As the last of this year’s wildflowers faded away, a group of Forest Preserve staff and volunteers spent a brisk fall day planting hundreds of native plant plugs around Four Rivers Environmental Education Center in Channahon to help next year’s display be even more spectacular.
The planting day was made possible thanks to Pembina Pipeline Corp., which has made a three-year, $40,000 commitment to The Nature Foundation of Will County that included funding for natural area restoration and habitat improvements around Four Rivers. In addition to Pembina’s financial support, this is the second year employees from the company’s Aux Sable plant volunteered to help with these habitat improvements.
In all, the Pembina employees and a group of Forest Preserve employees and volunteers planted 734 plugs, 16 shrubs, 55 1-gallon perennials and one tree at four spots around the Four Rivers campus earlier this month. Over the winter, Forest Preserve staff will also spread seed in the preserve’s prairie areas as part of the effort funded by Pembina, said Judith Wallace, land management coordinator for the Forest Preserve District.
Thanks to Pembina’s generosity, the landscape around Four Rivers is able to be enhanced beyond what the Forest Preserve could accomplish on its own, both in terms of financial and manpower resources, Wallace said.
“It’s absolutely great, because we are able to do some planting here in multiple areas that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” she said. “Our resources get stretched pretty thin sometimes, and also in terms of what we can get done with the amount of volunteers and staff, so Pembina is here with their people today as well as making the donation to purchase the plants and seed, which is great.”
Fall might not be a time people are thinking about planting in their gardens at home, but it’s the perfect time to put native plants in the ground, Wallace said.
“It actually is good planting season because we’re still early enough where the ground is not going to freeze really hard,” she said. “Now that cooler temperatures are coming in, with cooler nights, the plants like that better. They don’t like hot, dry conditions, so the cooler temperatures and hopefully more rainfall gives them plenty of time for them to get their roots established before the ground freezes hard.”
The Nature Foundation Executive Director Tara Neff was part of the group who got a little dirt on their hands and knees while putting the hundreds of new plants into the ground.
“This was a pretty tough weather day, but the group was absolutely ready for the challenge,” she said. “We accomplished so much on the Four Rivers campus.”
Pembina is one of The Nature Foundation’s major community partners, and Neff was happy to have a chance to meet employees while making improvements around Four Rivers.
“It was nice to connect with the employees and learn that their love for gardening and the outdoors led them to volunteer,” she said, adding she was happy to hear some of the Pembina volunteers plan to return in the winter to help when seed is spread across the prairie areas of the preserve.
Some of the Pembina employees who pitched in this year also volunteered at a similar event last year. For them, coming back was a rewarding experience.
“It’s great seeing how it’s filled in, with all the hard work we put in that day,” said Pembina employee Carin Wilson. “It’s good to see the rewards.”
Pembina employee Anne Liptak agreed and said she too appreciated the opportunity to see last year’s effort thriving.
“When I’m down bent over digging, I’m seeing plants that were obviously planted last year from the same effort,” Liptak said. “It’s rewarding for me to come back and see things blooming.”
Both Wilson and Liptak enjoy volunteering and being outdoors in nature and welcomed the opportunity to do both in their community.
“I am chained to a desk, so this opportunity to spend a day volunteering outdoors is wonderful. It’s great,” Liptak said.
For Wallace, the day’s work was just the start of her efforts to get the plants well established this year so they can show off next summer.
“I will be watching it intently,” she said. “If we don’t get a lot more rain, either myself or someone else is going to be out here follow-up watering. I wouldn’t even start this if I didn’t think we could keep them watered.”
Wallace said the work this year was designed to enhance the existing landscape and also attract wildlife. Along the side of the education center, she chose native plant plugs to complement what was planted last year.
“What we’re doing this year is looking at what species we don’t have yet that we might want to have here,” she said. “We are infilling with some different species and kind of more of the same of the ones that are doing really good.”
The idea is arrange the plants in such a way that pollinators will be enticed by them, she said.
“They like groupings of them, that’s what attracts them,” she said of pollinators. “So we’re putting groupings of threes, sixes, nines so there will be pops of color for people to see and enjoy, but the pollinators will really be able to zone in on those plants.”
New plants also went in around the pond next to the education center, and Wallace said she looks forward to attracting even more life to the space, which is often used as an outdoor classroom for field trips.
“At this time next year, it should be quite lovely — a nice variety of blooming wetland plants to attract pollinators. We already have cricket frogs here, I see lots of warblers in the spring, I’ve heard owls, so this is a wonderful little spot, and the interpreters are going to love using this for a classroom.”
Additional areas of focus included supplementing the little bluestem grasses in landscaped beds in front of Four Rivers and also adding more native plants around the Four Rivers Shelter, which is a popular spot for weddings and other gatherings.
Funding provided by Pembina for the planting effort is part of a larger $40,000 commitment that also included funding for STEM and STEAM activities at Forest Preserve visitor centers as well as funding for a bus scholarship program to cover field trip transportation costs for schools serving low-income students.