Volunteers in Shaker Heights planted 35 native trees in a half-acre area near the Doan Brook close to the corner of South Park Boulevard and Lee Road Saturday through the Doan Brook Watershed Partnership’s “Grow Not Mow” invasive plant removal event.
Saturday’s event was the second tree planting in a planned series along the Doan Brook. Previously, the partnership mowed down invasive plants. But this proved to be more detrimental than intended, said Shaker Heights City Councilmember Nancy Moore, who is also president of the Doan Brook Watershed Partnership Executive Committee.
“It mowed down all the new seedlings of the trees that were dropping off and would have created more trees and a more naturalized setting,” she said. “It also killed all the native plants, and so over the years, the native plants had been replaced by invasives.”
The Doan Brook Watershed Partnership is a collaborative effort between the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, who share the watershed. The goal is to increase the number of native plants and species in the area that benefit the ecosystem in Northeast Ohio.
“The more trees we have, more vegetation we have, the more carbon sequestration there is, the more the storm water is going to get filtered before it gets to the Doan Brook which therefore is going to make for cleaner water, get into Lake Erie,” said Nick Fletcher a member of Shaker Heights’ Tree Advisory Board.
About 40 people took part in Saturday's event, Moore said. They differed in ages and backgrounds, from high school students to toddlers and lifelong residents of Shaker to residents of neighboring cities, like Michael Wu, who recently moved from New York City to Wadsworth, and Jane Montgomery who’s lived in Beachwood for five years.
“I'm interested in the environment, and I'm concerned about global warming,” Montgomery said. “A friend sent me [the] information about this, and so I decided I'm going to spend my Saturday morning helping with this.”
Although this wasn’t the first tree planting for Montgomery, who was a master gardener before moving to Ohio from Florida, she said she was happy to attend and would volunteer again in the future.
“I'm just glad that … people are recognizing the need to do this kind of thing,” she said.
Alan Gross, who lived in Shaker Heights his entire life, and graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1966, said it was nice to see so many “committed residents” of various ages coming together to help maintain the city’s beauty.
“The environment isn't limited to Shaker Heights,” Gross said. “We're all committed and wherever we have an opportunity to serve and better the community, the environment, I think we're all very happy to step in, whether it's in Shaker, Beechwood, Greater Cleveland, whatever it might be.”
Julia Larouche, chair of Shaker Heights’ Green Space and Stormwater subcommittee, echoed that sentiment.
“How many of us come down Lee Road, whether we're in cars or on bicycles or on foot?” she said. “So, I think this does bring people together from different walks of life as an effort that will really benefit all of us, no matter where you're coming from.”
Nate Smith, a member of the Tree Advisory Board, handled the planning, which included deciding which trees would thrive in the wet conditions, and where to plant the trees relative to the Doan Brook itself.
Through a grant, Smith purchased many different trees, like hop hornbeams, Ohio buckeyes, sycamores and many others, from local nurseries. He also collected donated trees from residents growing them at home – some as tall as 20 feet.
Volunteers brought shovels and equipment, and dug sloped holes in the soil two times larger than the pots the trees came in. Before planting the trees though, volunteers and event partners loosened the root ball of the trees to allow the roots to spread out in the soil.
“We want to have a place for the roots to go,” Smith said, “and have a sloped side that has, sort of, edges and lots of surface area for the roots to dig into.”
After planting, cages were placed around each tree to keep deer from eating them or scratching the trunks with their antlers. Volunteers also placed mulch around the base of the tree to help it retain moisture.
“It's also going to keep down some of the invasive weeds that we do have here,” he said. “We had students taking down a lot of invasive plants in the past several weeks, and we don't need any of that kind of taking over and harming the trees.”
Students from the upper campus of Hawken School in Gates Mills came and cleared out invasive species in September to make room for the trees, but Smith said the partnership will likely visit the site again to clear more invasive plants from the area.
Seeing the work pay off, Smith said, is a rewarding experience.
“It’s surprising when you look up close how common the invasive species are and how intensely they sort of dominate a space sometimes,” he said. “And now, seeing this happen and seeing all the cages going up around the trees, it just feels like, okay, this is this is real and we're … hopefully going to have more of them.”
The berries and seeds of invasive plants were bagged and taken to the landfill to avoid future germination, Fletcher said. Any wood and leaves from the invasive plants were left on site to decompose in the soil.
Invasive species like porcelain berries, common buckthorn and amur honeysuckle can be planted anywhere, Fletcher said, and some tend to be used in gardening and landscaping projects. But when birds and other pollinators eat the barriers, the plant is able to spread elsewhere.
“Then once it gets into a space like this where nobody's there to watch it and manage it, it really takes off and spreads unchecked,” he said.
Once they germinate, the invasive plants tend to spread quickly and suffocate the native species in the area, Fletcher said.
Some insect species rely on a specific native plant to survive, Fletcher said, like the milkweed plant for monarch butterflies. Milkweed is the only plant monarchs will lay their eggs on, and the caterpillars feed on the plant until they create their chrysalis.
“There’s hundreds or thousands of other insects that have that sort of specialized relationship with certain plants or trees,” Fletcher said. “If those trees and plants aren't present in the landscape, then you don't get those insects. And so, by adding more and more natives here, we should get more insects, which in turn allows more birds to raise their young.
More than 96% of birds feed insects, like caterpillars, to their young, Fletcher said. So, if native insects in the region decline, the bird population could suffer as well.
“Oak trees that we're putting in can host something like 500 species of caterpillar,” Fletcher said. “If you think about the life of that tree over a hundred years, 200 years, and how many insects, how many birds it supports compared to [an invasive plant] which isn't supporting anything and is actively harming things, that's another big win.”
Though there is a misconception that any plant is beneficial to its environment, Fletcher said there’s a good way to identify if a plant is invasive.
“Generally speaking, if you can't see into a forest, chances are that first six to seven feet is probably some invasive material,” he said. “If there's like an impenetrable thicket of things, it's a good chance it's something that is not supposed to be there.”
This was the second tree planting, with the first being in April at the corner of South Park Boulevard and Courtland Boulevard. Although there is still work to be done removing the remaining invasive plants and taking care of the newly planted trees, Smith said there are plans in the work for a third planting.
“We’re looking to keep this rolling and try and expand this, I guess, model of a combination of … local government support and also volunteers and people who just care about native trees and plants and want to see want to see our future look a little brighter,” he said.
