Volunteers Tend a Linear Urban Refuge for Native Plants

Durham has many city trails—ten foot wide ribbons of pavement for people to walk or ride. Most trailsides are mowed by city crews, but the West Ellerbe Creek Trail is unique in that it is being managed for native wildflowers. When the trail was built in 2000, ECWA convinced city staff and the contractor not to plant exotic turfgrass like fescue along the trail, but instead to simply mulch the bare soil and allow the many pre-existing natives to revegetate.

The result has been a rich wave of plantlife—some to be discouraged, some to be encouraged, in the name of native diversity and beauty. To achieve this end, ECWA is using periodic work days in which neighborhood volunteers receive informal training in plant ID and learn which plants to pull and which to leave. The result is a creekside trail bordered by a grassy expanse of sedges and rushes accented with wildflowers like hibiscus, sunflower and jewelweed. Instead of static turf, trail users enjoy a steady progression of wildflowers that in turn attract butterflies, hummingbirds and other wildlife.

Most of the plants listed below are typically found in floodplains, but many of them can also survive in regular garden soil. Up to now, the native floodplain species have lived largely anonymous lives, toughing it out in roadside ditches and sewer right of ways. The trail offers a setting where people can rediscover an otherwise marginalized piece of the piedmont’s natural heritage.

The West Ellerbe Creek Trail has become our neighborhood’s pedestrian Main Street, a place for relaxed encounters with neighbors and nature. The volunteer workdays and other ECWA programming like birdwalks, make the trail a place to learn new skills and share knowledge of the natural world.