After chemical methods have controlled plant growth, the matter of maintenance is of prime importance.
The margins demand the most attention, for along the borders of a converted field, there are bound to be invaders.
The edge of a forest will surreptitiously creep in by underground runners or by the arching branches of shrubs taking root at their tips.
The leaves of forest trees will sometimes bury fallen seeds, hiding them from rodents and birds and protecting them until they have germinated.
The shade of these trees will discourage enough grass at the edge of the field to give other plants a foothold.
These have all provided problems on these Berkshire meadows, as they would on any similarly developed area, but the time required in handling them needs to be counted only in hours, not days per year.
Dealing With Ferns
Ferns have demanded attention, too, for several kinds are forest-edge plants that sometimes may overrun an area.
If they are kept under control by spraying at the margin, they can become an attractive feature. The hay-scented fern, for example, aligns itself vertically toward the light and makes a pleasing picture from a distance.
Bracken, if not allowed to become a pest, gives a flat-topped cover of glossy leaves in the sunshine. The cinnamon interrupted, and royal ferns have proved themselves worth featuring as individual specimens.
But eradicating ferns if they are not wanted requires more effort than killing most herbaceous plants.
Unless the ground is saturated with a strong solution of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T in Spring, several treatments of foliage or stems are required to assure root-kill.
Even the ground-spraying method has not yet been thoroughly tested, but the first results give promise of success.
Broad paths have been kept cut through the grassland by using power equipment three times a year—in June or earlier and again in July and August.
Flowers carpet the mown lanes, for it is only here that the gaily colored weeds of common pastures continue to be at home, blossoming close to the ground: violets in season, heal-all, diminutive Queen Anne’s lace and orange hawkweeds turning their coppery faces to the sun.
These, with buttercups and daisies, bloom in the trails long past their season in the uncut fields.
Blazing a Trail
A different type of path is maintained in the areas where some of the native shrubs have been left for landscape effect, for here, there has been the problem of breaking a trail through dense low shrubs.
When snow is on the ground to mark one’s route is the best time for determining a trail’s direction, tying rags on the trees and shrubs that stand in the way.
In the first attempts at trail-making, all woody plants were cut to the ground, and their stumps and new shoots were sprayed repeatedly to prevent regrowth.
A less laborious method has been developed since the advent of 2,4,5-T, which generally needs to be applied only once. This is to spray the shrubs without cutting, using a “basal bark” concentration of brushkiller in oil, preferably in Wintertime. Some of the shrubs will never leaf out.
Others will open their leaves and then gradually die. By early Autumn, the course of the trail can be easily followed along the line of the dead trees and shrubs.
By late fall, the smaller ones will be brittle enough to break down underfoot.
Most of the larger shrubs and trees sprayed the following summer can be removed. Their stems and branches, broken up and thrown aside, will soon disappear.
Another summer’s growth of grass should hide them completely, and they will give their substance to the enrichment of the earth.
Their stumps will still be left, but if the path is wide enough, these should not be in the way, and they will disintegrate in time.
Vistas Beyond
Strolling along these trails from season to season presents an intimate view of the fields’ inhabitants and opens up constantly changing vistas far beyond those seen from the dining-room window.
These grassy meadows, interspersed or bordered with flowering and fruiting shrubs, have emerged from a tangle of weedy shrubs and trees in less than five years.
The varied panoramas, created by discreet procedures in retaining the desirable plants while eliminating the unwanted ones, give pleasant contemplation.
Even without adding new plant materials, every view is aesthetically satisfying. What more might be if hardy plants that care for themselves were introduced is worth considering.
That it would be difficult to establish new species in the tightly woven carpet of the grassland is admitted. Yet, if handled the proper way, it apparently can be done . . . but how and with what is another story.
44659 by Carol H. Woodward