D&R Greenway and REI Princeton class instructors and volunteers plan to partner to plant native species on Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at the St. Michaels Farm Preserve in Hopewell from 9 a.m. to noon.
The team of environmental educators will join D&R Greenway’s Wednesday morning crew to plant native grasses and sedges along Aunt Molly Trail and the Bedens Brook stream corridor where D&R Greenway has removed invasive species colonizing land under an old cedar canopy.
The cedars that make up the majority of the canopy have reached the end of their natural life cycle. As they phase out, it is critical to the ecological health of the forest that they be brought to the next successional stage of a New Jersey forest and not be replaced by invasive species, which grow faster and are more aggressive than native plants like red maples, ironwood, beech and oak.
In the first phase of this project, D&R Greenway staff and volunteers removed invasive species from the understory (privet, burning bush, autumn olive and barberry, among others). In this second planting phase, these will be replaced with native species.
