Care of Creation Grounds Committee – June 2016
The Care of Creation group has been working in the St. Michael’s gardens to remove invasive plants and to replace them with native plants. We’ve been joined in this effort by the Earth Force Team of the Meridian Homeschool Club. Meridian meets at St. Michael’s on Wednesdays during the school year. The Earth Force Team has been evaluating our grounds, flora and fauna as part of their studies. You can view a slideshow of this work. As part of their efforts the Earth Force Team won a grant by Caring for our Watershed and they used that grant to purchase native plants for our gardens. During the course of this last year the Earth Force Team also prepared two videos. The first is a 1.5 minute improvised film about removing English Ivy. The second film shows a 5 minute first draft of their puppet show taken in the Memorial Garden. Finally if you visit the Memorial Garden you’ll see that many of the plants in the garden have been identified and labeled by the Earth Force Team.
(May 2016) As was described at the Apr. 17, 2016 presentations to the parish, we seek to become more intentional in caring for God’s creation in our own corner of the earth on St. Michael’s grounds. We plan to gradually move toward more environmentally sustainable practices on the church grounds, focusing on:
- Planting native species and increasing the interconnectedness and ecological value of our property
- Removing invasive species (and not planting any invasive species!)
- Reducing or eliminating the use of fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides
- Working to better manage storm water on site
We will periodicially provide updates in The Guardian and the website.
— Members of the Committee: Tad McCall, Karen Ruff, Helen Hines, Libby Harkins, Monica Dinan, Wil Harkins, John Hughes, Caroline Haynes