Replace your fallen trees

Montgomery has lost a lot of trees in the last couple of months, between the snow, wind, and rain (see first photo). Please don't be discouraged about planting replacement trees. If you choose the right tree for the place, or the right place for the tree, you have a much better chance of avoiding the kind of damage we are still cleaning up. I hope you will decide to replace any trees you lost, because Montgomery needs trees, and so does the earth.

The most important point I want you to know is this: don't plant a Bradford pear tree! This Frankentree is an environmental disaster. The Bradford pear tree is an example of a Callery pear tree, a type of pear tree that was hybridized to produce pea-sized fruit, so it could be used as a street tree. It has white flowers in spring (see second photo) and beautiful red fall color that recommend it to many people. Unfortunately, it has a weak branching structure, resulting in many fallen limbs (see third photo). Moreover, at the time of year when the fruits ripen, the birds are foraging for native berries, which are fatty, waxy berries, so they can store up energy to migrate, and the birds don't know that the Callery pear's berries don't have the nutrients they need. In fact, they barely have enough calories to repay the birds for the energy they expend in foraging. However, the birds eat the berries and spread the seeds in their droppings, and Callery pear trees are springing up in fields, hedgerows, and forests everywhere. Native butterflies' larva cannot eat the leaves of Callery pear trees, but they outgrow and displace native plants that do provide food for native birds and butterflies. Montgomery Township has banned the planting of these trees and other invasive exotic species on our Open Space and as part of any application for development, and the Shade Tree Committee holds volunteer events to remove them from our Arboretum.

If you are considering planting a Bradford pear tree, please don't. If you have one that has been damaged, why not cut your losses and replace it with a native tree? Callery pear trees don't live long, they are easily damaged in storms, and they are bad for the environment. If you want a flowering tree, you could plant a beautiful ornamental native tree, or if you like the look of a fruit tree, why not plant a flowering crabapple tree? These are not native trees, but the entomologist Douglas Tallamy (see my post titled "Why Native Plants?" from March 28) states that crabapple trees are the only non-native tree that native insects can use just as well as native trees. They have beautiful spring flowers (see fourth photo) and they are drought-resistant and very tough. Do check for a disease-resistant variety; Donald Wyman is a reliable favorite with white blossoms (see fifth Photo). In a future post I will recommend native ornamental trees.

Most people have noticed that the majority of the trees damaged by the storm were evergreens, because they presented much more surface area for the wind to work on. Evergreens also suffer disproportionately from heavy snow. It would not be a bad idea to plant evergreen trees farther away from your house and garage to prevent damage during winter storms. White pine trees all over town lost branches, but an informal windshield survey suggests that Norway and blue spruce trees were the most likely to be uprooted. Apparently they have shorter roots than most other trees. Since they can grow to be very tall, they can do a lot of damage to whatever they fall on. I would recommend that spruce trees, especially, be planted away from your home, or used only for places where evergreen screening is needed. The native Eastern red cedar grows well here in Montgomery in well-drained, sunny spots, with lovely blue berries that birds love to eat (see sixth photo). However, when it grows in shade it gets tall and spindly, which makes it prone to bending over (permanently) or breaking (see seventh photo) when weighted down by snow.

You can prevent some damage to your trees by keeping vines from growing on them, especially English ivy, which is famous for damaging even brick and stone buildings.

Remember to protect any tree that you plant from deer with a fence four or five feet tall. When the tree is little, a flag to alert lawnmowers is a good idea. If the tree is large enough that the deer can't reach its leaves or twigs, don't forget to protect the trunk from scraping by bucks' antlers in the fall, starting September first. Remember to mulch in a doughnut, not a volcano, and no more than 4 inches deep. Mulch should not actually touch the bark of the tree. Also, don't forget to water (equaling 10 gallons for a balled-and-burlapped tree) once a week for the first summer, when there hasn't been a soaking rain.

Soon I'll post some suggestions for native shade trees.

Earth Day Fair--a great success!

Montgomery Township's Earth Day Fair was a lot of fun, thanks to a lot of work from the Environmental Commission, the Sustainable Montgomery Committee, some dedicated Township employees, our sponsors, and a wide variety of volunteers. Thank you! Estimates are that around a thousand people attended.

