Creating a Native Tree Grove

​Most Howard County residents live within a half-mile of a storm drain or stream that eventually leads to the Patuxent or Patapsco rivers and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.  It is vital that residents learn how their behavior affects the health of our local waterways and become inspired to care for our natural resources. To achieve this big-picture goal, CEI applied for a Chesapeake Bay Trust (CBT) grant to create a new native tree grove in community open space owned by the Columbia Association. Also supported by the Howard County Forestry Board and the Audubon Society, this project was designed to achieve the following objectives:

• Engage diverse Howard County residents in the practice of civic ecology. Civic ecology practices are local environmental stewardship actions taken to enhance green infrastructure, ecosystem services, and community well-being of urban and other human-dominated systems. Social research has shown that active stewardship projects build knowledge, shape attitudes, and encourage more positive environmental behaviors among people of many backgrounds.
• Take lasting action to both protect local watersheds and address climate change. The forest project benefits water quality, supports local biodiversity, absorbs carbon, and involves participants from diverse local communities in building shared values of earth stewardship, knowledge of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, and skills to undertake additional future projects to improve watersheds and enhance climate resilience.
• Positively influence Howard County resident behavior towards their local watersheds. The project will involve participants in active stewardship of the forest project site and also develop skills they can take to their communities. Educational information provided during project events sought to engage cognitive, emotional, and spiritual connections with the natural environment.

This project used a methodology created by Japanese scientist Akira Miyawaki, who won the Blue Planet Prize (sometimes considered the Nobel Prize in the environmental field) in 2006 for his work planting 40 million trees all over the world. His afforestation methodology amplifies natural forest growth processes to establish a mature, native forest in ten years — ten times the typical rate of forests planted by humans. Indian engineer Shubhendu Sharma has worked with Miyawaki refined his method to grow native, self-sustaining forests anywhere in the world. This process includes six steps: 1) Conduct a site soil study to identify what nutrition the soil lacks; 2) Identify what native species should be growing, depending on climate and forest goals; 3) Amend the soil with locally abundant biomass to a depth of three feet; 4) Densely plant saplings of ~50 native species that are ~32 inches high (three to five saplings per three square foot); 5) Allow the forest to grow; 6) Water and weed the forest for the first two or three years, at which point it becomes self-sustaining.

In collaboration with the Columbia Association, CEI identied a plot of land in their open space property on which to create the new, native tree grove. The site location is just northeast of Woodblock Row in the Village of Oakland Mills. Prior to planting it was a mix of early succession black locust, autumn olive, and invasive vines. This location is in the Little Patuxent watershed adjacent to a tributary to the Little Patuxent River and along the Columbia “Lake to Lake Trail”, making it a strong choice for broader community visibility.

In April of 2018, two community events were held to prepare the site and then to plant the site with 213 trees from  18 different native species. Over 150 people participated in these two events.  Since that time we have organized several events to tend to the tree and weed the grove. The trees are growing well and we look forward to seeing how this grove grows overtime and being able to replicate similar efforts around the community!