With or Without the Park Service, the Clean-Up Continues

Like many parks in and around DC, Shepherd Parkway is officially closed, being under the jurisdiction of the shuttered National Park Service.   The chaos and paralysis on Capitol Hill a few miles to our north has furloughed our friends at National Capitol Parks-East who ordinarily provide bags, gloves, tools, and curb-side trash pickup for our clean-up events.

But that hasn't stopped many of our city's most downtrodden residents from taking refuse in the grassy area near the intersection of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Avenues SE. It hasn't stopped the littering and dumping that have long plagued that park, and it hasn't stopped the English ivy from growing and smothering our precious trees. Congress has ceased to function, but life in the (Congress) Heights above goes on.

After careful consideration, we decided to go forward with our long-planned clean-up on Saturday, October 11. Eight dedicated volunteers braved drizzly weather and rain-soaked ground to converge on the steep, narrow strip of woods between Malcolm X Avenue and Parkland Place, which has been repeatedly cleaned over the past years, only to slowly fill up again with trash. Among our finds this time: a huge cache of 1800 tequila bottles, a bunch of rugs, bundles of newspapers, and a four foot tall teddy bear.

Studies have shown that  people are more likely to litter where they see litter already. We hope throughout faithfulness and  persistence to change the perception of Shepherd Parkway as "just some woods."

Please plan on preemptively burning those Thanksgiving calories by joining us on Saturday, November 16 from 10 to 1 pm. Our meeting location will once again be the picnic tables near the intersection of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Avenues.

Saving Our Trees from the Alien Invaders

English Ivy (Hedera helix) is flowering plant in the family Araliaceae, native to most of Europe and Middle East.

In the United States, it’s been prized for over two hundred years as an ornamental evergreen. The nation’s oldest and most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton are called the Ivy League in reference to their stately ivy-covered buildings.   

But what looks nice in a garden or college campus can wreak havoc when it spreads to the woods. English ivy is now found in 32 states, and is one of the greatest threats to forests in DC.  Its sale and import is outlawed in the state of Oregon.  

Why is it so bad? According to our friends at the Rock Creek Conservancy:

• English ivy holds onto green leaves year-round, and it's heavy. It causes branches to break, and it even uproots whole trees when the wind blows or heavy snow accumulates.                                                                               
• English ivy attaches to the bark of the tree, which keeps the bark wet underneath. This rots the bark and attracts fungus and insects that cause tree decay.                                                   
• English ivy starves trees by taking nutrients and water from the soil that the trees need. When the vines grow out onto branches, the leaves block sunlight from reaching tree leaves on lower branches.                                                           
• English ivy is a "reservoir" for Bacterial Leaf Scorch (Xylella fastidiosa), a plant pathogen that is harmful to elms, oaks, maples and other native plants.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
• English ivy only flowers and makes berries once it grows up a tree or wall, and some birds, especially the non-native English sparrow will eat these berries, which are a bit toxic, and they spread the seeds all over parks and neighborhoods.                                                                                                                                     
• Invasive plants, such as English ivy, replace the native plants, eliminating food and habitat for the wildlife of the park.                                                                                                                                        
• Wildlife has adapted over millions of years to the delicate and specific ecosystem of the park that is now being radically and suddenly altered by these plant invaders.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

While our efforts to restore Shepherd Parkway have so far focused primarily on removing trash and debris, saving out trees from English ivy is equally urgent.

Fortunately, the vines get their water and nutrition from the soil, so cutting them off at the ground causes all of the upper branches to wither and die.  

In 2012 volunteers removed ivy from nearly 100 trees in the park north of Malcolm X Avenue, and in recent months we’ve been tackling the massive infestation just south of where South Capitol Street crosses the park.

Thousands of trees face illness and death if we don’t get to them in the next few years! Help us slay the alien invaders, just like in the movies.

 

Drum Roll Please...

Mark your calendars now! Our monthly community clean-up are set to return from their summer hiatus. You've been asking about the dates, so here they are:

 Saturday,  September 21
 Saturday, October 12
 Saturday, November 16
 Saturday, December 14
 Saturday, January 18

Each event will run from 10 am  to 1 pm. We will meet at the picnic tables in the park near the intersection of Martin Luther Kings and Malcolm X Avenues SE. Street parking is easy on Malcolm X Avenue and Parkland Place. The site is six blocks west of the Congress Heights Metro Station on the Green Line.

Crosslake Lutheran Church Kicks Off Wave of Summer Groups

On June 19, 22 youth and three adult leaders from Crosslake Lutheran Church in rural Crosslake, Minnesota  arrived at Shepherd Parkway, the first of six groups who will come through between now and end of July.

The summer weather so far has been cooler than in recently years, moist, rainy, and humid. The section of hillside below LeBaum Street where we worked is one of the worse, trash buried on top of trash.

Wednesday, July 10, the park will get TLC from a group of 50 from Washington Parks and People. The very next day, another Lutheran youth group will descend , 15 strong.


If you are interested in joining on either of these days, email Nathan at nbharrington@yahoo.com.

Check back soon for fall and winter community clean-up dates.

