By Anne W. Semmes
At the head of Smith Cove, Oneida Drive runs past a rare salt marsh adjacent to sparsely wooded land seen at the corner of Indian Harbor Drive. That land stretches uphill to the playground across from the Bruce Museum. Constituting nearly four acres this is the Oneida Audubon Sanctuary, a preserve of tidal wetlands/salt marshes of which Greenwich once had 1,800 acres but now only 250 acres. It is the smallest and only coastal sanctuary of six managed by Greenwich Audubon across town.
Last Monday week the restoration of those nearly four acres began with some 20 young volunteers pulling out invasives and planting native plants and trees. “We’re creating canopy space and generally improving growing conditions for other more valuable native plants that we’re going to be putting back in here,” said Matt Viens, Land Stewardship Manager at Audubon.
And those volunteers? “They come from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in New York, and every year they work with the Volunteer New York program to do a week of community service projects.”
“The other two things we’re going to be working on,” said Viens, “is we’re going to be putting in two native trees, a hackberry and a white oak tree.” “The other thing we’re doing today is setting the first stages for where the walking path is going to be. We’ll be digging parts of it out, laying down landscape fabric, which would prevent weeds from growing up…so that over time maintenance of the trail is relatively less.”
“So, the idea is,” he continued, “that it’ll just be a general loop trail starting here and go to that little kiosk that has an Audubon sign that gives you a little bit of the local ecology, plants, animals you might see here. Why this ecosystem is important.” And yes, those salt marshes can bring Egrets and Great Blue Herons.
“That trail will follow the water line between those two red cedars,” Viens indicated, “then it will loop back around the edge of the road area, maybe about 20 to 25 feet in from the road. And then eventually, we might put in a little spur path going out the way the property extends, but that’s not part of the plan at the moment.”
Viens then introduced a few shrub plants to a few volunteers with shovels ready to plant. “So, the ones with the leaves mostly still intact are Arrowwood viburnum. And these are Black Chokeberry. They’re both really good native plants. They should do well in a coastal environment. And these will help form almost like a border hedge here.”
So, with this being a tidal wetland, are there rising waters he was asked? “It gets periodically flooded. But we don’t anticipate, at least for many years, this park to be submerged. But the plants we’re planting are things you would typically find in a coastal environment. So, most of these plants can handle periods of salt, water intrusion, or wet roots or things of that nature.”
Instructing the planters, Viens said, “When you’re digging your hole, you want it to be a bit wider than the top.” Pointing to the plant containers, he told, “So basically the depth should be equivalent to the size of the root ball. The pot’s a little bit higher than the top of the root ball, so, a little bit less than the pot. “
Nearby was an ongoing effort to dig a hole deep enough for that hackberry tree, with some four volunteers working away at a huge rock in the hole. “There’s going to be a lot of room once we get that giant [rock] out if we can get it out,” said Chistian Alexander, Senior Coordinator of Community Programs at Greenwich Audubon.
“So, I run all of our volunteers, our internship programs, our youth leadership and our summer camp,” said Alexander. “A lot of the volunteer efforts that I coordinate end up being land stewardship responsibilities to help support Matt…We have a two-man team, but a lot of the land stewardship efforts that are important for bird conservation are just tedious and take a lot of man hours. We do a lot of invasive species removal. And having a group like this to do that really helps out.”
It was at a previous meeting at the Audubon Center where Executive Director Rochelle Thomas was laying out future plans for Greenwich Aududon before invited garden club members that she shared that Audubon had received funding help earlier this year for this sanctuary restoration. “We received $23,000 in funding from the Connecticut Land Conservation Council. It’s part of their Climate Smart Land Stewardship grant program. And that grant program supports projects that are focused on environmental restoration in a way that is also climate forward.”
She cited the Oneida Audubon Sanctuary as “a really accessible space of land and it provides us a lot of opportunity.” She highlighted the declines in different bird species, with shorebirds showing “the second most significant decline. “So, it gives us an opportunity to provide essentially healthier, more dynamic coastal habitat for those bird species. And also because of its central location, is a really wonderful opportunity to serve as a community gathering space and education space and sort of the gateway for folks to learn about habitat conservation and birds and then hopefully engage with some of our properties.”
