Three generous couples have fulfilled HarborLAB’s vital marsh grass seedling budget for 2016! We give great thanks to Katherine Bradford and Gregory Leopold, Maura Kehoe Collins and David Collins, and Dylan Geil and Thomas Dieter for sponsoring 1,000 spartina (or cordgrass) seedling plugs that HarborLAB will plant along its Newtown Creek shore and in Jamaica Bay. These seedlings were grown by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center on Staten Island. This greenhouse and seedbank is part of the Natural Resources Group that cares for the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation’s wild preserves.
You can help us plant even more native species by donating in HarborLAB’s name to the Natural Areas Conservancy.
Please make your donation online or by check here:
Be sure to put “HarborLAB” in the comment section online or in the memo line of your check!
We’ll also continue to grow spartina from seed through our Cordgrass in the Classroom program as supplies become available. In addition to the profound educational and emotional benefits to youth that paddling and planting days provide, there are great economic benefits to New York City. Learn more about the value of estuary marsh ecosystem services in this paper.
Hunters Point Community Middle School students gathering goldenrod seeds with HarborLAB, helping the environment in view of the United Nations. Photo by Erik Baard.
HarborLAB volunteers had a wonderful day gathering seeds in Hunters Point South Park with a Hunters Point Community Middle School science class. We conceived and operate our seed program as a means of restoring and strengthening estuary habitat. We’re advised by local conservation groups and agencies, and in our field work we partner with school groups, corporate volunteer teams, and residents.
We’ve partnered with HPCMS since before it even opened its doors. The school has an ecological focus and serves special needs students, like our seed gathering partners, along with those in the mainstream. The student population is very diverse and most come from lower-income families.
Mary Mathai’s students met us in the park across from the school on a mild and partly sunny December afternoon. The weather has been so warm that many flowers have yet to slip into seed-heavy dormancy. We focused on a thicket of seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) which fortunately had largely turned over to fuzzy seed. We’ll return to the school to make seed balls with our day’s collection, and plant them along shorelines throughout our estuary as we paddle in 2016.
HarborLAB Founder Erik Baard talks about beach rose to Hunters Point Community Middle School kids. Photo by Patricia Erickson.
On the way to our goldenrod quarry we visited beach rose, pitch pine, and what are commonly called North American asters. Beach rose (Rosa ragusa) isn’t native, and is categorized as invasive along much of the East Coast. But in Hunters Point South it’s decoratively planted. The rose hips provided a great chance to talk about nutrition (especially vitamin C) and seed distribution by endozoochory (dispersal by animal ingestion and defecation). Pitch pine (Pinus rigida) is a tough native tree with twisting branches. It grows in poor soil and forms the core of the famed New Jersey Pine Barrens. This species allowed us to talk about forest regeneration through fire because this tree tenaciously regrows after damage and its cones pop open to released winged seeds after being exposed to high heat. Because of our region’s record high temperatures this autumn, many flowers were North American asters were determined in 1994 to not be true asters at all, but were instead categorized under the genus Symphyotrichum. The new genus is still under a family named for the asters, Asteraceae, along with daisies, sunflowers, and many other important flowers.
Many thanks to volunteers Patricia Erickson, Diana Szatkowski, and Erik Baard. Deep gratitude also to Hunters Point Community Middle School science teacher Mary Mathai and Principal Sarah Goodman, and to NYC Department of Parks and Recreation western Queens park manager Norman Chan for access and to the Natural Resources Group of the department for guidance.
Goldenrod in flower and seed. Hunters Point Community Middle School student outing with HarborLAB. Photo by Erik Baard.
Count goldenrod among the Asteraceae too! Goldenrod has long been recognized as a medicinal plant and recently urban planners have appreciated its ability to stabilize shorelines and dunes. Goldenrod is important to many animals. It feeds butterflies and bees, and hosts host the Goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia), which can change color to camouflage itself against its insect prey. Goldenrod also shelters the nests of black skimmers, one of our region’s most fascinatingly adapted shorebirds. The kids quickly grasped how the puffy seed heads acted as parachutes or sails to help carry the plants’ next generation far away. No need to worry about this goldenrod stand being diminished — these are perennials and we left many seeds at the site to boot.