I had a table for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey (see photo) and enjoyed hearing and (usually) answering a lot of questions about native plants. I also spoke briefly about my experience with a home energy audit under New Jersey's Home Performance with Energy Star program (see my post of Thursday, January 14, 2010), and otherwise never even got a chance to leave my table. But I heard the live music and the children and saw the crowds across the room. I hope everyone who attended learned something about the environment and about Montgomery.

I also got rid of the items I brought to Freecycle, which is incredibly good news for my attic! The Boys and Girls Club of Trenton collected about 100 bicycles, and they were very pleased.

If you missed the Earth Day Fair, or loved it so much that you wish there was another one, there is a Sustainable Hillsborough Family Fair on Saturday, May 1st from 1:00 to 5:00 at their Municipal Complex. I will be there for the Native Plant Society of NJ with Dr. Hubert Ling, the naturalist from NPSNJ, who has great recommendations for urban trees. Montgomery and Hillsborough may be rivals in football, but we are partners in sustainability!

Earth Day Fair

The Environmental Commission and Sustainable Montgomery Committee are pleased to announce the fifth annual Earth Day Fair on Sunday, April 25th from 12 to 4 pm at Montgomery High School on Route 601. This year's theme is Earth Day, Every Day: how we can incorporate green practices into our everyday lives.

There will be many exhibitors representing a variety of environmental organizations and non-profit and commercial enterprises with goods, services and information that address our environment and quality of life (I will have a table for the Native Plant Society of NJ). There will also be several expert speakers offering information on a range of topics such as the NJ Clean Energy program including rebate and home audit information (I'll tell the experience of a homeowner who has gone through the process), simple things you can do to keep the air in your house clean, organic lawns and gardens, and how to pick the right plant for the right spot by Toni Cox.

There will also be several recycling opportunities not usually available. Johnson and Johnson Consumer Companies will be sponsoring free computer recycling (for Montgomery residents only). The Boys and Girls Club of Trenton will be collecting used bicycles of all sizes to support the Boys and Girls Club Bike Exchange Program. Nassau Racquet and Tennis Club will be collecting used tennis racquets for the Montgomery Special Olympics program. Used printer cartridges, cell phones, eyeglasses and batteries will also be collected.

New this year will be a "FREECYCLE" event, where you can drop off items you no longer need and go home with "new" items--all for FREE! This is a great way to recycle and to reuse. Please do not bring items that are larger or heavier than one person can comfortably carry. You may bring photos of such items and include contact info to make arrangements for pick-up by interested persons.

There's even more! Three bands will be playing over the course of the afternoon: Jersey Junket Cajun Band, Mountain View Jam, and Acoustic Road. For the kids, Garbanzo the Clown will perform, a professional story teller will tell exciting stories for all ages, and creative crafts can be made from recycled items. Finally, there will be giveaways and plenty of food for all.

"The Earth Day Fair in Montgomery has become an increasingly important event for environmental education, so much so, that it was one of the reasons that Montgomery received certification in 2009 from the statewide Sustainable Jersey initiative," said Montgomery Township Committeeman Brad Fay, who is the liaison to the Environmental Commission. "I encourage everyone to come spend time learning about the local environment while also enjoying good food, good music, and good friends."

In addition to the Montgomery Township Environmental Commission and Sustainable Montgomery, this year's Earth Day Fair is sponsored by ConvaTec, Green with Envy Home Store, Environmental Liability Corporation, Hilton Realty Company, Robinson's Candies and Rocky Hill Cleaners.

The fair will be held indoors and outdoors, rain or shine. For more info, contact Lauren Wasilsuski, EC Secretary, at lwasilauski@twp. montgomery.nj.us or 908-359-8211 or email the Earth Day Fair Planning Committee at earthdayfair@gmail.com.

Speaker Schedule:
12:15 - 12:45 pm Organic Lawns by Verdant Lawn Care
1:00 -1:45 pm NJ Clean Energy --Home Audit and Rebate Information
2:00 - 2:30 pm Organic Vegetable Gardening by Truly Home Grown
2:30 - 3:00 pm Hunger and Home Gardens by AmpleHarvest
3:00 - 3:30 pm Pick the Right Plant by Toni Cox
3:30 - 4:00 pm Clean your Indoor Air! by Green with Envy

Kids Entertainment Schedule:
12:30 - 12:45 pm Storyteller
1:00 - 1:15 pm Storyteller
1:15 - 2:15 pm Clown
2:15 - 2:30 pm Storyteller

Live Music Schedule:
12:15 - 1:15 pm Jersey Junket Cajun Band
1:30 - 2:30 pm Acoustic Road
2:45 - 3:45 pm Mountain View Jam

Why Native Plants?

