was funded by a grant from the judith kay record group who has been a long time supporter of broadmeadows has helped us several instances with grants and with this particular voyager the conservation commission felt really strongly that we believed to have been part of the racial pond however the ecologist on staff at our school has some doubts if that's true but we're going to get to the bottom of it and review the preserve good wildlife habitat for hunting and to preserve and open under story by the time british call this arrives to found watertown sixteen thirty the closet had been decimated by disease and rock metal was found to be partly with open meadows and little dense forest because it was so wet and rocky it was poor for and we're really excited keep working on this project and develop the designs that will be showing you tonight for a master plan for conserving rock meadow as a meadow into the future right so her view of entirety rather than focusing on just the parking lot and also the management plan will be coming up over the next couple weeks as well seventy acres half of which is meadow and that consists of east meadow west meadow north meadow in the central west metal which consists of a certified we and we went back and looked at some aerial shots from decades ago and one thing that's striking is in two thousand and seven this is the year that the mass on my report was done  encroaching and then after the plan sort of unplanned was implemented this is last year in the summer you can see what was removed it now delineate for park entrances including the main entrance off mill street and we showed this last time but we thought it was just so interesting that the description of the entrance in one hundred sixty eight was course this is the entrance kind of you know an opera transition from the parking lot into the park some of the signs are fading  good on some of the things we noticed closed landfill and incinerator on the north side of the lot and the victory gardens hundred forty  early spring and we understand that the the cost of renting a lot goes towards maintenance of the meadow three weeks ago we heard from you that parts of the victory gardens are a little unsightly and that could be something we designed for going forward we compiled all of your responses for the question wildlife which those two attributes are a body in the meadows we read through the mass audubon report that was done in two thousand and seven and as far as we can tell these are the things that have been sent them into you mass so we're interested to see if there's any difference in fertility were nutrients between the actual test plot sheep grazing and we took a few other samples from the north meadow in the east meadow noah and also the meadow destine birds and so one one question that's at the core of our design research is how can a compromise be reached habitat one another thing the mass audubon best management practices report says is that a lot of new england nesting birds grass and nesting birds actually prefer a meadow that predominantly grasses as opposed to today it's all grown over you could hardly see the foundation there's no there's milk we were we were shocked at how much the meadows changed just since you know three weeks ago clearly completely different place that are we spoke with chris politick he said he was in charge of clearing out some of the understory know so a little review broadly geologically speaking the whole region it is again believed to be informal but a former glaci pond which is more to the northwest of that of fresh hot but predominantly glacial tilt which is that the parent material under the good immediate top soil layer and dry but rock metal has a relatively high water table so there are areas where the water table intersects with the soil surface where we have a did a soil survey through ever c s in addition to the soil samples which will be you know more detailed but this is how an r c s grouped kind of the soil classes of rock meadow and it's predominately a fine sandy load which is called among the montauk series that's how they named it and this portion is also fine since you look well drilling but  where it's green and that's where the water table is higher so we have you know this string of wetlands that makes it wetter than the rest of the site the marsh is almost pure site because of the topography the the wetlands are kind of their expansive views of the of the weapons which are kind of like pools in the landscape the steepest slopes are along concord out and mill street here so we're looking at different ways to cite the parking lot and how how we can solve the problem of the drive being too steep  so that's a design challenge and then secondly another design challenge is to plan the trails around the steep slopes and the wetlands especially he a accessible meadow a little bit more away from the crowd a little bit more secluded while the west meadow is a place where you can kind of really feel like you're really in the meadow and a little bit immersed in the general concept well for it is like a flower growing oriental just not a grass or and the west meadow would actually change into a warm season grass i think a little meadow to forty about forty contiguous acres of grass one dominated meadow and doing this would supply the appropriate habitat for not only bob lives which require five to ten acres of contiguous crosland but savannah sparrow's and bester sparrows which are currently threatened in massachusetts and require about fifteen to twenty five contiguous  and goes with it to the extreme to present get us like figure outside of the box a little bit some of the trail updates so the western greenway in this concept would the