To the Editor,

For those of you who have noticed an immense transformation in the understory of our wild places and along the edges of our roads and properties, you might be interested in attending The Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group Walk and Talk to be hosted by The Newtown Forest Association. Experts such as Dr Charlotte Pyle will provide plant education and a demonstration of proper invasive plant removal with the opportunity for audience participation.

As a child who grew up in neighboring Trumbull, I can remember many happy hours spent traipsing through the wooded areas which surrounded my backyard. We had highbush blueberry, mountain laurel, small hardwood saplings and club moss in abundance living under large oaks, hemlocks and maples. Today, the health of the forest understory is looking very different.

As you drive through Newtown or perhaps look out your window into your yard, chances are that you are met with a solid wall of thorny Japanese barberry, multiflora rose and burning bush. In addition, there is also Asiatic bittersweet, a creeping vine that does not share a symbiotic relationship with our trees. It creeps, shrouds the trees and eventually kills them.

And for anyone who has spent any amount of time walking near the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard and the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary, you have witnessed what happens when mugwort finds a field to be happy in. The biodiversity of our warm season grasses and perennial wildflowers have been sadly eradicated by this unchallenged infiltrator. Between the ticks and these thick, impassable monocultures of plants, it’s no wonder that I almost never see children playing in the woods as I did.

If you would like to learn more about what you or your landscaper can do to help make our wild places and yards healthy again, please email the NFA director at: Trent.mccann@newtownforestassociation.org to say that you would like to attend the CIPWG event on May 14 at 1:30 pm at 55 Great Hill Road.

Be sure to bring bug spray, water, eye protection, long gloves, gardening tools such as clippers and an open mind. Together, hikers, hunters, fishermen, gardeners, birders, artists, and all people who feel a connection with nature can make a difference with this ecological imbalance and restore America the Beautiful.

Thank you,

Christine St. Georges

Newtown