Planting Site (Click on it to enlarge it.)
Plans are well underway for the big Piedmont Patch Planting Day on Saturday, April 14 (rain date April 21) from 9:00 a.m. to noon. We will be planting native grasses and wildflowers on the 300-foot-long earthen dam beside the pond at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill. We’ll also be adding some plants around the shallow edges of the pond, and a few water-tolerant shrubs to offer more cover and food options for native waterfowl.
By the end of the growing season this year, the area around the pond should be teeming with blooms, butterflies, bees, birds, and other native wildlife. As the plantings mature over the next few years, they should provide permanent habitat – food and shelter – for a diverse array of native animals, stabilize the integrity of the earthen dam, and provide a place of beautiful contemplation and study that will be open to the public year-round as a demonstration of how adding a Piedmont Patch on a public or private landscape can transform the property into a haven for displaced native wildlife, and a place of beauty for human admirers.
To manifest this dream, we need as many enthusiastic volunteers as possible to help us plant around 1000 grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs of varying sizes on Piedmont Patch Planting Day. We invite volunteers new to gardening and veteran gardeners to join us on the big day. We hope to use the veterans as group leaders, who will each supervise a small group of less-experienced volunteers. Each group will be assigned a set of plants and an area to plant. We are hoping our group leaders will be able to talk about the native plants they recognize as they work with their group, so that everyone will leave with more knowledge than they arrived with. The group planting water-tolerant plants should wear water-proof shoes and be willing to get a bit muddy during the planting process. Everyone else should wear sturdy gardening clothes, closed-toe shoes with tread (we’ll be planting on the slope of the dam), and gardening gloves. Please also bring your favorite planting tools – trowels, spades, garden knives, etc.
The planting site is not ideal for younger children, but families with children old enough to safely traverse the slope and handle planting tools are invited to join us. We also welcome any Girl Scout/Boy Scout and other youth groups interested in helping to plant this site.
If you would like to volunteer for the Piedmont Patch Planting Day, please send us an email at piedmontpatch@gmail.com. Let us know if you are a veteran gardener or a newbie and how many folks you’ll be bringing. You’ll find directions to our planting site on our Web page. Please join us in creating our first Piedmont Patch!
Piedmont Gardener 