invasive plants – Belmont Citizens Forum

Lone Tree Hill Saw Improvements in 2023

Environment, January 2024, Lone Tree Hill, McLean, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 052024

By Radha Iyengar Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation area benefited from another year of conservation, restoration, and stewardship, thanks mainly to the efforts of the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC). Many Belmontonians and visitors enjoy this 119-acre conservation property for walking, biking, viewing wildlife, and being out in nature. The LMC was created through a memorandum of agreement between the town and McLean Hospital in 1999. The agreement outlined the development restrictions for the McLean Hospital campus. It also reserved approximately 119 acres of the campus as publicly accessible open space, including a new municipal cemetery, and [READ MORE]

Residents Restore Royal Road Woods Ecosystem

Environment, Newsletter, November/December 2023, Plants Comments Off

Nov 012023

Residents Restore Royal Road Woods Ecosystem

By Vincent Stanton, Jr. and Pamela Andrews Belmont Conservation Volunteers (BCV) formed earlier this year to work on “restoring our natural spaces for everyone to enjoy.” Volunteer efforts have focused on reining in the extensive and expanding invasive species displacing native plants which support local insects, birds, and mammals. The BCV emerged from pioneering volunteer work by Leonard Katz on Lone Tree Hill. (See “Spare a Thought for Lone Tree Hill”, BCF Newsletter, September 2022.) To expand that work to town-owned land, Katz and Sustainable Belmont leader Dean Hickman obtained permission from both the Select Board and, because many of [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

Environment, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants, September/October 2023 Comments Off

Sep 012023

Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

By Jeffrey North On Earth Day 2023 (April 22), the Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day. (See “Volunteers Plant, Clean Up Lone Tree Hill,” BCF Newsletter, May/June 2023, for more information). Several dozen volunteers rolled up their sleeves, and gardening trowels in hand, planted 350 plugs of young native plants in the Great Meadow and reclaimed meadow areas of Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land in addition to planting 40 white pine saplings to replace the mature pines gradually lost to age and weather. The [READ MORE]

Profiles in Belmont: Dean Hickman

Environment, July/August 2023, Newsletter, Recycling Comments Off

Jun 302023

By Elissa Ely Before he became chair of Sustainable Belmont, before the PhD in pharmacogenetics, before moving to the United States, certainly before any awareness of the environmental needs of a Massachusetts town next to Cambridge, Dean Hickman was picking up litter. “Have been picking up trash anywhere I go since I could walk,” his Instagram says. Growing up in farm country west of London, traveling the footpath systems, Dean took the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaign of the 1960s to heart. Many decades later, on a late rainy afternoon when he could have been enjoying a mug of tea, we [READ MORE]

Let Your Hidden Native Plant Garden Emerge

Environment, May/June 2023, Plants Comments Off

Apr 262023

Let Your Hidden Native Plant Garden Emerge

By Heather Pruiksma Spring has sprung, and gardeners everywhere are itching to get their hands into the soil and among the roots. At Grow Native Massachusetts, we encourage including more native plants in your gardens, which can be less work than it might seem — if you’re willing to be a little patient. Native plants are plants that have been growing in a particular habitat and region, typically for thousands of years or much longer. Also called indigenous, they are well adapted to the climate, light, and soil conditions that characterize their ecosystem. Within this system, they have evolved important relationships [READ MORE]

Invasive Plants Can Harm Local Birds

Environment, May/June 2023, Newsletter, Plants Comments Off

Apr 262023

By Meg Muckenhoupt May is the peak of spring migration season in Massachusetts, and thousands of birds are landing in Belmont. (You can even get radar reports on which birds are arriving overnight on birdcast.info.) But what will these birds do when they get here? Will they find the resources they need to survive, raise young, and embark on fall migrations next September? The answer may depend on what’s growing around Belmont—and a lot of what’s growing around Belmont is invasive plants. Plants change birds’ lives North American birds evolved with native plants. Most bird-lovers know that different types of [READ MORE]

Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

May/June 2023, Newsletter Comments Off

Apr 262023

Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

By Radha Iyengar The Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day on Saturday, April 22, an overcast and cool day. Volunteers included Girl Scouts Troop 82027, employees of Cityside Subaru, M&T Bank,and the Sai Group, and residents of Belmont and the surrounding communities. Many hands made light work. At the Pine Allee, efficient volunteers planted forty white pine saplings. The new plants replaced the Allee’s missing trees and some of the dead saplings from previous volunteer day plantings. At the adjacent meadow the volunteers planted slender [READ MORE]

Profiles in Belmont: Jean Devine

Environment, March/April 2023, Newsletter Comments Off

Mar 012023

By Elissa Ely There were woods behind Jean Devine’s house growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire. As a child, she liked pressing leaves and hated wearing socks; her mother would send her outside on ‘safaris’ with apple slices, the family dog trailing behind. She was always late to school. Jean was unafraid of bugs and fascinated by Daddy Longlegs. Woods and spiders did not turn her into the environmental educator, native-plant coach, and landscaper she eventually became, but they were her introduction to nature. Her mother belonged to the Garden Club in an era when plots were visually beautiful, organized [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

Environment, January/February 2023, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 032023

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

By Jeffrey North In 2020, the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multi-year campaign to restore native plant communities in prioritized areas of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. Step one in the restoration was to bring the invasive plant species under control. Planting natives would be a wasted effort and expense if they cannot compete with the pernicious plants that have come to occupy large swaths of our conservation lands and private yards. The work began with a broad brush, property-wide restoration survey conducted by ecological design professionals in [READ MORE]

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

Environment, November 2022, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Oct 312022

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

By Joseph Hibbard and Jeffrey North The Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter has been printing articles about the perils and poisons of non-native invasive plant species on these pages for years. Readers have learned that garlic mustard changes the chemistry of the soil to gain an advantage over other plant species in forest and edge areas. Our article on black swallowwort described that plant’s deadly toxicity to Monarch butterfly larvae that mistakenly consume it instead of nourishing native milkweed. We have described how Asiatic bittersweet rapidly climbs native trees, blocks the sunlight, and eventually topples the tree while changing our viewsheds. [READ MORE]

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