The Greening of the Southwest Bike/Ped Path

By Sue Reindollar

During the spring of 1886 the four-mile stretch of corridor leading from Fitchburg onwards towards Madison was teeming with the muscle and sweat of the gandy dancers, those laborers who toiled with hand picks, shovels, draglines, and horses to construct the Illinois Central Rail System. Now, over a century later construction workers with bulldozers, ditch diggers, steam shovels, blowtorches, and draglines toil once again, converting the same four-mile stretch of corridor to a bike and pedestrian path.

The corridor is again in transition. This time, this new beginning, in tune with the challenges of a new millenium, gives us the opportunity to rethink what we should be doing with this green space as our gift to the future.

Those who ride or walk along the corridor, plus the property owners bordering this space, now have the chance to work together to create an area which will enhance not only the needs of the homeowners but the pleasure of the users of the path.

To many of us that track area was the solace after the stress of a day's work where we walked our dogs or just meandered through the green space. So what can we do to recover our cherished backyards and improve our experience as users of the "tracks"?

Perhaps first we need to give some thought to the ecology of the corridor. After all it has a life of its own which needs to be respected. It has long been a migratory route and sanctuary for birds and butterflies. Over time observers have noted as many as 130 species of birds moving along the corridor. There have been an occasional deer and a coyote, along with the usual complement of possums, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and forever-fecund rabbits. We are not the only creatures who leave tracks on the path.

The plant communities that border the corridor are just as diverse. Between Commonwealth St. and Spooner St. there is a shady, damp area, where the marsh aster, jewelweed, and woodland sunflowers grow. The areas paralleling Gregory St. are bound by a degraded remnant of open oak woodland in the adjacent City of Madison property where many residents enjoy walking their dogs.

Reclaiming the corridor for a new purpose is an invitation to plant or, at the very least, either do nothing with the area or erect a manmade barrier. The fact that there are invasive noxious species along the tracks is warning enough that we must be aware of what we introduce to the area.

Japanese knotweed (often called Japanese bamboo by many living along the tracks who curse its invasive habit), is already prolific along the Gregory St. portion of the track. It is so tenacious and invasive that it has the capability of growing through asphalt. It took only a few days, not weeks, for it to send up new sprouts within the graded area of the track when the ground was disturbed. It's almost like a science fiction horror movie where you become encircled by this horrific plant and smothered.

Another noxious invasive plant is garlic mustard which takes over, as it has in Glenwood Children's Park, and shades out plants that are more desirous. It is a biennial (two-year growth cycle) and must be pulled for at least two years in succession, taking care to destroy the plant and roots before it flowers. Information on these and other invasive plants, plus numerous pictures and suggestions on what would be good to plant, will be available in a three-ring binder in Monroe St. and Sequoya libraries.

For those of us who want to plant a privacy screen or improve our space, here are some possibilities to think about. Diversity is the key to a healthy environment, drawing a variety of insects, birds, butterflies, and animals to attempt an ecological balance. Native plants and trees have evolved to survive in our local climates and soils, and they are very hardy, requiring little, if any, maintenance.

If you have full or partial shade on your backlot, then some understory trees growing from fifteen to thirty-five feet are:

1. serviceberry or Juneberry has wonderful blueberry-tasting fruit for birds and people;
2. Pagoda dogwood produces blue-black fruit and features a layered shape;
3. chokecherry is fast growing and spreads;
4. redbud has delicate purple-pink flowers;
5. wild plum has edible fruit and it flowers in the spring.

Popular trees or shrubs which grow eight to ten feet tall are:

1. the viburnums such as highbush cranberry with red berries support the birds in winter; nannyberry, arrowwood, and blackhaw are the other good landscape viburnums;
2. dogwoods, such as redosier, spreads and creates dense screening and berries; gray dogwood forms clumps for good screening;
3. staghorn or smooth sumac has beautiful fall color with berries popular with the birds but spreads and needs lots of room.

A wonderful nursery to try is Reeseville Ridge Nursery owned by Daryl and Mary Kromm who travel around gathering seeds and propagating their own woody plants of native and non-native trees. As with many of the nurseries specializing in native plants and trees, their main business is selling bare root stock (which is reputed to produce a healthier and sturdier growing tree than the balled trees) in either plugs of one foot or root stock of two feet. Obviously this means that you have to be patient to get the screening you want.

Let's not leave out the flower color and fragrance, the invitation to delight. This is where the fun begins. Some like their yards natural and others like their yards cultivated with varying degrees of seclusion. Low maintenance gardens might include daylilies combined with purple and yellow coneflowers, coreopsis, Culver's root, bee balm or Monarda, rattlesnake master, butterfly weed, cardinal flowers, Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed susans), meadow rue, Joe Pye weed, and various milkweeds. How about some of the beautiful grasses (big blue stem and little blue stem),some which grow four to seven feet tall. But ask your local ecologists and they will say that it is better to select plants of local origin to preserve local gene pools and to avoid introduction of potentially invasive ecotypes.

The following nurseries might be good choices:

• Jean Bawden of Earthspirit Farm, 4385 Oak Hill Rd. Oregon, WI 53575 (e-mail: bdn7458@mailbag.com);
• for bare-root seedlings, Daryl and Mary Kromm at Reeseville Ridge Nursery, 309 S. Main Box 171 Reeseville, WI 53579 (e-mail: rrn@globaldialogue.com);
• for the unusual in trees and shrubs, Stonewall Nursery 763 Hwy 14 Oregon;
• for specializing in shrubs and trees, Little Valley Farm 5693 Snead Creek Rd. Spring Green 53588 (608-935-3324);
• for plants and seeds, Prairie Nursery Box 306 Westfield, WI 53964 (1-800-476-9453);
• and also for plants and seeds, Prairie Ridge Nursery 9738 Overland Rd. Mount Horeb, WI 53572-2832 (608-437-5245).

Contributors to this article were Jean Bawden of Earthspirit Farm; Doug Evans of Fox Ave., Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood; Laura Brown of Piper Dr., Midvale Heights neighborhood and former president of the Madison Wild Ones, a group promoting native plantings in your own yard; Mary Kromm of Reeseville Ridge Nursery; Amy D. McDaniel of Euclid Ave., Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood and vice president of the Madison Audubon Society.

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Last Modified: 03-Feb-08 05:53 PM

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