By John Barnes
Most of us will remember the dangerous flooding that occurred in Ellicott City in 2016 and again in 2018. New Cut Road from just past Glen Mar into Ellicott City was closed for some three years while the road was reconstructed. While the road closure was an inconvenience for some of us, the possibility of further flooding threatens the lives and livelihoods of those who live and work in Ellicott City. As a result, grant funding has been made available to make improvements to the watershed for Ellicott City. Almost all of Glen Mar’s property is in the Ellicott City watershed.
Howard Ecoworks is an organization that does work-force training and development to respect and restore our natural systems for future generations. They applied for and obtained some of the grant funding to provide tree planting and conservation landscaping within the Ellicott City watershed. Ecoworks approached us earlier this year about the possibility of using our grounds for doing some of this work. Since Ecoworks provides all the planning and labor and resources for the installation at no cost to the church, we agreed.
In May, Ecoworks installed eight trees scattered around our grounds, all varieties of oak. You can tell which ones they are by the wire cages around them to protect them from deer damage. And then in early September, Ecoworks installed a conservation landscape garden with native plants, including some milkweed which is critical to the life cycle of Monarch butterflies. They also planted two new redbud trees in September.
Transplanted trees require a lot of watering until their root system can develop and grow to reach water resources further underground. So thanks to Andy and Fayette Stewart and my wife Ruella and I for lugging lots of jugs of water around! If you are interested in more information or would like to help with the watering, please speak to Andy, Fayette, Ruella or me. It will be exciting to watch these new members of the Glen Mar family grow and become established, and become an asset for the future generations!
