Native Plants and Invasive Species

April is National Native Plant Month, and in this episode we talk with Sustainability Specialist Kevin Harrison and Paul Kovalcik of our Stormwater Inspection & Maintenance (SWIM) department, unpacking what defines a "native plant" and why they matter for water quality and habitat. We talk about how native species support pollinators, and why losing host plants can impact the entire food web.

We connect native landscaping to the Sewer District's stormwater management and stream-restoration projects, and explain how invasive species can take over when nothing has co-evolved to keep them in check.

Our guests offer tips on how to choose the right tree for the right place, when to plant, and why starting small is the best advice for building a low-stress native garden. 

Other resources:

NRCS - Natural Resources Conservation Service, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency that provides a "PLANTS" (Plant List of Attributes, Names, Taxonomy, and Symbols) database with automated tools, weblinks, and references.

https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/

Cleveland Metroparks Tree Selector Tool - Enter in various site attributes for guidance on tree species selection for any type of planting project.   

https://treeselector-clevelandmetroparks.com/tree-selector 

Rain Garden Manual for Homeowners - Courtesy of Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District, this manual outlines rain garden terms and definitions, recommendations for creating the right garden for your property, and important diagrams and planting instructions. 

https://www.neorsd.org/Stormwater%20Form/landing%20page/2007_rain_garden_manual.pdf

Transcript

Welcome And Native Plant Month

SPEAKER_03 0:00

This is Clean Water Works. April is National Native Plant Month. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

I just now I learned that.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Yeah. Ohio was the first state to pass a law recognizing native plants. So anyway, April is National Native Plant Month, and we are here to talk to two sewer district employees who are quite familiar with native plants.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

We have Kevin Harrison Harrison, sorry, sustainability specialist. Kevin, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And we have Paul Kovalczyk, our supervisor and our stormwater inspection and maintenance group.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yes, thanks for having me as well. I'm really excited to be here. Are you? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Let's talk about what each of you do here at the sewer district. Kevin, you want to start?

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Uh sure. So I'm in the sustainability department, if you haven't guessed. Um some days I'm working on projects to expand or preserve our tree canopy. Um, for example, leading a tree inventory project. We've catalogued over 5,000 trees on our properties. Other days I'm tracking utility usage and energy consumption or inventorying greenhouse gas emission data, looking at waste reduction efforts, and also co-leading our sustainability employee resource group.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

And how long have you been at the district?

SPEAKER_04 1:25

I've been here for seven years this Earth Day.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Oh, that's exciting. Uh-uh. You got hired on Earth Day.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

I got hired on Earth Day, yes. It was intense.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

It was intense, but was it intentional? Did you want to start on that day? You were like, I only will work at the super district.

SPEAKER_04 1:41

I thought it was very fitting, but it just happened to be a Monday. So nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

All right, Paul.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I'm one of the supervisors in our stormwater inspection maintenance group. I supervise the maintenance team. And so we are tasked with maintaining our large green infrastructure sites. So a lot of people may be familiar with a little bioswale. They park beside in a parking lot. They walk past it when they go to work every day, and they might see when it rains, it fills us with water and the water goes away. And they kind of see that. Well, our scale is, you know, our sites range anywhere from 10 acres down to a tenth of an acre. You know, we maintain those sites, a lot of native plantings, a lot of more formal plantings because there are public amenities at those sites. And then on the stormwater side, my crew maintains all of our stormwater construction projects as well. So stream restoration, stream stabilization, uh large stormwater basins that capture and hold floodwater. Those are a little bit more naturalized, kind of wild landscapes that we're maintaining as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Kevin, you said 5,000 trees, all the various properties. What are those properties that we're talking about?

SPEAKER_04 2:50

So we have our three wastewater treatment plants, uh, easterly and southerly specifically have a lot of trees. Also our green infrastructure sites, and then we have stormwater project sites where we've done restoration work, but we also own a lot of small properties throughout our service area that might have been part of like a tunnel project for our wastewater side of things. So we have well over 600 acres that we own.

What Makes A Plant Native

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Wow. What makes a native plant native?

