Lawrenceville’s Newest Native Gardens Bloom with Purpose

By Leila  Khabbaz ‘28

Each year, five Lawrenceville students participate in the School’s Restoration Ecology Internship, a one-week summer program in land stewardship that aims to enhance campus wildlife habitats. This year, the goal of the program was to establish a native plant garden on two sections of unused land surrounding Lawrenceville’s sports fields to support pollinators and other wildlife. Throughout the program, interns learned about the importance of native plant gardens in the midst of conventional fields of mowed lawn, which act as ecological desserts for pollinators looking for habitat. We found that land stewardship efforts and maintenance of native gardens through consistent weeding and redistribution of overcrowded plants are essential to protecting pollinators and other native species.

Lawrenceville Director of Sustainability and science teacher Stephen Laubach initially bought native plants for the project from Kari Lloyd, a sixth grade teacher at Melvin H. Kreps Middle School in nearby East Windsor, N.J. As Lloyd recounted, her students helped “sort and package the seeds for [their] Free Native Seed Library” into seed kits and worked “alongside community members to sow seeds into gallon milk jug greenhouses” at events known as Native Seed Sowing Extravaganzas. The proceeds from these seed and plant sales raise funds for the Kreps Middle School’s native plant garden as well as local conservation groups such as Sourland Conservancy and Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space. For this reason, Lloyd describes the project as a “win-win for students, schools, and the environment.” Laubach initially bought plants grown from seeds in 150 half-cut milk cartons over the winter, with ten seeds per milk carton. Laubach and Big Red Farm Manager Ben Bois later bought 100 more native plants from a local nursery to ensure that all available land would be covered.

As interns, we began the project by preparing the 1,000 square feet of available soil for planting by weeding, moving existing plants, and uprooting excessive native grass clumps. Throughout this process, we identified pre-existing native plants, such as milkweed and liatris, and tried not to uproot them. If the roots were damaged, we cut the stems in half so that the plant could focus its energy on growing healthy, hydrated leaves. Although the first section was mostly cleared, the second section of land was overflowing with grasses so tall that they covered the sports’ fields dedication plaque. On the third day of work, we cleared 85 clumps of grass and composted them at Lawrenceville’s mulching site, leaving some grass behind to complement the native flowers.

After we prepared the land, we separated each cluster of plants into individual stems and laid them out on each section to plan where they would be planted. We placed the same species in clusters of three and separated each stem by at least one square foot, depending on the estimated width of the plant. This allowed the plants to have soil space to grow their roots. To ensure that all plants could be seen from the path that ran through between each section of land, we evenly distributed plants so that taller plants, such as wingstem and baptisia, were planted in the back while shorter plants, such as wild basil and yarrow, surrounded the perimeter of the garden. Over the course of three days, we planted most of the stems and redistributed already-present swamp milkweed so that they had root space to continue growing. Our final steps were to add plants to any sparse areas and cover any visible dirt with leftover grass cuttings in several areas to prevent weed growth.

We have already observed the impacts of land stewardship, witnessing a monarch butterfly laying her eggs underneath milkweed leaves. As Lloyd stated, projects like these gardens contribute to a “growing community of students who are excited to get their hands dirty and contribute to something lasting.” Although we expect to see a full garden next summer, the presence of native species has already made tangible progress toward restoring wildlife habitat at Lawrenceville.

For more information, contact Lisa M. Gillard H'17, director of public relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.