Honeysuckle Hack at the Fire Station

The River des Peres Watershed Coalition is in charge of two sites in the River des Peres Watershed. One site is located in Maplewood, Mo on Deer Creek a large tributary of the River des Peres and the other site is located on a natural stretch of the River des Peres in University City, Mo called Mona Terrace. Mona Terrace is a quarter mile stretch of the River des Peres situated on a bike route of Great Rivers Greenway, is becoming likely to considered a park by City of University City, being a green corridor just a block away from busy Olive Boulevard. Mona Terrace is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, an apartment complex, and just to the east of it is the University City Fire Station located at the intersection of North & South and Shaftesbury Road.
The fairly new fire station has an interesting place both spatially and historically. Spatially it is a better location (traffic wise) and more of a visible presence in the community and historically due to the fact that in front of the fire station is a marker showing the starting point of the 1904 World’s Fair marathon. Being just east of our Mona Terrace site, the RdP figured what’s a few more hundred feet of honeysuckle removal? The city beautification group U. City in Bloom, has planting sites throughout University City (located at schools, curbs, and road medians) and is working to get the City of University City recognized for community involvement through public gardening. U. City in Bloom has been maintaining the site of the marathon marker, but planting a beautiful variety of annual flowers. Unfortunately beyond the marker and flowers, was thick undergrowth of Japanese honeysuckle, invasive vines, and Eunonymus (Winter Creeper) (second picture in top row). The long-range plan is to beautify the entire grounds around the fire station. The RDP seeks to reconnect the community with the River des Peres as well as removing invasive plant species and beautifying the environment with Missouri native plants. So our two organizations shared a common goal of beautifying this riparian area at a worthwhile civic location. That was where the RDP was ready to come in and do work on removing as much of the invasive species as possible. On Sunday morning of June 13, 2010a group of 14 volunteers from U.City in Bloom and the River des Peres Watershed Coalition, armed with handsaws, loppers, shovels, and of course plenty of water delved into the “jungle” as we called it and for the next 3 and a half hours began hacking away at the mass amount of invasive species (We had a chainsaw, but it went out of commission soon after starting the project, but we made up for it with good old fashioned muscle and grit). Though I have spent countless hours removing honeysuckle and other invasives I am always surprised by how open the area looks when the plants are removed, especially how much the invasive species become a block to the river. I felt that we were successful in removing plenty of honeysuckle, and salvaging trees that were being slowly choked off by vines; Winter Creeper though we removed some, we still have a lot more work to do on that.
At the end of our work we had removed 14 cubic feet of honeysuckle, and many bundles of Winter Creeper; though we did a lot of hacking and cutting of plants, we enjoy planting them as well, and we had the chance put 12 trees and native shrubs in place of the invasive species that we removed (The picture in center-bottom row is a view towards the back of the historical marker sign- that was the area we cleared in addition to other side of the firehouse) . We did a heck of a job out there that Sunday morning, and the RdP and U.City in Bloom are already developing future plans to return to the site within the next month to remove more invasives. Being the River des Peres Watershed Coalition we are privileged to work with other community improvement groups in the St. Louis region, but it is great when we get the chance to work other groups in our very own community. Looking at the site in the present day, being the site of a fire station and a slightly channelized portion of the River des Peres, it’s hard to imagine the area once being the site of a marathon more than a century ago. But hopefully the effort made by members of the River des Peres Watershed Coalition and U.City in Bloom will make the area more accessible to the community and preserve a small piece of history. Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to all the people who dedicated their time and effort to help both the River des Peres Watershed Coalition and U.City in Bloom in beautifying the city of University City, Mo, these people are the absolute embodiment of the term community service, in volunteering their time and hard work.