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Really, it's just a plant that has existed in a certain region or climate area for a long, long time and it's adapted to that area. And in turn, the wildlife are also adapted to that plant being there. So everything, you know, from the bacteria up to the herbivores that eat it, um, you know, is aware of that plant, is accustomed to it being there.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Yeah, I typically think of it as plant species that are indigenous, at least to here, prior to colonialism. And um, as Paul said, they've co-evolved with other insects and wildlife. So a lot of insects specialize on certain plants. So if that plant goes away or that insect goes away, then they won't exist anymore. Um, so that's why I think that's kind of important. But it kind of depends too, sometimes who you ask, because you might see a wider ranging list that might just be like eastern US or Midwest Northeast kind of area. The nerds will debate these kinds of things. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah, I was just talking to someone at Stone Lab about um some kind of crayfish, right? It was like native to southern Ohio, but was not native to northern Ohio, but it was moving up into northern Ohio. And he said that it does get tricky to say like what is native and what is not native, especially with climate changing and things migrating and sort of making their own path into climates where they could and do exist. And so I was like, Well, what do you do when you come across those? And he was like, Yeah, it's kind of tough because with some species, you know, you're told to like not put them back if you find them, if they're invasive. But he's like, that one's really hard for me because they're native in southern Ohio. They're just moving into northern Ohio.

SPEAKER_04 5:16

I think in a very general sense that there's kind of a divide between the East and Western U.S. as far as what plants you might see. And then when you start talking about Europe and Asia, that's you know, definitely not native to here. But that makes sense. You see the northern-southern divide, uh, that's where it gets a little tricky with climate change and the migration.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

I always check the USDA NRCS plants database.

unknown 5:42

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

It's a website, it's a great resource. If you know the name, either a common name or a scientific name of a plant, you can look it up and they'll show you a map of its distribution as a color code to whether it's native or introduced.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Why are native plants important or why do we encourage their propagation?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I'll answer from the regional stormwater management perspective. They provide more benefits for our regional stormwater management program in general. A lot of native plants, compared to your lawn, your mowed grass, they're going to soak up much more stormwater compared to a lawn. So we like that because that takes the pressure off our sewer system and off our regional streams. The roots go very deep into the soil, they help penetrate into hard soils. That also helps more water infiltrate into the soil. Again, a stormwater benefit, more infiltration, less runoff. And then related to those deep roots, if they're along a stream bank, a lot of the native plants have those deeper roots. They're holding the soils down. They're also reducing erosion along stream banks and really on any property just by holding that soil and holding those soil particles in the ground.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

So better at reinforcing the stream banks.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

Yes. And you know, plants that that can mean anything from like flowers to uh flowering perennials to large stature trees. I mean, there's so many benefits, but you know, I always think of the ecological ones having those specialized relationships with other insects and wildlife is is critical. Also, without pollination, we wouldn't have food. Um protecting these species, because we all live in a food web. And when you start chipping away at that, losing plants here and there, you risk collapse. And you know, not to be all doom and gloom, but that is a real thing that we uh as a species risk.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, what's going on with the bees? Anybody know?

SPEAKER_04 7:36

How are the bees doing? I'm no entomologist. I like bees. Certainly, habitat loss is is a huge problem with bee populations, then throwing climate change too. Just yesterday, I was sitting in my yard and I was looking at the young red bud tree that I have, and um it was just covered in in dozens of bees. So I was I was like, oh, I'm gonna go check this out. So many different species of of bee, like solitary bees, not the typical like bumblebee or non-native honey bee that you might normally see on non-native plants. It just kind of goes to show like if you plant it, they will come, but also if you get rid of it, then they're gone. So stopping that habitat loss is really critical, I think, to protecting not only bees, but you know, moths, butterflies, and all the other little critters out there.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Do you have native areas like at your house that you take care of or gardening?

SPEAKER_04 8:38

I have a little under an acre, and I've been there for eight years. And my goal is to ecologically maximize the space. So um, aside from a small part of grass that I leave for my dogs to run around, my goal is to have everything either be native plants or something I can eat. I really like the analogy. Like your lawn should be like an area rug and not wall-to-wall carpeting. And that's kind of really how I live my life.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

I like that. That's cool.

Backyard Native Gardening And Bees

SPEAKER_02 9:12

It's not my quote, but what about you, Paul? Can we go back to the bees for a second? You know, I was gonna add, Kevin, I think you worked for me when we when uh Ohio State University, they were actually monitoring bees on some of our larger green infrastructure sites. Probably started in 2022 and ended last year. Most of our green infrastructure sites are areas that have been sort of renaturalized with more of a mostly native meadow. So imagine, you know, forest primeval, if you believe in that. Um, and then, you know, colonization, farming, industrialization, or neighborhoods, one of the two, right? And then now some of these neighborhoods are are gone. The house has been torn down, and now they're back to sort of this naturalized space. And they started monitoring bees on those sites, and they really did find that the native bees are attracted to these sites and stay there, and they are providing sort of that full suite of resources for the bees to live out their full life cycle in these spaces. So there's definitely value in this. These spaces do provide that pollinator habitat.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

