyed learning about that aspect of the hard, but rewarding work we take part in daily!
Marilyn Young is Horticulture Assistant at Wave Hill.
Important players in the glorious pageant of spring are the early flowering magnolias. In his special report on the major trees of Wave Hill, arborist Bill Logan of Urban Arborists notes that our magnolias are “the strongest collection in the garden”.
To this ”particularly fine group” came an exciting new addition this spring. In 2009, in honor of the Year of the Trees, Logan prepared a report on Wave Hill’s major trees. Included with his suggestions for future planting was the addition of a large, overstory tree Magnolia acuminata to help complete this family of trees’ representation. Our new cucumber magnolia, as it is commonly called, was selected by Scott Canning, Wave Hill’s Director of Horticulture, along with Brian McGowan, Assistant Director of Horticulture. The site chosen is on the lawn above and east of Wave Hill House. It was planted on April 26. Still full with buds then, it blooms a little bit later than the early ones.
Historically, this type of tree was used by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in its program for developing cultivars, providing the big breakthrough in breeding yellow-flowered magnolias. One of these special cultivars is located south of Wave Hill’s front gate, by the lower entrance to the Herbert & Hyonja Abrons Woodland. There the glorious Magnolia x ‘Elizabeth’ bears creamy yellow, sweetly scented flowers. This grand tree is a cross between M. acuminata and M. denudata.
A venerable specimen of this second variety is the white flowered beauty just inside the main entrance, on the lawn in front of Glyndor House. The day this photo was taken it was enjoying the petal-falling moment. Underneath its tall branches, gradually greening with new leaves as the white petals fall, someone has drawn up a chair for a splendid spring seat.
Every year since the inception in 1980 of Wave Hill’s Forest Project Summer Collaborative, one of the nation’s longest running youth development internships focusing on urban ecology, Bronx-area high school students have participated in urban woodland restoration projects while learning the basic principles of environmental science and stewardship. For many interns this is a first job, and may be the first time they have worked outdoors. In this first entry of the 2011 summer program, high school intern bloggers Emanuel and Jared, 10th graders, Lidia, an 11th grader, and John, a senior, offer candid feedback from the field.
July 22, 2011―Hey, Wave Hill readers! This is Emanuel, Lidia, Jared and John here, with Emanuel humbly narrating this entry! We’re all brand new interns at Wave Hill’s awesome 2011 Forest Project Summer Collaborative. We are a secretly organized group of bloggers, handpicked from two of the best crews Forest Project has ever seen. For the last three weeks we have been working in the Woodlands at Wave Hill. Our first three weeks have consisted of weeding invasive species, specifically mugwort, garlic mustard, and porcelain berry (Lidia’s worst enemy). To the untrained eye, this task may seem exceedingly easy, but to us masters of the forest, it can be daunting and exhausting at times. The mixture of heat, sweat and dirt is challenging but rewarding. We decided to widen our scope and question whether the other interns felt that this activity brought them closer to nature and to each other or farther away from it, creating a fear of the wild. Our covert team of operatives snuck through our meeting space, gathering information on how our buddies felt. (Seriously, we’re not actually covert, as you’ll see!)
In 98 degree weather, with a blistering sun beating down on our necks and sweat-soaked shirts sticking to our bodies, Lidia and I stumbled down the stairs towards the outdoor area of our home base. Someone had leaked private information that Cynthia’s crew was lurking around there and we immediately took advantage of the news. Once the heavy door slammed behind us, their heads all turned, looks of surprise on their faces.
“You tryin’ to spy on us?” Cynthia joked. Lidia and I shook our heads and shrugged it off as the rest of her crew laughed. (Little did they know that we actually were spying…)
I began the questioning. “So… it has been in the high nineties all week long, you have been weeding nonstop and you have not been paid yet. Doesn’t this make you feel a little distant from nature, and even angered about what you are trying to protect?” Lidia and I, both expecting agreement, were shocked by what we then heard.
Imani told us that for her it was all about the crew. “I LOVE my crew,” she exclaimed, to which everyone around her began nodding in agreement. “I mean, if it was just me out there pulling weeds, yeah of course it would be awful.” Jolifer quickly voiced her agreement.
“We are always singing and dancing, and just having a good time.”
“Doesn’t the heat get to you?” I asked the crew.
“Yeah, it can get hot,” Annarose chimed it.
“I used to hate being outside, but now I really like the outdoors. I am happy just sitting in grass or dirt, and I never would have thought that before,” Jolifer added.
Meanwhile, John and Jared were looking for the other crews. They marched up to Greg’s crew, who were deep in conversation about their skit for the end-of-week Awards Ceremony. The crew saw them and abruptly the conversation ended.
“Are you guys spying on us?” Greg taunted. (We are protective of our skits.)
“We are here to ask some questions about work,” explained Jared.
Giovanni welcomed them. “Sure! Fire away.”
John began to ask question after question, most of them revolving around how everyone felt about weeding and the hard work.
The Q&A ended with the question of all questions. Before heading back to his crew table, Jared asked, “How do you feel about the pay?”
The answers were resoundingly similar. “It’s money. Any kind of money is good.”
For many of us, this is our first job. We are receiving our first paychecks and dealing with our first responsibilities. We are ready to perform the tasks outlined by our leaders without complaints. Many of us leave Wave Hill every day ready to jump in the shower and take a nap. Little do we realize that every hour we spend in the field has an impact on our attitude toward nature and how we affect our communities.
Lidia and I, like our peers, are anxious to receive our first checks this Friday. Other than the money, though, one of the benefits of the work I do every day is creating relationships within my crew. We have a number of inside jokes. Since none of my friends from school have been around this summer, I look for company and laughs with the highly entertaining people in my crew. Lidia feels the same. She says that she agrees with Imani the most, because although all Lidia wants to do during lunch is sleep, she’s ready to go back to work when she sits down at her crew table, and is immediately smiling. The guest speakers that have visited Forest Project have created an explosion of questions for Lidia and she wants to know more every day. Not only about nature and which tree is what, but how her actions now and in the future, can help realize the dreams of people like urban arborist Bill Logan and conservation ecologist Eric Sanderson, two heroes who have already been guest speakers at our program this summer.
