Students, naturalist remove invasive plants at Buck Creek, plant native trees

“The goal would be (in about) three years from now when campers come down, they’ll be able to pick a plum and pick berries, and the birds will pick the berries and eat the plums, then hopefully reseed those native plums and serviceberries where we cleared the honeysuckle,” said teacher Andrew Hahn.

The school, located on 10 acres along North Limestone Street that’s mostly forest, has an ecology program where they have been removing invasive species to replant the native forest, Hahn said.

When Hahn was on a nature hike with naturalist Bob Wooten, he found out Wooten was doing the same thing for Buck Creek State Park and asked if the students could help. He said they keep a nursery of native plants of dozens of species and have the resources to help clean and bring the plants to the park to replant.

Wooten said the students are going to be planting two flowering plum trees and one serviceberry.

“(They will be) where we took the honeysuckle out and moved all the understory from the honeysuckle, which is an invasive plant, and we’re going to plant those trees and then they’re going to plant some undercover as well, some flowers,” he said.

The students have been going to the state park each week, and the goal is to do that every week for the rest of the year and years to come.

“To try to put a dent in removing all the honeysuckle out as much as we can here at the reservoir that’ll hopefully let different species of wildlife come back into the area who just don’t have anything to eat, because they can’t eat honeysuckle,” Hahn said.

Student Bo McClain said helping the park makes him feel good.

“I like getting out here, working on these plants. I like to do more hands-on work... it makes me happy to get out here and make things nice,” he said.

McClain said the invasive plants ruin the view at Buck Creek State Park.

“There’s so many better plants that we can plant up here. Birds can come here and eat the berries, the birds (then) spread them all over instead of honeysuckle everywhere blocking your view from everything,” he said.