I have a game. What's that?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

I have a game.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Oh, you prepped.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I prepped.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

For part of this?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Yeah, I did prep a game for this one.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Donna has prepped games before and they've worked out pretty well.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

With mixed results. All right, so I made a game. As we all know, common native plant names are weird. There's a lot of weird ones out there. I have compiled a list of real common plant names and ones that I made up. Wow. I'm gonna read the plant name and then we're gonna take a vote on if it's a real plant or if it's something that I made up.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

I want to do this with birds, but it's probably not appropriate for the district. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Plant species number one. Dutchman's breeches. Real?

SPEAKER_04 11:01

Not real. That is real.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

That is real. Well done.

SPEAKER_04 11:06

Probably blooming right about now.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Cat shade.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Not real.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Not real. That is correct. However, toad shade is real. Tall bear suckle.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Tall bear suckle. That is real.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

That is not real.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

I thought if I gave a confident answer, it could actually make it real.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

It could make it real. Winged monkey flower.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

That is real.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

That is real. He's good. He's good.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

This guy's no their stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Hairy wood mint.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

I'm gonna say not real.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Real. Oh don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_04 11:39

I'm sure it's not hoary wood mint.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

No, I'm I'm sure.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

I believe there's a hoary mountain mint. Might be it.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

That could be it too.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

You know, common names sometimes are interchangeable. They might call it hairy wood mint in West Virginia. They might call it Hory Mountain Mint in Pennsylvania. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Spiky liver sedge.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Spiky liver sedge. That's not real.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

It's not real. I made that one up. Small faced golden gate.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Not real.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Not real. Maiden hair fern.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Real.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Real. Good job. Swamp candles.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Swamp candles. Are real.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yes. Great job.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

What are some native plants that are pretty common and people would already have them on their property or know about?

SPEAKER_02 12:23

What do you think, Kevin? Milkweed? Probably one of the big standouts. People know that. Common milkweed. People remember as a kid pulling leaves off it and seeing all the milky set, got their fingers all sticky. Black-eyed Susans. Yeah, black-eyed Susans.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

People know that.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Purple coming flower, echinacea.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

A really common one. I like Canada Goldenrod. I think we all know it. And I have to use this platform to say it does not cause allergies and is a great plant. So you should plant goldenrod. Because it is one of the most beneficial plants to insect species.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Aaron Powell Do people think that they're allergic to it?

SPEAKER_04 12:57

Is that why you blooms at the same time as ragweed, which doesn't have a noticeable flower? So goldenrod gets the uh bad rap for ragweed.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

I was gonna mention goldenrod because a lot of people don't know they know it. But if you've ever driven down toward what, Columbus along I-71 and seen all the old fields, August, September time frame, and a lot of like roughly chest-high yellow flowers, you're probably looking at goldenrod.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

What's an invasive species?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

I don't want to say I'm giving the dictionary definition, but it's really just something a plant species that was introduced to an area where it wasn't originally growing. And again, we'll go back to Kevin's sort of original being sort of pre-Columbian time. Quite often they're brought in from Europe, Asia, maybe Southeast Asia, and so not really originally in this area.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

And I think the other distinguishing factor between non-native and invasive is that the invasive species are typically very hardy, prevalent, and will push out native species, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Aggressive, yeah. That's usually like the difference between saying something's like a non-native species versus saying it's like an invasive species. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:08

Yeah, because all all invasive species are non-native. You know, some native species, like Canada Goldenrod, are aggressive, where they can push, you know, and spread a little bit, but but they can be controlled. Whereas these invasive species, they create a monoculture spreading out of control because they there's nothing here that co-evolved with them to keep them in check. So they displace those native plants that other wildlife depend on.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Can you give us some examples of invasive species, especially like on our project sites, Paul? I know that we even have contracts in order to try to maintain our native populations, but also to get rid of some of those invasive species.