Last fall I attended a lecture at the Delaware and Raritan Greenway by Douglas Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware. He wrote a book called Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, which I read, and which gave me many more reasons to plant native plants. His lecture was inspiring and added even more information from his latest research. Dr. Tallamy autographed my book and was gracious enough to pose for a photo with me. He has a website (see below) which you should visit to learn why it is important for us all to plant native plants.

Here is a summary of his arguments. We have developed the USA so much that only 3 to 5 percent of the land remains undisturbed as habitat for native plants and animals. Where land is in isolated patches the biodiversity decreases, so we need to provide food and other habitat for native plants and animals around and between nature preserves. Some native animals, such as deer, can eat a wide variety of plants, and some, such as raccoons, eat our garbage. However, most of the food chain comprises animals that only eat native plants, and the animals that eat them and the animals that eat them, and so on. Insects do the most consuming of plants, and are in turn eaten by other insects, birds and other animals, so we need to provide the plants that insects need to eat. For example, each type of caterpillar has to eat a certain native plant or family of plants, or maybe a few families, in order for it to survive (think of monarch butterfly caterpillars which can only survive on milkweed leaves). Each native plant supports its own ecosystem of insects and sometimes other animals that rely on it for food, and cannot eat anything else. These insects are in turn eaten by birds or turtles or frogs. Butterflies, which most people love, cannot exist without first being caterpillars, so if you want butterflies, song birds, turtles, etc. you should plant native plants. And the birds that are attracted by your butterflies will keep the caterpillars under control, just like a balanced ecosystem.

If my summary doesn't make sense or isn't persuasive, please visit the website or read the book. On the website you will also find lists of the native plants that support the greatest number of native insects, and please note that the top 21 woody plants (trees, shrubs and woody vines) each support more insects than the highest herbaceous plant (which happens to be goldenrod).

As you plan your garden this spring, or choose trees to replace the trees that fell over in the windstorm or snow storm, please select plants that are native to the place you live, because there they will be found by the native insects, birds and other animals that need them. For information on plants native to your area, you can visit the website
http://plants.usda.gov/checklist.html, or look at the Native Plant Society of New Jersey website http://www.npsnj.org/ In future posts, I will be showing you photos of some of the plants I am planting, as well as some I've planted previously or found in the wild as they come back to life this spring. I will also be showing some native plants at the Native Plant Society of NJ table at Montgomery Township's Earth Day Fair on Sunday, April 25 from 12:00 to 4:00 at Montgomery High School on Route 601.

I think spring may be here

Montgomery was bloodied but unbowed--we survived the winter with its snowstorms (first photo), and we survived the rain and wind storm (second photo). Suddenly the weather is beautiful, and flowers are now blooming that came out in January or February last year (snowdrops, third photo). Buds are starting to open and frogs are calling from vernal pools.

My husband ordered seeds for his vegetable garden in January with a friend who gardens. Now there are trays of seeds germinating on the coffee table and other trays growing in the basement under a fluorescent light. He has been poring over gardening catalogs for months and calling local nurseries, searching out the best flowers, shrubs and trees and the best sizes and prices for his garden and for community planting projects. I have been researching native plants.

But it's still not too late for you to plan your garden! When you do, please consider native plants. They benefit the ecosystem and are well-suited to the local soil and climate.

If you lost some trees, think about replacing them this spring. Be sure and ask advice about the right type of tree for the spot you have in mind. There is no point fighting Mother Nature by planting a wetland tree in a dry place, or a sun-loving one in a shady area.

Whatever you do, please DO NOT plant any invasive exotic species. These are non-native plants that spread from cultivation and grow in the wild, taking habitat away from native plants and the wide variety of native animals that depend on them. Common examples are Bradford pear, Norway maple, burning bush, barberry and English ivy. Bradford pear trees have weak branching structure and they sustained a lot of damage in the recent windstorm (fourth photo), so you will be doing yourself a favor if you don't plant them.

Montgomery Township is picking up branches curbside on Monday, March 22, and they will chip them up and add them to their wood chip pile. It would be even more sustainable for residents to compost as much as they can, or use it as firewood (fifth photo). I have seen shrink-wrapped firewood for sale that has been shipped over from Europe, and if you use firewood you would do best to buy local. We found a friend who heats with wood and is happy to have pieces of our fallen sugar maple branches.