Hunters Point Community Middle School students with the seeds they gathered. Photo by Erik Baard.
HarborLAB Facilities Manager Patricia Erickson shows students how to gather seeds without scattering them to the wind.
HarborLAB volunteers scouted Orchard Beach Lagoon and Pelham Bay in May. We intend to bring young people and community groups on Nature Paddles in these cleaner, safer waters. Photos by Alex Pavlov.
Orchard Beach Lagoon is an amazing bit of NYC, tucked away in the western Long Island Sound. You’ll be amazed that you’re still in NYC, splashing off the Bronx shore. Kids paddling here will see night herons, egrets, turtles, shellfish, bioluminescent comb jellies, jellyfish, sea grasses, foliated metamorphic rock, and numerous fish. HarborLAB Founder Erik Baard even saw a juvenile bald eagle there with David Burg of Wild Metro. HarborLAB Operations Manager EJ Lee fishes in Pelham Bay often and was the driving spirit of the day.
Interspecies fun on Willow Lake in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Starting in June we’ll offer paddling the first Sunday of each month. We offer both Partner Paddles to augment the missions of schools and community organizations, and Community Paddles for the general public to enjoy during open program hours.
We’re deeply grateful to the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Conservancy for its advocacy for this premier green space, and for aiding HarborLAB with permits and outreach. The organization’s leadership is reflected in the naming of Pat Dolan Trail for its first president.
Our goal is to through demonstrations seed a local eco-educational, non-competitive paddling, and nature stewardship group at Willow Lake and Flushing World’s Fair Marina’s kayak launch. For those looking to paddle race or row, try these two great nearby groups: New York Dragon Boat Race Club or Row New York!
The Willow Lake habitat restoration in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was closed to the public for a long stretch while the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation restored and replenished natural areas. We’re excited by the improvements and hope to contribute to further progress through water and sediment testing, new plantings of native species, and mitigation and remediation of highway runoff waters. Paddling provides unique views of the herons, egrets, turtles, and other beauties of Willow Lake. At a later date we’ll write about the history of Willow Lake and its larger twin, Meadow Lake, and proposals for the future of the greater Flushing Creek watershed.
Through the years other groups, including Boy Scouts, John Bowne High School, Yale University, LTV Squad, New York World, and CUNY Macaulay Honors College have worked for the betterment of the park’s Forever Wild areas and to document its life and needs. We give thanks also to the NYC Urban Park Rangers, who provided the first public canoeing in Willow Lake and will certainly continue to be a leading presence! We hope that HarborLAB can partner with these organizations, bringing the added joy and access of a canoe fleet! HarborLAB also has sit-on-top kayaks, but canoes are a safer (drier) bet until we have water quality data.
PADDLING WILLOW LAKE
So what’s it like to paddle Willow Lake with HarborLAB? It’s an amazing New York City experience!
What are those strange people up to under the Van Wyck Expressway traffic? Canoeing, of course!
We’re under the Van Wyck Expressway (I-678), just north of Jewel Avenue, across from the park’s Ballfield #13.
HarborLAB’s “secret launch” to Willow Lake. You start in the shade of a Robert Moses cave that thrums and thunders with Smart Cars and 18-wheelers above. Your canoe awaits in a small canal that links Willow Lake to Meadow Lake.
Is it the Bayou? Nope. Our little canal gives way to a creek, which is thrown wide open at Willow Lake.
Paddling to Oz? The Observatory Towers, New York Pavillion, and Unisphere of the 1964 World’s Fair glimmer in the background.
The happy return.
Some of the day’s crew. Our friendly volunteers provide safety tips, environmental literature, activities, community notices, and more!
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