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Volunteer to Assist in Removing Invasive Weeds from Our Parks

Posted by The Park People on April 9, 2008

“Citizen Stewardship of Our Milwaukee County Parks”.  That’s our mission statement; a nice concise phrase packing a lot of meaning in a few words. Stewardship means different things to different people, but one meaning is maintaining the health of our neighborhood parks - something that can not be accomplished by our dedicated park workers alone. That’s where you come in!
 

“Weed-Out”, is a program in its second decade dedicated to ridding our park’s natural areas of invasive plants. Spring and fall, volunteers help eliminate or control the spread of exotic threats to our native plants and trees.

What’s the problem with invasive plants? Most plants become invasive when they have no natural controls such as insects or animals. That occurs most often with species introduced from different continents. A horrible example is kudzu introduced to our south to control erosion which now has reached the northern suburbs of Chicago as it adapted to cooler climates. You see it growing up trees as it smothers all other vegetation under it. It soon will be in our area as temperatures moderate and as it adapts.

Garlic mustard is another example, and one that’s of more immediate concern to us. It’s spreading across the northern United States from east to west, largely in our forests, but also in our yards, gardens, and parks. Garlic mustard attacks the beneficial fungus in the soil, destroying an energy source needed by our trees and native flowers, resulting in a reduced germination rate of beneficial species. Garlic mustard has a huge financial impact, not only in the cost to control its spread, but in the increased lumber price that ensues. Garlic mustard also crowds out our native woodland plants reducing our native populations. Without action on our part we will soon have only a mono-culture of garlic mustard and other invasive plants reducing the food supply for our native insects, bees, birds, and other wildlife that depend on plant diversity.

Once again this spring, generally on Saturdays in May, we will be doing Weed-Outs in several of our parks. Garlic mustard removal is our main goal. We’d love to extend the program to every park and every stretch of parkways, but that takes concerned neighbors who are willing to pitch in. Weed-Out is expanding, thanks in large part to The Park People’s Friends initiative which is creating more and more neighborhood park groups. Please consider joining in. Watch our web site for the spring schedule, or call the office for latest information. And, don’t hesitate to let us know which park you’d like to see added to the list! I hope to see you in the woods this spring!

                      Spring 2008 Schedule             

Unless otherwise noted all times are 9am - Noon