The project began conceptually in the Spring of 2013 . Landowners are Doug and Mary Green, bought a six acre property in the Merrywood Estates subdivision near Folsom, Louisiana. The property was purchased in 2000 and consists of four lots in two major sections. The house and a couple of outbuildings are on three acres on the south side of the property and the other three acres, consisting of the other two lots were completely undeveloped. The undeveloped land was an overgrown mess that no one had paid any attention to in at least 30 years. Historically, this land was part of the coastal plain of the southeastern United States and was dominated by Longleaf pine forest. See the tab entitled "Longleaf Pines" for a history of the land and its native environment.
This area, like the entire coastal plain, was logged out and converted to farmland. Longleaf pines did not regenerate on cleared land and were replaced with other species. The native meadow that co-existed in the fire dependent landscape was destroyed along with the Longleaf pine.
Merrywood Estates was developed by a French immigrant, Louis Chenel. He had farmed the area until some time around 1970 and then planted slash pines in widely spaced rows and sub divided the property for residential use. The lots in Merrywood are mostly one to two acres in size and most people have at least two lots. Our property consists of four lots totaling just under 6 acres. Our house was built in 1983 and the owners removed a minimum number of pines to construct the buildings on two of the lots and never did anything with the other two. Owning to the broad, straight rows of slash pines, the prior owners called the property Proud Pines.
By 2000, when we bought the property, the pines had suffered extreme stress over the years and there was a substantial pine beetle infestation problem readily apparent. Pine beetles attack the tree in the first 10 feet or so and cause severe structure damage to the trunk. Infested trees are weak and susceptible to collapse in heavy wind. The only practical way to get rid of the beetles is to get rid of the tree. So, we decided to cull the bad trees shortly after we purchased the property. At the same time, we decided to remove any pines within falling distance of the house in order to protect the house in the event of a hurricane.
Since we were logging out a lot of pines on the developed area of the property, we decided to do the same with the undeveloped area. We used the same strategy of removing infested trees and those that could fall on the house. The logger went about it with blunt instruments and took out most of the trees and pushed down most of the shrub layer that grows in a fire restricted pine forest. I was left with a couple hundred pines stumps, the lower tree layer and some of the shrubs - and a big mud pit. There was not much to do but bring in a stump grinder and a bulldozer. We planted grass and in a couple of years had what looked like a small park with widely spaced pine trees above, some black cherry trees, a few southern magnolias below and turf grass at the base. It looked nice. It looked like a park.
I quickly learned, however, that with the canopy of pines largely removed, the rest of the ecosystem was unbalanced and the lower layers started dying off. The lower tree layer pretty much died and the shrub layer had been removed during the logging operation. I had scraped off pretty much everything at the herbaceous or ground cover layer. So, what I had was some pines and grass and not much else. Still, the look was not bad if you don't mind taking down dead and dying trees every year.
Recognizing that the plot was becoming less forested than I intended and being skeptical of pine trees, I began to plant hardwood trees. I hoped the hardwoods would grow up under the pines and fill in an ultimate mix of pine and hardwood and eventually I could remove the remaining pines. Then, in 2005, hurricane Katrina changed everything. Every pine tree on the property blew over as well as most of the hardwoods. Thinning the pines reduced their ability to withstand the wind. The roots are very shallow with these pines as they do not penetrate the heavy clay soil to any significant depth. The only trees remaining on the entire property were oaks, magnolias, a lonely pond cypress and a couple of gum trees. Moreover, the trees fell over taking the roots with them, so after all that dead stuff was removed, I had a three acre field of small hardwoods and giant craters.
The turf grass grew back in very well well and I ended up with a very large yard causing me to spend a lot of time cutting grass on very rough terrain. That's not really how I want to spend my weekends and I found myself buying ever larger tractors to handle the job. I wanted to plant some trees to fill in the landscape. So, I needed a new plan. Hurricane Katrina had an unexpected effect, which was to make people in this area more conscious of environmental issues. The focus has mostly been on wetland restoration, but that awareness in our area focused us on the forest that was so easily destroyed.
Our initial idea was to restore Longleaf pines to the property. We live in the southern Coastal Plan and Longleaf pines were the natural habitat here when humans first appeared on the scene - as I have since learned. I consulted with the Nature Conservancy about my idea and the practicality of the project. The Folsom area is home to many plant nurseries and several carry Longleaf pines, so the plants were not a problem. But, the first recommendation I got was to restore the full natural habitat of the Longleaf Pine ecosystem rather than to simply plant some trees. Latimore Smith of the Nature Conservancy came to the property and said, "why don't you plant a meadow?" It was a simple thing he said, but I really had no idea what he meant. Latimore referred me to Marc Pastorek, the meadow man. Marc specializes, among other things, in native meadow restoration. Marc has a meadow in Mississippi where he grows seed and provides consulting services in meadow restoration. I have since learned that what Latimore meant was, the pines are just part of the natural environment - meadow is the rest. So, why not do a total habitat restoration.
There is a growing movement in the country to replace turf grass with native grasses as a landscape strategy. I have some references to books on the subject on the main page. So, this project, while nothing new to the nature conservation community, is avant garde to the landscape community. Establishing the environment will not be the challenge in this project. After all, these plants were here before we were and they survived and evolved over millions of years. All that is necessary is to prepare the soil, plant the seed, and leave it be. The first major challenge will be to educate the neighborhood about the legitimacy of this style of landscaping and the importance of habitat restoration, even on such a small, neighborhood scale. The larger challenge may be the management of the area by fire. Longleaf pine ecosystems are fire dependent and must be burned every year or two. Marc Pastorek is a certified proscribed burner and I will have him conduct the annual burns. But, they will smoky for a day or two. On other hand, the educational opportunities of this project seem large. The project area has open areas and a pathway throughout. We expect a slowly evolving plethora of species to become established. These will be cataloged and photographed and posted to this blog. Neighbors will be welcome to walk the path and visit the native meadow.
Marc developed a design for the property as seen below. The yellow area is meadow, the green areas are pine forests and mixed hardwoods and the open areas are existing turf grass. The site preparation began in the fall of 2013 with turning the soil and mechanically removing the existing turf grass to be followed by winter seed planting.
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