Since the Conservancy moved into the Rolling Hill Park cottage, we have looked after the 1 acre of land around the cottage. When the driveway leading to the cottage was paved, the Conservancy installed a rain garden and nature playscape. The garden was designed to slow rain water flowing off of the driveway and display a variety of native plants in action. Pollinators thrive on the Joe Pye (Eutrochium spp.), sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) and other native plant blooms throughout the growing season.

While we love to see the interactions between flowers and pollinators, plants provide many ecological benefits that happen out of sight. Crucially, plant stalks serve as habitat for overwintering insects and dead flowers provide seeds for birds. Fallen leaves and dead wood are also very important for nesting and overwintering wildlife. The common autumn practices of raking up every leaf and cutting plant stalks to the ground eliminate valuable habitat, reducing the number of beneficial animals and insects that can survive through winter. In the Rolling Hill Park garden we leave leaves and plant stalks in place over the winter to help pollinators thrive year after year in the garden.

The choice to leave dead flowers in place – as opposed to deadheading them – has led to re-seeders (new plants) popping up within the garden beds and outside their borders. In the past we transplanted some of the re-seeders to different gardens but we are now letting them grow to expand the garden footprint and combat invasive plants. The re-seeders include tree seedlings popping up from the nearby woods. We are keeping the native tree seedlings to help fill in the forest canopy over time.

In our area, deciduous forests are the natural landscape type so the local wildlife has evolved to live in and around forests. Pressure from deer browsing and invasive vines prevent woodlands from recovering entirely on their own but plenty of trees do pop up. Our goal in the space around the Rolling Hill Park cottage is to let the naturally occurring new trees fill in while planting additional trees to promote diversity and create a thicker future canopy. The process is slow but some of the planted trees have made good progress; one of the tulip trees we planted in 2017 is already around 30’ tall.