Real Or Fake Native Plant Names

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah, I think probably the number one is, you know, common reed or phragmites that we see on almost anywhere in our service area. It's a big, tall, grass-looking plant. You see it in just about every roadside ditch along the highway, along almost all of our regional streams in the area, and it really does take over the landscape. If there's nothing there to kind of keep it in check, uh seems to be less prevalent where there's already an existing tree canopy. Kind of shades it out a little bit. But if you open up that landscape again, maybe next to a highway, and uh it does like water, so if it's a you know roadside ditch that's a little bit wet, hydrophilic is the is the cool scientific term, it's gonna be full of that phragmites. And so whenever we do a stream project and we tend to have to clear the landscape a little bit, we do put down trees and shrubs and a nice native seed mix, but we have to be careful if there's either was Phragmites there beforehand, or if there's phragmites upstream, downstream, properties adjacent to us, where we really have to try and keep it at bay from really moving back into our site and overtaking what we planted. Phragmites is one of those ones that if you get it at the right time of the year, spray with herbicide and you can you can knock it back pretty well. And it really depends on the species, too. There are species that are more shrubby and woody. Um, you tend to cut those back in the late summer down to the stump, and you can use a strong concentration of herbicide right on the stump. Fall is the time of year when a lot of woody plants are you know sucking their sap and nutrients back down into the roots, and so it draws that herbicide into the roots, and hopefully that knocks out the plant.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

There's a lot that I think might be on you know people's properties that they don't know are invasive or even non-native, that some are still legal to buy. One that's not legal to buy anymore is the Bradford pear, which is currently blooming. So that white uh smelly tree that is everywhere is now illegal. So thank you, State of Ohio. But things like burning bush and uh bush honeysuckle, barberry, these are very common ornamental plants that tend to spread into you know natural areas. Um I've taken enough burning bush out of forests to know that these move on their own.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

What would you say are the impacts of climate change on native plant populations?

SPEAKER_02 17:27

It seems like there's two camps in that right now. There's sort of the hyper-local, hypernative people who think that we should be trying to grow plants that are very local to the area you're working in within, you know, so many miles, and we're talking like say less than 50, with the idea that those who adapted to this region, and maybe this region went through sort of what we call the bottleneck before, where it was a severe drought or a severely wet year, a severely cold year. And so those are the plants we should be propagating more of because they're gonna make it through some of these problems that maybe climate change is bringing on, right? And there are the camps that are saying, well, maybe we should be considering more assisted migration. So maybe we should be looking for the same species that are growing down uh northern Kentucky, Cincinnati, bringing some of those same species up that are more adapted to that maybe warmer climate already. Oh, okay, and mixing them into our sites. I think we need to try everything. I think we need to propagate the local stuff, bring things in from other areas that are coming from areas where we think our climate what our climate might be like in the next 50 years, and hopefully our kids will see what worked.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

And I think it kind of depends on what type of plant you're you're putting in the ground, too. Because you know, if this is like a perennial like flowering plant, um that's one thing, but the range needs to be a little wider when you're looking at trees, because you know, that's a 100, 200 year investment potentially. In that case, you need to think about well, what is the climate going to be in 30, 50 years in northeast Ohio? Um white pine, maybe it's not a great option, even though I love white pines. But you know, we also might look at bald cypress, which aren't native to here, but they're migrating north a bit. And they're they're great for stormwater. Aaron Powell White pine aren't gonna be able to they they like the more we're kind of more at the southern tip of their range. Um so they're they're moving up to Canada.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

U.S. Forest Service, right? Has the Trevor Burrus, Yes, there is a tree at the Climate Change Tree Atlas that actually predicts where different species of trees will you know, predictive model of where they will potentially migrate toward um through climate change. And I think you mentioned white pine. I think one of the other ones that actually could affect Ohio is um is sugar maple. I didn't want to say it.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Meaning it's moving out?

Common Natives People Recognize

SPEAKER_04 20:01

Moving out. It's like a yeah, I'll be moving. I'll be migrating. Along with trees, too. It also plays into us being in such an urban area. It can be challenging to plant only native trees specific to this like exact region because you have salt and drought and heat extra heat that's brighter from buildings. There's so many other uh soil compacts.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Soil big.

SPEAKER_04 20:34

Yeah. Uh soil here is terrible. You really have to factor that in, and that really limits what you can plant because then you have you know utility lines and other things you might have to be dodging. You know, I'm not saying plant non-native species, but it can be difficult to figure out what works because you want to plant the right tree in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

And I think the Metro Parks has an app uh on their website that helps you pick the right tree for the right place.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

The tree selector tool. Oh, yeah. There you go. Oh, I'm so glad you knew that because I used it personally and professionally. So shout out Cleveland Metro Parks. Okay, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

So if you are listening to this podcast and you were thinking about planting a tree, hey, wait, when are we supposed to plant trees? Now?

