On Sunday, Feb. 21, members of the Preservation Society for Spring Creek Forest and the North Texas Master Naturalist program worked alongside the Garland Fire Department and Parks & Recreation Department to dismantle and remove the shell of an abandoned Subaru from the Spring Creek Forest Preserve. This rusted chassis lay there, rolled over on its roof, engineless and tireless, junking up the forest and providing no benefit to that habitat for many years.
City of Garland firefighters used the “Jaws of Life” to cut the car into pieces and teams of volunteers carried the parts out of the woods, where Garland Parks & Recreation Department employees had a vehicle on hand to load and haul the rusted chassis to the recycler.
This activity was a great hands-on way for volunteers to experience this old-growth forest and its beautiful and diverse ecosystem, which includes the first flowers of spring – the beautiful trout lilies, no
w in bloom.
Thanks to the Garland firefighters, the Garland Parks & Recreation Department, the North Texas Master Naturalists and others, the rusty Subaru is gone from Spring Creek Preserve. Thanks to this great team of city employees and community volunteers, the job was completed in less than two hours and a beautiful new glade has been opened up in the forest.
For more information about this project, contact:
Dana Wilson: danawilson59@yahoo.com or 469-531-6856
David Parrish: okcanoe@tx.rr.com or 469-733-6089
Barbara Baynham: Barbara_baynham2005@yahoo.com or 972-495-3569
Reminder: Don’t miss the 23rd Trout Lily Walks led again by Tom Frey. Meet at 1770 Holford. Two walks are scheduled, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. The tour is designed for both novice and advanced naturalists and is an excellent way to learn more about our local environment. Be prepared for the weather and possibly muddy trails.
Tom Frey, landscape architect recently retired from Garland’s Parks and Recreation Department, always has new information about our preserve and its ecology as we stroll through fabulous woods to find Trout lilies, Erythronium albidum, one of the first plants to flower in the spring.
The plants are small, barely 6″ – 8″ tall, and the flowers only bloom from the middle of February through the middle of March. The entire above ground plant cycle is complete in about 10 weeks and then they disappear until next year. They require the perfect habitat and our preserve has it – a hardwood bottomland forest where leaves and downed trees are left to decay naturally and the understory is not mowed, disturbed or cleared to make it “park-like.”
To learn more about Spring Creek Forest Preserve, visit: http://www.springcreekforest.org/.
Barbara Baynham serves as president of Preservation Society for Spring Creek Forest can be reached at phone number or email address above.
The goals of the society are:
To promote the preservation and protection of Spring Creek Forest as a cultural and natural resource treasure
To facilitate scientific and educational pursuits by the public
Its responsibilities are:
To maintain nature trails, an interpretive center and parking lot
To plan activities, such as school ecology classes, ecological and plant research, and nature interpretation
To provide guided tours
To guard against vandalism in the forest