A Hedgerow Project

Photo courtesy of Chris Goode and Dick Ashdown

This morning I’m writing with that happy spring feeling small children get. I’ve just completed an initial proposal for the first large-scale landscaping plan I’ve ever helped make. Later today I’ll put in the order to Possibility Place Nursery in Monee, Illinois to contract grow native shrubs and small trees for the first phase, restoring a remnant hedgerow that separates part of the property from an adjacent field planted to corn and soy in rotation.

Some background: I am a member of the Environmental Concerns Committee of the Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers). The Yearly Meeting Campus is in Putnam County, Illinois, about two hours south and west of Chicago near the Illinois River. The land has belonged to Quakers since the mid-19th Century and has long served both as a retreat center for the Yearly Meeting, and as the regular Meeting House for the Clear Creek Meeting, composed of local residents. I’ve written more about it here.

Until two years ago, the property was three acres that included a historic Meeting House and a camping area with cabins and a shower house. Then the opportunity suddenly came up to purchase nine acres of adjacent land that included a farmhouse, barn and several other buildings. This land had belonged to an old Quaker family, which wanted the land to go to the Yearly Meeting. During the past two years, the house has been renovated for use as a year-round meeting place, and other improvements have been made.

Consideration is now being made for what to do with the property so as to best serve the needs of the local Clear Creek Meeting, as well as the Yearly Meeting, whose members reside in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.

Photo courtesy of Chris Goode and Dick Ashdown

Naturally, the ECC, whose members have long been involved with site maintenance and landscaping, was asked to develop a landscaping plan. Our interdisciplinary group includes an architect, a tree farmer, an ecologist, several environmentalists, a U. of I. Master Gardener, two local residents and myself. My job has been to facilitate idea generation, to research various things such as local history and ecology, and to organize and write up our proposal, which is centered in the philosophy of reconciliation ecology: we are planning as much for ecosystem health and non-human species habitat needs as for human use.

Now that we have written the proposal, we will begin the next stage: making drawings and developing a timetable for projects. Luckily, while we are doing that, we can restore the existing hedgerow, a remnant of old-time land management practices.

This is the first part of an occasional series, about this hedgerow project in particular and about hedgerows, fencerows and mixed shrub borders in general. 

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