Jenny Jump State Park

Last summer my husband and my daughter went on a weekend trip to Jenny Jump State Park, camping and hiking with some friends. My husband has been spending a weekend camping with some of these friends at various New Jersey (and occasionally New York and Pennsylvania) state parks and forests for almost twenty years, taking our children since they were toddlers. The Parker family is often part of the group, and every year John Parker sends us some of his beautiful photos. There are always photos of the children, and of the whole party at the most interesting parts of their hike, or the most scenic spots, or the highest places they climbed. This year there were some beautiful photos of the park, and I want you to see them and start planning a trip to Jenny Jump State Park for this year. From Montgomery it is a drive of an hour and a half, so you can just go for an afternoon.

The first two photos are the beautiful views from a lookout point.

All the other pictures are lovely things seen along the trail. John says that he likes to photograph "wildflowers and dead trees and things people usually don't notice as they pass by."

The third photo is the woods the hikers walked through, and the fourth is a boulder in the woods.

The fifth photo is a snake found beside the trail. This was very unusual and exciting, and it is not poisonous, so if you are afraid of snakes don't let this discourage you from visiting the park.

The sixth photo shows Virginia creeper and native grasses growing around a rock outcrop. The seventh features the berries of Virginia creeper, blue with red stems. Virginia creeper is a beautiful plant, under-appreciated here in the US, but often planted to grow on stately homes in Europe.

The eighth photo shows the beautiful fall color of red maple leaves, with a few heart-leaf aster flowers and leaves in the background. Next you see partridge berry, a slow-growing native groundcover, in the ninth photo.

Last of all is a picture of a face in a tree trunk. I think it looks friendly, but others may see a different expression.

Thanks for the pictures, John!

Save Energy at Home

Winter is one time of the year when I can't help thinking about energy. I can even hear the furnace working and the pipes in the walls heating up. New Jersey has a great program to help you save energy at home, and you can even save money saving energy.

Visit this website:
http://www.njcleanenergy.com/residential/programs/home-performance-energy-star/home-performance-energy-star-r
to learn about New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities' Home Performance with Energy Star program.

I learned about this program at an energy workshop that Montgomery and Hillsborough Townships sponsored last winter at the Hillsborough Library. It starts with a home energy audit, worth $300, which only costs you $125. It took my husband and me quite a while to get an appointment for an audit, because this is such a great program that there is a lot of demand for audits! We finally had the audit last spring, and it was very interesting. It took about three hours, and at the end we were given a report, telling what we could do to make our home more energy efficient. All the items were chosen for cost efficiency, and the resulting energy savings were estimated. Also, state subsidies and federal tax credits were identified--that's one of the ways you can save money by saving energy.

Some of the suggested projects were ones we didn't want to do, such as knock many holes in our newly-painted plaster walls to blow in insulation. However, there were many other projects to choose from. Then we interviewed three certified contractors, who gave us estimates for the work. Some of them were more experienced than others, and had advice for us on what would work best in our old house. All of these companies are very busy, so it was months before we could get the work done.

Next came the hard part--moving everything out of the closets in our attic so they could be insulated. My husband did most of the work, but I still thought it was a pain. I reminded myself many times that I could complain about it on this blog. We even found some things we don't need any more, and we are still trying to give them away. Need any decorator fabric scraps, anyone? (Don't ask)

We got a new burner and boiler (equivalent of a furnace) and hot water heater in our basement, and new digital thermostats on three floors (now if only we could figure out how to program them!). Next other contractors came. Their first job was a blower test. They close up all the windows and doors except one door, into which they fit an adjustable door with a blower, and see how hard the fan has to blow to suck the air out of the house. That is sort of a measure of how many tiny cracks and gaps are in the house. Then they set to work sealing and filling those little cracks and gaps. They sealed cracks around the windows in the basement and insulated the basement ceiling. They insulated gaps at the top of the basement walls, so air couldn't circulate from the basement to the attic or the attic to the basement. (Later we got a radon test to make sure our radon levels were still OK). They also insulated all those closets in the attic. Then they repeated the blower test, and checked to make sure the improvements were in the neighborhood of the predictions from the initial audit.

Then we had to move everything back into the attic closets. That was a pain, but when the December heating bill arrived, we could already see the improvement! The savings in energy costs will take a few years to pay us back for the work that was done, but the subsidies and tax credits made it several years fewer than it could have been. And what better investment can you think of these days?