Report of Mary Scott Nature Park workday May 5, 2018
Again DeKalb County did not deliver the requested dumpster to the western entry of Mary Scott Nature Park in anticipation of the Friends work party. So a stack of woody pest plants was piled at the western entrance to the park awaiting county disposal. On a delightfully cloudy Cinque de Mayo, four students from Lakeside Beta Club with a parent and a Boy Scout from Troop 77 helped two neighbors and four Georgia Native Plant Society members remove nonnative plants from the park. We pulled and cut Liriope, privet, Chinese holly, Japanese holly, Japanese honeysuckle, acuba, nandina, cherry laurel, English ivy, Elaeagnus, Youngia japonica, crocosmia and Mahonia holly. We found some Trillium where we had cleared on earlier workdays. Poison ivy and wisteria are rampant. We heard a pileated woodpecker.
The next scheduled workday will be Saturday, June 02, 2018, 2:00-4:00 pm when we plan to continue following the 2018 action plan of removing pest plants and waiting to see what grows in newly open space. The woodland is beginning to look like southeastern woods with the high dense canopy and some herbaceous plants sprouting where the sun can penetrate.