Larry’s lecture with Travis Beck and Stephen Murphy at ASLA’s annual meeting featured on The Dirt blog.

 

One of Larry’s lectures at ASLA’s recent annual meeting in Chicago was featured on ASLA’s blog The Dirt. The lecture, given with Travis Beck of the Mt. Cuba Center and Stephen Murphy of the University of Waterloo, explored the practicalities of working with novel ecosystems. Whether born unintentionally from plant invasion or purposefully from design constrained by site degradation, these ecosystems present myriad challenges.

Larry, Travis, and Steven discussed the ecology of plant invasion and novel ecosystems as well as strategies and practical techniques for working with globalized vegetation. Larry showed a range of strategies used by our firm when confronting both desirable and undesirable growth on a site. In the above photo, a native wildflower (Packera aurea or Golden Groundsel) capable of vigorous growth through vegetative expansion and seeding is used to stabilize the groundlayer in a woodland formerly dominated by invasive species.

In the photo below, an area dominated by Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium viminieum) has been seeded with a meadow mix that contained forbs (wildflowers), sedges, and rushes but not grasses. In this scenario, a grass-specific herbicide can then be used to treat the Stiltgrass; once the Stiltgrass is under control, grasses can be added.

To learn more about the lecture,  read the post.