Bloggin' About It

In 2011, when we began working intensively to restore Shepherd Parkway, the park was invisible on online. A web search for Shepherd Parkway turned up almost nothing.

In celebration of our growing web presence, we thought we’d share a few of the website and blogs that are helping spread the word.

Julie Kutruff, the dedicated and dynamic site supervisor for national parks in Wards 7 and 8, spearheaded the creation of an official NPS website for Shepherd Parkway, complete with a wildlife guide and historical photographs.

The Restore Shepherd Parkway Facebook Group has been replaced by a much more user-friendly “Like Page.” Click here to Like it now!

In the last two years, hundreds of volunteers have worked in the park, and many of them have shared their experience on the net. Here are three of my favorites:

Thurgood Marshall Academy: The Other 17 Hours

Theta Chi's Service Blog

James Madison University “Be the Change”

Perhaps most enlightening of all is the Shepherd Parkway Study Area Landscape Assessment Plan commissioned by the General Service Administration as part of the project to turn the West Campus of the old St. Elizabeths Hospital into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

June is shaping up to be the best month Shepherd Parkway has seen in decades.

On Wednesday, June 19, 25 students from Crosslake Lutheran Church in Crosslake, Minnesota will be coming to us through the Steinbrook Center for Urban Studies. Anyone who is interested in joining should email Nathan at nbharrington@yahoo.com.

Saturday, June 22, will be our final Community Clean-Up of the spring season. As always, we will be meeting at 4th and Newcomb Street SE at 10 AM.

The United Planning Organization, whose Petey Greene Center is two blocks from Shepherd Parkway and hosts monthly meetings of the Congress Heights Community Association, has signed on a partner in our campaign. They'll be helping with direct outreach to Ward 8 residents to expand our base of support and awareness of Shepherd Parkway as a community asset.  

Finally, throughout the week of June 24-28 church youth groups from Texas will be hauling from the woods what trash and invasive are still left.

We'll be taking off July and August off before roaring back into action with monthly clean-ups from in September through December 2013.

All told, it is not unrealistic to imagine that the 40 acre area north of Malcolm X Avenue could be virtually free of trash by the end of 2013.  What began as the most polluted wooded area in DC is about to be pristine again.

One Tire at a Time

Saturday, March 23 marked the third Shepherd Parkway community clean-up in as many months.

Participants included a boisterous group from the Wild Bunch Sports Bike Club of Maryland,  and American University's Zeta Psi fraternity.

During the February clean-up, a huge pile of tires and trash bags was left at the bottom of the escarpment below LeBaum Street because it was too slippery to haul up. Fifteen volunteers formed a chain to move it all up to the street, while others pulled dozens of bags full of trash off the slope just to the north.  In total, we removed an estimated 200 tires and 300 bags of trash from the forest.

A small but enthusiastic group from University of Maryland rescued trees south of Malcolm X Avenue from invasive English Ivy. 

Spring has sprung, and Shepherd Parkway is growing healthier and more beautiful with every clean-up event. 

Mark your calendars now for our next best chance on Saturday, April 20 from 10 am to 1 pm. 

The job is immense but every little bit counts. We need you, and your friends.

Who Says DC Can’t Handle Snow?

We knew we were taking a risk when we decided to have community clean-ups in January and February, but the week leading up to January 26 was remarkable, with the longest run of freezing temperatures in DC in five years. The afternoon before the event saw the winter's first snow fall. The half an inch that accumulated was enough to closed area schools two hours early, but the ten volunteers who appeared at our new meeting location at the corner of 4th and Newcomb Streets SE were undeterred. Temperatures rose to near 40, the began to melt, and the forest smiled on us.

An intrepid group from University of Maryland saved more than thirty trees along the south side of Malcolm X Avenue from an infestation of English ivy, while three strapping young men hauled 30 tires up the hill.

On Saturday, February 23, we hope for even better weather and an even better turn out from our amazing volunteers.

October Surprise on the Parkway

The removal of historic quantities of trash from the northernmost part of Shepherd Parkway reached new heights on October 20 when over 50 people participated in yet another Community Clean-Up day, the fifth of 2012.

Our largest contingent came from the District Church in Old Town Alexandria, led by the intrepid Omar Ojeda,  who can be seen here hauling of two refrigerators up a steep, treacherous slope below LeBaum Street.

Becky Harlan, a freelance documentary photographer currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, joined us and took the photographs that accompany this post.

Another large group came to us from the Washington office of Holland and Knight, a major international law firm. Additional help came from the InternationalStudent Club at Gallaudet University, Washington Parks and People, and the AnacostiaWatershed Society. 

Robert Barrett, a faithful member of the Shepherd Parkway Committee, collected more than 50 tires from far below 4^th Street, and passed them off to volunteers from Metro Church who formed a line along the slippery incline to get them to the street high above. 

Our work is cut out for our last Community Clean-Up day of 2012. On Saturday, November 17  we will meet once again at the corner of Malcolm X Avenue and 2^nd Street SE at 9 AM and finish with pizza lunch courtesy of the Congress Heights Community Association.