Who: Anyone who’s willing and able to help. Scarlett students are welcome to participate but you must bring a parent.
Where: Meet at the bench near the showcase at the main entrance to the woods.
Why? spreading wood chips, trash cleanup along old Ellsworth and removal of invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle.
- Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata): An aggressive herb with delicate, four-petaled white flowers. The leaves have a distinct garlic-like smell when crushed. Many have already gone to seed, so we need to collect the ones we pull in plastic bags.
- Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis): Often mistaken for native phlox, this tall plant features clusters of purple, pink, or white flowers.
- Bush Honeysuckles (Lonicera spp.): These tall shrubs leaf out earlier than native trees and produce highly fragrant, funnel-shaped white, yellow, or pink flowers. They spread via rhizomes as well as seeds. Very satisfying to yank the smaller ones out of the ground!
- Buckthorn (Rhamnus): These shrubs have gray bark with darker stripes around the branch. The branches have one-inch thorns. If a layer of the bark is stripped, the sub-bark is orange. The leaf veins loop towards the leaf point.
What to bring:
- Wood Chips: wheelbarrows and shovels (if not frozen),
- Clean up: Plastic garbage bags and gloves,
- Invasives: loppers, hand saws.
When: Saturday November 7, 2026 at noon – 2:00 pm.
Never done this before: Welcome! We’ll show you what to do and how to do it!
Please wear sturdy shoes, gloves and long pants.
What we did: N/A.
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