outer loop of rock meadow on and that this outer loop would also be india accessible along the perimeter so the entire perimeter as opposed to it you know the first marsh that would be have to be all boardwalk which could look something like this how it looks and habitat which is really beautiful and there would be crushed gravel overlaid in the slow draining areas and we may work with you the community to determine to determine which areas these actually are they get wet every every year every season the interior paths would the same but they would be off limits to both mountain bikers and job lockers during the grass and bird nesting period which disrupts that cycle  walkers that don't have dogs and don't disrupt that cycle the eco store tour we were with and maria today said i'm looking at some of the features of rock meadow and we've identified you know the victory dar victory gardens as a core component to remember the legacy of mclean fire and the the meadow at the maybe we could start a conversation about the bases and some of the some of the benefits actually basis because black locust is illegal to plant and in massachusetts and yet it offers so many system services pollination the most rock resistant wood and new england smells great in the meadow to showcase the dynamics that are happening there but season versus school season forms versus grass and there's a rock wall has anyone noticed the rock wall in it the wood lived on the hill  it's really beautiful and we didn't kind of showcase that agricultural history of point along the deep emergent marsh on the news trail segment a point along as well as adding a kind of shrub a send us shrub layer that circles around the path to create a kind of just diversified habitat we'll also notice that there aren't that many con evergreens on site so this could be an opportunity to introduce you know more white pine where hemlock or whatever the community chooses but also retaining several and birding is really the best way to manage a meadow that increases soil fertility it encourages our need of warm season grasses which are no longer here about and it also maintain nesting birds actually prefer a kind of a clean soil layer that doesn't have all the automotive material and then also continu  small meat c s a that could go towards maintaining rock meadow just introducing more funds in addition to the victory gardens and then finally pollinator patches  along the margins to not interrupt the grassland dominated medical corps and to kind of punctuate the entrances each entrance you come into rock metal made entrance you have ten year two phase management plan and if if we really want to produce this vibrant habitat we spoke with chris politan and he really recommended the first phase being all about just comes back so knowing only keep to date doesn't eliminate it fully so some some research we looked at recommend it recommended mooing in june with its flowering and then again grasses it only affects woody shrubs but it is slightly toxic to ducks and fish the doesn't affect these so this is part of a broader conversation about the use of herbicides  and when we asked that question to you on in the questionnaire in the majority of you said you're comfortable with the use of herbicides in certain contexts i think out of twenty four responses we've got seventeen said yes you're comfortable seven said maybe and two or three said absolutely not in any circumstance so and having some of these conflicts i think all the limits of your user besides or not depending on what we're dealing with black swallower is the most difficult to remove the others like garlic mustard day we can have a volunteer day or have been a big test out and say with honeysuckle which is less well rooted and they actually have a tool specifically made for honeysuckle for moving it however it's not affected by trade period and actually needs roundup if you're going to go the herbicide route japanese knotweed is another difficult one that's really hard to get rid of you repeating that process for three years until it goes down and then you have to replant immediately with something that will fill that gap so for my research japanese know we didn't blacks all that were t both of labor of love and animals as well as burning those the animals and birds nerd the two ways that things have been managed for forever and also the least amount of more intensity birds of of mordor you know we'd especially see on the west coast the build up of woody material in the understory and that's why we see these crazy out of control while fellow wildfires on the west native mixes and seeding that at four pounds of seed per acre the grass the meadows morning before september fifteenth homa on the back side to prevent flowers and collecting the cut material every three years in the areas that are being burned because nesting birds are for that clean regeneration without facts and then finally these two organizations came to our attention recently in the popular project which matches yours with farmers who are conservation lives that are seeking to establish public habitat  so this funding available last year about fifty thousand dollars was awarded to one hundred or so different recipients so that's something to pursue dominated meadows we see a conflict with the conveniences a e a needs with the natural all of this and we would like to suggest that this area over here where wheelchairs and so forth and a da people here might have and then out trail or something that overlooks in a combat but they can't go all the way around and are not in favor because some of us enjoy the walk through the grass up to the high ground and sitting on the rock and so for being a natural experience in the high