Next Generation Ecology

As part of our first year’s 40 volunteer hours, new master gardeners are required to participate in a series of prescribed projects and tasks. These are meant to whet our gardening appetites as well as learn firsthand what volunteer options are available to contribute the annual 20 hours (or more) to the overall mission required of the Master Gardeners. So last Wednesday, I trundled down to Kennard Elementary in Centreville to help several MG’s help a battalion of fourth graders plant a ditch with Lobelia cardinalis, Asclepias and Rudbeckia. I was fairly clueless when I first got there, trowel in hand, and almost as frustrated as the kids by the thatch of wiregrass they had to hack through to plug in the plants. But as I watched the kids, I was encouraged not only by the general enthusiasm (with only a couple of exceptions) for the grubby hands-on work, but by how many of the group of about 50 kids got both the concept –ecosystem interactions – and the specifics – native plants simultaneously help contain and filter runoff to prevent it polluting the Bay, and they encourage the 3B’s (or 4 depending on how you count) Beneficial Bugs, Birds, and Bullfrogs. The kids knew there was a concrete reason for the effort and could see how the first part of the little swale, planted several years ago, was sustaining wildlife -- the 3 (or 4) B’s already in evidence and noisily swooping, chattering, buzzing, and garrumphing. I was reminded of the old adage: As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Those elementary school twigs clomping around in the muddy ditch shoving plants in willy-nilly seem to be growing well.