Hi Connie! I had runaway blackberries on my property down in Oregon a few years back and I bought two weathered (fixed) goats. We put them out on tethers, thus saving the need to fence the area, and the blackberries vanished! Just a thought!
-Rolan
"Constance J. Sidles" <csidles at mail.isomedia.com> wrote:Hey tweets, I called the horticulturist at Children's yesterday to talk to
him about Children's blackberry eradication program. The man's name is Jeff
Hughes. If you want to talk to him directly, call his cell phone at
206-916-6791.

Jeff discussed the use of Roundup-Pro with me and listened respectfully to
my concerns. He said that once the blackberries are gone, he plans to
replant with native species in a dense thicket that would provide homes for
birds such as sparrows. He listed some of the plants he wants to put in,
but I am not a plant person and did not recognize most. Mountain ash was on
the list, I remember.

Jeff's inteniton is to duplicate the blackberry habitat, but with native
species instead of invasive ones. He said that many of the children in the
hospital never get out, so it's important for them to be able to see flora
and wild fauna on the grounds. Jeff gardens with that in mind.

He also seems fairly knowledgeable about plants that help our native birds.
For example, he mentioned some late-flowering plants that provide food for
Anna's hummingbirds. He also said that Children's received special
permission from one of the state environmental agencies to exempt
Children's from mowing all the thistles on the property - Jeff wanted to
keep enough food around for the goldfinches. As part of the agreement,
Children's has to keep the thistles in areas that won't spread the seeds,
so they plant thistles within courtyards and attract goldfinches to those
courtyards.

I made a plea for the replacement plants to be arranged in such a way that
dense cover was maintained - I said we don't need more parks and paths at
the expense of birds. Jeff seemed sympathetic to this notion. He also said
he would be very happy to talk to anyone who wants to express their
opinions or offer suggestions.

I think this whole issue of mixed use will be the biggest one facing us in
the future. Our growing population makes it difficult to maintain enough
habitat for wildlife. (That's one reason why I support nonprofits that
simply buy up the land. I don't trust the government to protect public
lands from exploitation.) But I also think we have to work with private and
public institutions to accommodate mixed use, especially in urban settings
(which in our area seems to be pretty much the entire Puget Sound basin). I
may wish that people would leave more habitat in a pristine state, but that
is not going to happen. I may wish that people would refrain from bringing
in foreign species, but that is still going to happen. I think once people
mess up a place, we have an obligation to try to mitigate the effect on
native species. The solutions sometimes are not pretty - witness the
eradication of Canada geese, and the spraying of herbicides now. But
letting things be can be even uglier.

I think it's always a good idea to try to fix things in the most natural
way. But as a 10-year veteran of the loosestrife project at the Fill, I
have seen how difficult it is to keep up the effort to hand-pull invasive
plants. As many of you may remember, I used to send posts to tweeters
asking people to pull up 10 loosestrife plants every time they visited the
Fill. I also used to put together pulling parties. The best we were ever
able to do was to keep a small strip of mud clear on two ponds, the main
pond and Shoveler Pond. We had to let most of the other ponds go completely
over to loosestrife. It was heartbreaking.

The current solution at the Fill (the introduction of two bugs from Europe)
is having wonderful success, and so far no bugs seem to be devouring the
neighborhood. But no such solution was available for blackberries. So at
the Fill, the blackberries are bulldozed and sprayed. Nobody likes it, but
nobody was able to do anything else about it. - Connie



Rolan Nelson
Burley, WA
rnbuffle at yahoo.com


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