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Native Plant Communities
for Neighborhood Landscapes
By Bill Dreyer, Restoration Ecologist
When you walk through your neighborhood do you ever wonder
what the landscape looked like 200 years ago?
The yard of my parents home in Webster Groves overlooks
a creek.
When we were kids my brothers and sisters and I used to
play along that creek. The adventure of exploring new
twists and turns and turnin g over rocks to find crawdads
put me in a natural frame of mind. Then one day finding
a perfect pink flint arrowhead helped put me in touch
with the past, when a Native American hunted along the
same creek I had just meandered in. He might have been
a boy my own age.
On those summer evenings before dark the cicadas sang
their lazy mantra in the ancient Pin Oak tree out side
my bedroom window. I laid there listening
to their wild sound as my mind wandered off into the realm
of natural wonder before I fell asleep.
Today when I walk through an urban neighborhood I often
find myself trying to decipher the nature of that terrain
as it was before Western Expansion. And even in an urban
neighborhood I find an abundance of clues to help me understand
the nature of the landscape as it is and as it was. I
use all the clues I can get. And I get serious about visualizing
the native potential for a landscape. But that is my job.
I work at restoring natural areas. I have worked in native
landscapes in the Appalachian Forests; in the Ozarks;
In the Tall Grass Prairie; in the Great Plains; and in
the Rocky Mountains. And I have had the opportunity to
become familiar with native plant communities in each
of those regions. If I could tell you one thing I learned,
I might tell you something you already know. Despite their
variety and diversity, native plant communities are orderly
and somewhat “predictable” about where species
can be found, depending on climate, soil types and location
on the landscape.
Looking back in time, the history of land use helps make
sense of what we find in our neighborhoods today as compared
to what we might expect to find in a natural situation.
We are not many generations removed from farming, grazing
and logging or=2 0mining that may have taken place where
our homes sit today. If I remember hearing correctly the
majority of trees in the city of Kirkwood were planted,
so it must have been open country. And the mere name of
Webster Groves suggests to me that at one time Webster
would have been open with grassy meadows and it’s
groves of trees. The land use, such as grazing, or logging
changes the condition of a natural area.
Traveling through Webster today you can still find many
North facing slopes or aspects with old White Oak stands
there, such as in the Shady Creek sanctuary along Kirkham
between Gore and Elm. And this stand of Oaks on a North
facing slope would be a natural condition for a transition
zone including woodlands, savanna and prairie.
Now when I walk along that creek running through my parents
yard off Glen Road I can still find native remnants. Some
of these are Oaks, Sycamores, Cottonwoods, Walnuts, Mulberries
, Gray Dogwood, Bittersweet, Sedges and Spring wildflowers.
If I walk up hill I can still find Big Bluestem and Ohio
Spiderwort. From my own experience I can list other native
plants that are often found in association with the plants
I named above. And there are several good references I
refer to which help me identify other native species which
would be characteristic to that location.
I like to encourage people to consider working together
with neighbors to restore the native character of their
landscapes. The character and health of the landscape
become more vital with the right use of native plant communities.
Migrating birds are more likely to locate habitat when
it is neighborhood size. Beneficial insects and butterflies
have specific needs that native plants fulfill. I am regularly
surprised and amazed by how wild things find newly established
native habitat.
I think “plant communities” are vitally important
to the ecology of any landscape. Plant communities are
collec tions of species which share a location but also
have their own unique growth habits. The more diverse
the collection is, the more stable the vegetative community
is through changing times. Some differences among plants
are: the season of their growth and blooming, colors;
their life cycle; their root depth and plant height; their
structure or form; and their drought or moisture tolerance.
To really appreciate the beauty of a native plant community
in it’s natural setting takes some study and insight.
The plants share the moisture and sunlight through out
the year. Each species has it’s season of germination,
growth, flowering, seed production and dormancy. And a
plant community responds to a variety of disturbance according
to the strength of it’s members.
In Natural Areas such as are found in state parks the
harmony of vegetation
is noticeable where native plant communities can be found.
I think neighbor who want to work together to find large
scale landscape solutions for their neighborhoods can
simplify their decisions by following natural models.
It helps to understand both the natural features and the
current conditions. With so much pavement and roof surface
today we have
more water runoff and short duration wet areas. And conversely
with excavation for construction we have soil sites with
shallow, clayey, and rocky surfaces that are extra dry.
There are native plants which can survive and thrive in
both of the above conditions.
Most of my work is on done on rural landscapes; in Woodlands,
Savannas, Glades and Prairies. There, the nature of the
restoration work depends on the nature of the terrain
and the owners aspirations. I think the potential for
restoration or recreation of natur al areas in urban areas
is similar. And I think the potential is great if neighbors
have the aspirations for natural areas and work together
to restore their landscape to it’s native potential.
Bill Dreyer - Native Habitat Restoration
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