LandHealth’s Native Plant Nursery and land revitalization
by Steve Jones, Nursery Manager
When we started LandHealth’s native plant nursery, our main goal was to bring “life” to the urban land that had been stressed by human activity. Some of that new life has been in the form of people, including the adults from SpARC’s day program.
We bring life back to the urban land through our operations decisions. Our nursery site at Parkside, West Philadelphia sits gently on the urban land we are in the process of revitalizing. The open areas for visitors are maintained with low-impact practices. We don’t introduce plants to our open areas that require added water, pesticides, or fertilizer. Grasses and most other plants that grow in these areas are cut regularly, but not removed. The organic material cut is returned to the ground, where it can add more organic components to the new soil we are producing on the land.
We are allowing some of our open space to revert to urban meadow, with tall clump-forming grasses providing most of the green for this area. This year we are selectively removing aggressive weeds and replacing them with plants from our nursery operation. Next year we will have a colorful urban meadow that is low maintenance, provides habitat for beneficial wildlife, and allows us to show off the beauty of landscaping with native plants.
Our nursery operations are mindful of limiting our use of resources like water and fossil fuels. We have solar panels to generate a small amount of electricity for the site. Our watering regime focuses on directing water to the soil, rather than spraying water into the air. Direct watering is beneficial to the plants, which are less prone to diseases when their leaves are kept drier.
The selection of native plants is itself part of the land revitalization wherever our plants are used in the Philadelphia region. Pests are not a concern to the native plants growing in our nursery. When we do encounter such problems, we look for ways to control or limit pests without using chemical pesticides. This year we are learning to use beneficial insect predators such as ladybugs and nematode worms to control the bugs that impact our plants. By reducing the population of problematic insects through weeding, we allow natural processes to help with pest problems.
We believe our work with the urban land at Parkside is benefitting our neighbors, program participants, and all the organisms that make human life possible in an urban setting.
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