Friends create habitat for pollinators

The Friends of Watsessing Park Conservancy held its annual pollinator event Saturday morning, July 15.

Activities included a talk on local native plants by Bloomfield Councilman Richard Rockwell, but the morning’s highlight was the vibrant butterfly garden adjacent to the lawn bowling court near the Maolis Avenue entrance.

Here visitors could marvel at an abundance of flowers and swirling pollinators. The caretakers of the garden are husband and wife, Rich and Susan Moseson.

“Ten years ago we learned about the problem of monarch butterflies,” Rich said at the garden. “They were losing habitat.”

The problem, he explained, was that the monarch butterfly, an important pollinator, requires the wildflower milkweed to live and propagate. It is only on this plant will the insect lay its eggs and the ensuing caterpillars will eat. But farming, development and insecticides decrease the number of viable plants.

Rich said he and his wife began growing milkweed at their Linden Avenue home and were so successful, they had to give some away. They contacted the Friends of the Great Swamp, in Millington.

“We donated a lot and still had a lot potted up,” he said. “I’m on the board for the conservancy and Susan suggested we start a butterfly garden.”

With permission from Essex County, a vacant area in the park was selected and plans for the garden were approved. The county provided pavers, top soil, mulch, fencing, signage and access to water.

“We’ve had a lot of community support,” Rich said. “And we used no-till gardening. We didn’t turn over the soil, but instead placed cardboard over it. On top of that we put the mulch and then top soil. We planted in the topsoil. The cardboard disintegrated.”

The flowers were selected for the time when they bloomed. There are about 50 different species in the garden, most native to New Jersey. A $600 grant from the Northeast Earth Coalition was used to purchase native plants when the garden expanded.

Numerous Bloomfield residents have created home gardens to attract and sustain pollinators while also raising monarch butterflies to be dispatched on their 3,000-mile migration to Mexico. The butterflies will return north in the spring, but three or four generations of insects will live, propagate and die on the journey. The effort by
Bloomfield residents reflects an awareness, nationwide, for the importance of pollinators.

Rockwell, a member of the conservancy, and several other volunteers are currently working on a restoration project along Lloyd Brook, a tributary of the Second River, in Watsessing Park. At the pollinator event, he gave a tour of this area and identified the native and invasive species so as to make people aware of flora growing in their backyards. Some plants he pointed out, if found growing on a lawn, would be removed as weeds. But in actuality, they did have names and develop tiny flowers for tiny pollinators.

“We are removing the invasive Japanese knotweed and replacing it with native plants and grasses,” he said. This is our third year and we are seeing a lot of progress. We have several areas, each with a slightly different approach.”

In the area under his care, the knotweed is cut down in early spring, then as native plants germinate, the knotweed is carefully removed.

“Japanese knotweed is an invasive species that spreads aggressively and grows very fast,” Rockwell said. “It crowds out native species that provide food for native wildlife
and it forms dense patches that prevent wildlife from traversing wetland areas.”

He said the native plants returning to his area include white snakeroot, white vervain, American jumpseed, deer tongue, Canada lettuce, Canadian honewort, white avens, daisy fleabane, wood asters, path rush and American wild mint.

Some of these plants he pointed out, if found growing on a front lawn, would be called weeds. Nonetheless, they did have names and developed tiny flowers that attracted tiny pollinators.

“We’ve planted some additional natives including common boneset, late boneset, soft rush, river wild rye, woolgrass, swamp milkweed, Culver’s root, rice cutgrass and goldenrod. There is a lot of work involved at this stage, but as more and more native plants thrive, we will have less and less weeding to do.”

Pollinators were also released Sunday, July 29, at Van Tassel’s Funeral Home, on Belleville Avenue, which was hosting its third annual Include Me To Butterfly Release.

People were invited to purchase a butterfly in memory of a loved one. According to Izabela Van Tassel, 15 people attended the ceremony and about 30 butterflies were released. Sixty-four names were remembered, including those of four cats and one dog.

The Watsessing Park Conservancy meets once a month inside the park at the senior center on Conger Avenue. The group is planning a tree planting and park clean-up. For more information: friendsofwatsessingpark.org.

  Glen Ridge, pollinator, Watessing Park