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Spring and fall is great.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Fall is best. Yeah, I love fall. Okay. Spring, you're it's great if you have a really wet year, but make sure you're prepared to potentially water all summer long.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

And you can use a tree selector tool to pick pick out your pick out your tree.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

It also has a helpful map that tells you what nurseries you can locally buy these plants from.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

How did you end up here, Kevin?

SPEAKER_04 21:45

Well, I wanted to get into sustainability coming out of high school, is when I started to learn that climate change is a thing. We didn't really talk about that in in high school. And um, you know, my dad always would take me on hikes. When I was a kid, but I never really appreciated it at the time because I'd, you know, I'd rather just be playing my Super Nintendo, you know, instead of being in the heat. That's that's really come back to me ever since after college. And um I volunteered weekly at for Cleveland Metro Parks. Shout out to them again. Doing a lot of restoration work and just reading a lot of books, um, plants kind of became my life. Just the the relationship between plants and people and insects is just fascinating. And the more I've learned over the years, it's just it wows me every day.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

So well, it seems like you're in the right place helping us out here at the sewer district.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

It's been a good time.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Paul, what about you?

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So I'm an aquatic biologist, ecologist, so not necessarily a plant person by training. I started working for a small gardening firm doing landscape installation mostly. And the woman I worked for um used a lot of natives. Natives weren't, I mean, this was early 90s, so natives weren't super popular on the radar. But she kind of sort of had this rambunctious garden attitude. So she would use natives where it made sense, but she was also really into pulling sort of non-native naturalized species into the landscapes. So she would do some neat things. She would um use uh staghorn sumac in the landscape designs, which is common. You see it on the roadsides everywhere, but it's it's a beautiful plant. Um, she would pull in uh the orange daylilies that you see in ditches sometimes when you're driving down the road. Some of that might have actually been what we call midnight gardening, too, back in the day, where she harvested from. Um don't recommend that. But um, yes, that kind of got me into using more native species. Also, I'll shout out to a different Metro Park, Summit Metro Parks, since I grew up in the Akron area, uh, doing some volunteer work with them. I would do volunteer water quality monitoring with them. And then one time I had the opportunity to actually do some live staking and live branch layering at one of their projects, which is a stream stabilization technique using uh live native plant material. The idea of actually doing something to restore an area, planting something, doing something physical as opposed to just monitoring, really just like had got the wheels turning in my head about, okay, wow, okay, we can use these native plants to make something beautiful and make people feel comfortable and warm and happy, but you can also do them for something physical to try and fix a problem, too.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Aaron Powell You talked about the sewer district's interest in native plants about stabilizing stream banks and things like that. Are there other ways to tie it into water quality, native plants having an impact on water quality?

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Like there's the stabilization aspect of holding down the soils, but also our floodplains are critical in catching seed bank, right? So when the water from a stream during a storm event comes out and onto those floodplains that we've restored, hopefully in some of these cases, the sediment drops out, but so does the native seed bank from upstream. And if it's a good stable floodplain, then it can continue to to grow and and catch that material and catch that sediment as it falls out. It really does play a big role in sediment transport and making sure that not only is sediment not leaving the stream bank, but it's also collecting there and gathering there so that you get the right amount of soil moving up and down the stream. So sediment transport is really important in water quality.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Definitely couldn't have said it any better. Yeah, yeah. Slowing down the water, dropping out the sediment. The only thing I would add is, you know, a lot of these native plants, you know, they're sucking up any kind of nutrients or pollutants that are brought down with that sediment.

Climate Change And Assisted Migration

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Actually, the regional stormwater management program is so cool to watch in action because we take these parcels that used to maybe be houses that were eroding into the stream, or they were parcels that used to flood. We tear up all of that lawn, or we tear up whatever was there previously, mostly lawn. We remeander the stream through the area, and then we reseed it and make it this natural meadow. And then that's what Paul's group is going out and inspecting and looking at in their stormwater inspection and maintenance group. It's just like so great to see that transformation from these like channelized streams that are hardened to like a beautiful stream corridor right through some of these neighborhoods. We have a great restoration project in Broadview Heights. We have another one that'll be coming along here in Seven Hills and looking forward to it getting a couple more years of growth in because it's still a little fresh. But it's just really nice to see the completed projects that we've done. Any uh lessons learned? I mean, the we've had the stormwater program for 10 years now. Uh any lessons learned on plantings?

