Healing Gardens

Body:

Week 2

10/4/06

2 hours working on site description for Longhouse garden. Also spent time trying to identify the plants in our

area.                                                                                                                                                       Total hours 2.75

Learning: This week I became aquainted with a lot of plants I had never heard of or seen before.
 

Week 3

Spent 4 hours at Shotwell's Landing the Nature Conservancy's Prairie Restoration project. We were given a tour of the facilities and spent the remaining time weeding and harvesting viola seed pods.                                                                                                                                                      Total hours 6.75

Learning: Like the previous week, I was introduced to many plant species which were completely unfamiliar to me prior to this day.

 Week 4

Spent 2.5 hours at Shotwell's Landing weeding and planting viola cells. Also worked for 2.5 hours at Longhouse Garden pulling horsetails, pruning trees, light weeding, and taking pictures                                                                                                                                                    Total hours 11.75

Learning: I discovered that the Viola is a very important plant for the prairie and is very attractive to Butterflies.

Week 5

Spent 3.75 hours in computer lab working on site description and plant list for web page. Also spent 3 hours at the Forest service removing sod for planting prairie plants.

                                                                                                                                                                 Total hours 18.5

Learning: This week while entering our plant species into the computer, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much we could recall about our plants without having to

turn to our notes for information.

Week 6

Spent 3.25 hours at Forest Service covering landscape cloth with bark and and planting Fescue grass. Also this week I spent 2 hours researching medicinal values

and uses for approximately half of the plants in my site.

                                                                                                                                                                Total Hours 23.5

Learning: I was surprised to find that nearly every plant in our site has some value for medicinal use. The Red Alder was used to fight Tuberculosis and skin infections.

Also I learned that the appropriate procedure for planting Fescue is to place it every square meter.

Week 7

Spent 1.5 hours cutting back blackberries.  Also spent an hour reviewing the medicinal values and native uses of the remaining plants in our site.                             

                                                                                                                                                                 Total Hours 26

Learning: I learned that Trailing Wild Blackberry not only trails, it hops, leaps, and burrows itself among other plants.

Week 8

Spent 3 hours pruning plants back and weeding Creeping Buttercup from our site. Worked with garden partner on preparing presenation

                                                                                                                                                                   Total Hours 30

Learning: I had not realized how quickly the Buttercup spreads. We did a pretty good weeding at the beginning of the quarter and now it is quite abundant again.

Week 9

This week I spent about 1.5 hours researching plants that would be suitable to put into our area. I also spent about 5.5 hours working on our presentation.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Total Hours 37

Learning: I discovered that there are very many species native to our area that I had never seen or heard of before. Kind of sad.