6-acre hillside to become demonstration meadow
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An underused six-acre hillside in Boyce Park will be converted to native grasses and wildflowers next spring to reduce the need to mow, to provide wildlife habitat and to reduce stormwater runoff into nearby streams.
The site, Indian Hill — ½ mile from the ski lodge on Centerview Road — is a sweeping slope of Bermuda and crab grass, clover, plantain and wild violet.
The Allegheny County Parks Foundation is undertaking the $6,500 project based on the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s recent ecological assessment. It will be the first demonstration meadow in a county park, with potential for another 27 acres elsewhere in Boyce Park, said Carole Smith, communications manager for the Allegheny County Parks Foundation.
The environmental benefits are far-reaching when considered on a countywide basis.
The conservancy is now conducting an ecological assessment of South Park. The parks foundation expects opportunities in all nine county parks to create environmental assets while reducing the time, cost and pollution from having to mow.
“We are looking at areas that don’t get any or much recreational use,” said Caren Glotfelty, the foundation’s executive director. “We have funders who have been interested in ecological projects ready to leap on these” opportunities.
The most use Indian Hill gets is by sledders, and sledding is not allowed in the park, she said.
Andy Baechle, Allegheny County’s director of parks, said the meadow in its first couple of years will not look impressive to the public, “so we will have to put educational signs up. In a few years it will look fabulous and people will want to get in there are see the birds and other pollinators. It will be a great interpretive area.”
He said the amount of stormwater that runs off and that which the meadow could deter have not been calculated, “but we know it will be” significant. “The meadow will suck up a lot more water than [turf] grass. And we know it will be good for wildlife habitat.”
He said several areas in other parks have been designated for habitat improvement, “where we have stopped mowing along the edges [of forests]. We’re going to learn a lot from this and hopefully we can replicate it in other places.”
The walk up Indian Hill is steeper than it looks from a parking area at the bottom. At the crest, the top of the Cheswick power plant can be seen.
The plan is to mow a network of public paths up the hill so people can use the hillside to connect to forest trails and to enjoy the new habitat, Ms. Glotfelty said.
The meadow will include little bluestem and Indian grass, “which have seed heads that birds like,” Ms. Glotfelty said, as well as asters, beardtongue, coreopsis, wild senna, sunflower and other species.
The first steps will begin next month. On dry, windless days, park staff will apply a minimally harmful herbicide and repeat the application in the spring to get rid of the current turf. In late April, public works crews will use planting drills to apportion seeds throughout the acreage.
Ms. Glotfelty was the environmental program officer for the Heinz Endowments before taking her current job two years ago. She said she has been able to hire a few people and has had “great support from the county” to improve natural areas of the parks. Among her projects are to control invasive species, take out sick trees and plant new ones.
The PNC Foundation paid for the study of Boyce Park and the Allegheny County Conservation District is funding the cost of converting Indian Hill to meadow.
“We can predict negative public reaction at first,” Ms. Glotfelty said. “People are not used to seeing that kind of growth and might assume a lack of upkeep, but we will do signage.
“One of the most exciting things is that the maintenance supervisor loves the idea.”