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah, plan for maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

That is real though, right? Like people are like, oh, just plant more trees. It's like, oh, if it were only that easy.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Oh, how many times have you well, Donald, you've probably heard me say it, Mike. I'm not sure. Is you know, there was this sort of reset it and forget it attitude with all projects because when you build a bridge, when you put it in a sidewalk, you're done for the next 30 years or 50 years. Who knows? Um, it's just the opposite from a restoration project, right? So in that first week, month, year, five years, maybe even 10 years after it's been constructed, you need to make sure you're maintaining and helping this thing along and nurture it until it's ready. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

It's a lot of work, but I think the sewer district does a good job at creating maintenance schedules, investing in the projects year after year to make sure that they can keep on going and getting better.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Some people feel overwhelmed, right, if they want to put in native plants in their yard. And I think that's true. You do have to do a little bit more work to find your plants that are gonna work in your yard. You know, it's not always something you can just go to your, you know, box store and redo your front yard flower bed, right? You kind of have to take a little time and think about it and find the right resources, right places. You mentioned the Cleveland Metro Park site that has some maps of some nurseries and figure out what's gonna work best on your property. I'll admit some natives aren't the best for my little inner ring postage stamp yard. I've tried a few and I had to actually dig them out and take them, give them to other people who had larger yards. I'll name two. Um elderberry. Um great wet area plant, nice shrub, beautiful flowers, beautiful berries, attracts lots of birds. Kind of aggressive and took over my backyard.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah, my dad has so much of that in the backyard.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Yeah, same with bayberry. Um, Northern Bay Berry, which is a great plant. It'll grow anywhere. It is one of the toughest plants I've ever seen. Native, but again, it really started to take over one of my flower beds. And I just had to dig it out and give it to somebody who had more space to gotta find the right fit. Find the right fit.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

We do have a rain garden manual if folks are looking for tips on what plants can be planted in that. And that's on our website, and it has a nice list of you know, shade versus not shade, how moisture tolerant are they. Um there's a there's a list in that as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Yeah, we'll put a link to that in our show notes.

SPEAKER_04 29:13

I was just gonna add, don't feel like you have to totally jump all in and just rip all your lawn out, you know, one day and and put all these plants in that you don't know. Don't don't do that. You know, I like I've been chipping away at my yard like a hundred to three hundred square feet a year at a time. You know, I'm I'm taking it slow, and then that way you get a nice maintenance schedule where the first couple years I can work in these beds, and then these beds over here are kind of on their own, doing their own thing, and they're they're good. I've killed plenty of plants though. I mean, I half the time I don't know what I'm doing, but you know, you that's how you learn. Uh, don't plant things in the front that have the word tall in it. I don't know why I did that ever. So you you can you kind of learn as you go, but just take small steps and and you can make a big difference because the insects I've seen in my yard, I mean, every time I see a hummingbird moth, I freak out. Oh my god, they're so cool. Those are the coolest things ever.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Do you do you get these natives sometimes that you planted them in one place because you thought it would look great, and they decided they didn't like it there. They may last there a couple years, and then you find that some seed basically seated itself maybe 20, 30 feet away. And it loves that spot and it just takes off. And I've had some natives do that to me too. I don't know if you've had that same experience too.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

Mist flower is just all over the place. I planted it one one year, and the next year is just everywhere. I'm like, oh my god. Okay. What this is gonna be a problem. Okay, but beautiful plant. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Blue mist flower. Oh, it's cute.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

It it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

It's like a fluffy blue blur.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

I'm replacing my whole front yard with native plants, one one space at a time. And kind of when I was starting out, I was doing this bed by bed, not really thinking big picture of how are these all gonna interplay with each other, where which is kind of where I'm starting to get to now.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Where you're advanced.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

Yeah, yeah. Things are starting to go over here, and I'm like, okay, are you gonna get out of control? Should I let you go? It's it's it's a huge experiment, and I I just I love it. Every spring is so exciting.

Water Quality And Restoration Projects

SPEAKER_02 31:23

So I had my iron weed move about 30 feet across from one corner of my house to the other after about two years, and it decided it liked the other corner of my house better. I don't know why, and now it's doing great. So native plants will do that. Sometimes expect the unexpected, roll with it, and do what they want to do.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

Just kind of dip your toe in the water to get started, not taking on anything too big and see what happens each year.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

One plant at a time. Maybe two. Thanks for coming on the podcast today, you guys.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

Paul Kavalczyk, supervisor of our stormwater inspection and maintenance department. And Kevin Harrison is a sustainability specialist here at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Interrupted fern.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

That's real.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

That is real.