FE AT URE Image courtesy of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Ohio’s Statewide Forest Action Plan, Natural Resource Assessment.
With in-house knowledge and skills we are uniquely equi85pped to marry our horticulture and conservation practices to better understand the dynamics and to implement management strategies within these fragmented forests. These management strategies will help improve the overall aesthetic experience in the Arboretum Core, creating visually appealing transitions between highly cultivated gardens and natural lands. They will also have the potential to demonstrate how private landowners can improve their own forests, thus impacting forest health broadly throughout our communities.
A total of 85% (6,778,000 acres) of forest land in Ohio is privately-owned. The other 15% is owned by governments or in public holding. Most of that privately-owned forest is in the hands of individuals or families, and small, privately-owned woodlands less than 10 acres in size account for approximately 1.15 million acres in Ohio. The takeaway? Private landowners hold most of our state’s wooded land and thus most forest stewardship rests in their hands. Increasingly, Ohio forests are being fragmented and owned in smaller and smaller units. Research has shown that separated and discontinuous forest units reduce animal and plant diversity and make areas more vulnerable to environmental threats. This makes small woodland owners more important than ever for the future of Ohio’s woodlands.
Economical & Sustainable Clean-up By Rob Maganja, Horticulturist
On the ground we’ve encountered less-than-ideal weather, pandemic challenges and have had to coax the woodchipper into action. These hurdles serve to grow collaborative relationships, and over more than a year of action we’re really getting into a groove. We’re currently working on the Core Natural Area due east of the 2-acre Butterfly Garden. Especially in October and early November, when the temperatures were a little warmer, the effort to drag brush hundreds of feet and even up elevated and sometimes muddy inclines was impressive. Probably the most delicate aspect of the operation is the disposal strategy for all the waste material we generate. We all agree that the most important disposal strategy is one where we’re spreading the invasives as little as possible. While there are legitimate options to leave or remove the waste material for disposal elsewhere, for now we’re leaving the waste material on-site. Work is ongoing in that Core Natural Area, the most inundated of the sites. Once that is complete, we’ll have a nice template for how to do every future site in as economical and sustainable of a way as possible.
We will share this with our guests and community homeowners to consider for their own backyard fragmented forest habitat. Based on joint experience, we need about two years to manage invasives and their seedbanks before restoration planting can occur. At that point, we aim to introduce many native plants that can hold their own or repress aggressive invasives. Agroforestry elements will start to creep into the design palette; both native and non-aggressive exotic edible plants will be favored; maybe even hearken to our rural surroundings and explore how livestock and perennial plantings can go hand-in-hand; plant windbreaks to create microclimates for plants more suited for a slightly-warmer growing zone; include nearly-forgotten practices like coppicing and pollarding; use plants that can adapt to our changing climate. The list of possibilities goes on. In short, the Core Natural Areas act as bridges between our cultivated garden and high-quality forest communities to demonstrate an ecosystem continuum on which private lands throughout the state can be modeled on.
MEET THE STAFF Caroline Tait is the Vice President of Horticulture and Collections. Caroline began her career propagating perennials at Coton Manor Gardens in Northamptonshire, England, voted the UK’s favorite garden in 2019. Designing gardens for shows and clients took her all over the the UK, until 2018 when she was selected from a global pool of candidates for the yearlong residential Fellows Leadership Program at Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia.
26 FORESTS & GARDENS
