2022 brought new sites and new opportunities!

Among the invasive plants on a steep woodland slope, on appropriately named Southcliff Drive, were two gems: an appalachian sedge and poverty grass. After a thorough removal of english ivy, vinca, mimosa and other weeds, Bluestem boosted the existing natives with more of their kind and a variety of other sedges, like pennsylvania and white-tinged, and grasses like prairie drop seed and sideoats grama. Companion plants like ferns, woodland asters, alumroot, and columbines were interspersed creating what will become a dense weave.

Around the corner on Dixon Hill, on a site that surely includes some of the largest persimmons in Baltimore, Bluestem planted trees like hawthorn, american holly, arborvitae, redbud, and magnolia virginiana, along with a dense shrub layer of winterberry and oak leaf hydrangea.

Working with Ashland Ave Community Garden and helping to install a perennial border, with life-supporting perennials like switch grass, milkweed, aster. black-eyed susan, and echinacea, has been a real highlight!