Exciting happenings this weekend: We are the proud gardeners of a community plot in the Rock Meadow Community Gardens in Belmont, MA!
Our plot is not stellar -- We had last pick, literally, but just having a square of dirt to attempt to make things grow out of is awesome! The photograph to the right is actually a view from our plot. We are on the edge of the gardens with great proximity to the meadow.
Rock Meadow is in the beginning stages of a project to restore it as wildlife habitat. I was particularly impressed by a fairly large group of cattails apparently not impeded by invasive phragmites or purple loosestrife. It's a beautiful spot.
I'm looking forward to seeing our garden grow and also watching how Rock Meadow and the gardens change through the coming growing season.
See another gardener's blog for many more images of Rock Meadow Community Garden including photos from last year's growing season.
2 comments:
I'm confused by the concept of an ecosystem that requires mowing to prevent it from converting to another ecosystem. Does the meadow ecosystem only exist in New England as a result of earlier agriculture? Would it otherwise all be forest? Or can meadows no longer self-sustain due to the expulsion of large wild animals?
I'm not an ecology expert, but I'd like to point out a couple of things: First, meadows can be natural, man-made, or somewhere in between. Furthermore, what any landscape in Eastern Massachusetts would be like without human interference is an entirely academic question. Native Americans farmed the area extensively long before Europeans arrived. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on meadows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadow) and you'll see that some New England tribes even cleared land to form transitional meadows to attract deer for hunting. So, I don't know what the history of Rock Meadow is in particular, but it's possible that it is a perpetual wet meadow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_meadow). It is also possible that it's original existence is a direct consequence of human actions. Whichever is the case, it's preservation will (or continued creation) will provide valuable habitat for flora and fauna that naturally live in the area.
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