At Ferry Farm, meadow beckons

Wild meadow walks at Ferry Farm offer visitors the chance to see grasses, wildflowers, and other plants--and maybe a fox or two

Deer are among several wild animal
species that find Ferry Farm's
reclaimed meadow to their liking.

By LAURA MOYER
Published in the Free Lance-Star: June 23, 2008

When visitors to Washington's Ferry Farm in Stafford County take guided "wild meadow walks" this summer, they'll focus on all the plants, birds, mammals and insects that thrive on the property.

What they won't see are all the thought and effort it took to get the meadow to be a meadow.

In the 1980s--years before the property came under the stewardship of The George Washington Foundation--the parcel was quarried for materials to build the nearby Blue and Gray Parkway.

"That created a 10-acre bowl that pretty much nothing grew in," said Dave Muraca, director of archaeology for Ferry Farm. "People said, 'That would be a good place to dump stuff.'"

And that's what happened until the foundation took over in 1996. The quarry site is part of an 80-acre parcel connected to George Washington, whose family farmed the land when the future first president was a boy.

In the past few years, foundation employees have resurrected the former quarry as a wild natural area, turning once-sterile ground into a place where native plants thrive.

They've improved the soil to the point where it can sustain planted strips of buckwheat and millet that birds and animals like to eat, and they've reduced the numbers of such invasive non-native plants as the misnamed "tree of heaven."

These days the meadow provides habitat for more than 100 species of birds, for mammals including a couple of families of foxes, and for an abundance of butterflies.

Morning dew outlines a
spider web along a path
through the
Ferry Farm meadow.

Starting this past weekend, volunteers from the Fredericksburg Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society are guiding visitors through the meadow, into the woods and along the Rappahannock River.

In teams of two, volunteers Donna Finnegan, Linda Chaney, Ann Gorrell and Anita Tuttle are sharing their knowledge of the native (and some nonnative) plants in the meadow, and pointing out some of the insects, birds, mammals and other creatures that call the meadow home.

Turning stripped-bare land into bustling meadow took time, but the effort was prompted in part by the tenacity of animals that made it their home even at its bleakest.

"There was so much wildlife out there anyway," said foundation spokeswoman Paula Raudenbush. "It seemed like a natural progression."

Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com

Photos by Robert A. Martin, The Free Lance-Star

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Last Updated: August 25, 2008