Bedford Garden Club helps restore decades-old garden
By JOYCE CORRIGAN //
“A bit rough around the edges” is how Taro Ietaka delicately described what the Native Wildflower Garden at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation looked like two years ago before its extensive renovation and re-imagining.
The historic plot was first established at the Trailside Museum in 1955 as the Luquer-Marble Memorial Wildflower Garden. As Ietaka, the Ward Pound Ridge supervisor, explained, many original sun-loving species had sadly disappeared; death by natural causes, Ietaka concluded, because overgrown trees had shaded them out. “There were also some aggressive, non-native species we were contending with,” he said, “We’ve managed to remove periwinkle, goutweed, Japanese primrose and lungwort, but the lesser celandine (an invasive poppy) continues to be a challenge.”
First to the rescue was the Bedford Garden Club, whose early members established the original garden and named it after two founding members, conservationists and wildflower warriors, Eloise Payne Luquer and Delia West Marble. Luquer (1862-1947) also had a brilliant career painting them. It could be said that she was to wildflowers what Beatrix Potter, her contemporary, was to rabbits.
“The Garden Club jumped in wholeheartedly — sometimes right into poison ivy,” recounted Ietaka. “They weeded, designed, planted, watered — and helped fund. Varner Redmon, Elizabeth Sachs, Jayni Chase, Betsy Mitchell, Susan Burke, and so many other members have pitched in.” With two very generous matching gifts — a five-figure grant from the BGC and another bountiful grant from the Garden Club of America — BGC member Burke brought “seed money” to a whole new level.
Ward Pound Ridge Reservation is a biodiversity reserve area with miles of trails, active research projects and award-winning educational programs that hosts close to 100,000 visitors each year. The Trailside Nature Museum was founded in 1937 and is one of the nation’s oldest of its kind.
“Native wildflowers are part of our dwindling natural heritage,” said Redmon, chair of the BGC’s Civic Improvement Committee, who has spearheaded the BGC’s initiative. “They provide food and shelter for wildlife, stabilize the climate, and attract and feed pollinators which are essential for our own food supply.”
The proliferation of non-native plants has led to the alarming decline of pollinators which in turn is a threat to crop productivity. By contrast, according to the World Wildlife Fund, a single-acre wildflower meadow with 3 million flowers would produce 1kg of nectar sugar, enough to support nearly 96,000 honeybees per day.
Environmentally supportive in every way, not only are native wildflowers the basis of the food web, but they also benefit biodiversity by improving soil health, reducing water runoff, improving air quality, and decreasing pollution as they eliminate the need for mowers, fertilizer and pesticides. In fact, wildflowers are all-natural pesticides, attracting the carnivorous insects that prey on common garden pests such as hoverflies, parasitic wasps and ground beetles. Compared with gardens of predominantly cultivated plants, a hearty and self-reproducing native wildflower garden needs less pruning and watering — in other words, very little human intervention.
In addition to planting hundreds of new native perennials and eradicating invasives, the Native Wildflower Garden team has doubled the footprint to include a new sunny meadow, installed an invisible deer fence, rebuilt the wooden bridge with Adirondack railings, and installed two free-form rustic benches. Members are designing a new website with plant identification and cultivation in development using QR codes.
“There are also two access points to the stream that passes through the garden, so that visitors can see aquatic plants, crayfish, water striders and other stream life,” added Ietaka.
“We’ve had two wonderful growing seasons, and the dozens of native perennials and shrubs we planted are thriving,” said Redmon. “Last summer we had volunteers in the park twice a month and this year plan to be there almost every week.”
“Our collaboration with the gardening community has been beyond our expectations,” she continued, “from the enthusiastic staff of the Trailside Museum, curator Danniela Ciatto and naturalists Hayley Lewis and Brendan Wallace, to the Friends of the Trailside who paid for tree work to cable our wonderful old maples and to thin trees to lighten the canopy.”
Another collaborator Redmon cited was Trees for Tribs, a New York Department of Environmental Conservation program, which donated and helped plant 40 native shrubs along the fence line. Westchester Parks Foundation sent a large group of corporate volunteers to help move hundreds of plants, while Hilltop Hanover Farm’s native plant experts, Emily Rauch and Lindsey Feinberg, donated countless native plants grown from seeds collected in Ward Pound Ridge. Garden Club member, Betsy Mitchell, corralled some environmental studies students from Fox Lane High School to pitch in.
“Whether professional or backyard grower, we’re all being encouraged to embrace indigenous plants,” – BGC President Heather Langham
National leaders in the American horticultural firmament have been taking notice. “This year the Garden Club of America has been working to establish a Native Plant Month in all 50 states,” noted current BGC President Heather Langham. This followed the game-changing Senate resolution designating April 2024 as National Native Plant Month.
“Whether professional or backyard grower, we’re all being encouraged to embrace indigenous plants,” Langham explained. “It’s learning to view your landscape through the lens of ecological well-being.
So, what to say to the generations of gardeners who’ve only ever grown cultivated plants, and quite happily? “It’s not an either/or choice,” countered Langham. “Gardening with natives and wildflowers doesn’t sacrifice beauty — it’s an additive. Transitioning an existing garden or landscape to a native plant palette is just that — a process that can happen over time, and one that can include non-native plants when used responsibly.”
Redmon rhapsodized over the wildflower garden’s natural allure. “The dappled light, the different shades of green, the only sounds being running water, insects and the wind. Our little oasis will change through the seasons and be alive with insects and more resilient to changes in rainfall and temperatures,” she said.
“We are working on lesson plans, activity kits, signage, and other ways to communicate the wonders of the Wildflower Garden,” Ietaka said, adding, “But even without those, just taking a seat on one of the new benches, listening to the stream, and watching hummingbirds and butterflies feeding on the cardinal flower is wondrous!”
Perhaps that was what Romantic poet William Blake meant when he described innocence and true bliss as being able to recognize “Heaven in a Wild Flower.”
Native Wildflower Garden at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation. Photo credit: Varner Redmon.