We have been attending to removing non-native garlic mustard in our preserves for years, but the year 2008 was a major wake-up call. When March came, we knew from watching our native woodland mustards that this truly was "the year of the mustard" in terms of spectacular blooms. By April we realized that this was true for the non-native garlic mustard as well. It seemed to be popping up in huge colonies in places we had never worried about it before. For the first time, we realized we could actually lose the native understory of some of our hard-won preserves if we weren't really perseverant. Scanning the entire 3000 acre preserve system for colonies of garlic mustard, each with the capacity to grow and spread, is now something we know we must do thoroughly, every single year, without fail. It's an immense task, one that requires LOTS of volunteer help -- a true community of effort -- to successfully accomplish. Maybe that's what garlic mustard came here to do for us Americans - to teach us that nothing truly important can be done without effort. To teach us the virtues of community, earnest hard work, and  non-procrastination. In regard to the latter, there is only a 10-14 day window in which to effectively act each year to weed garlic mustard--falling at a time when almost everyone is hearing the siren call of their gardens and yards. Regardless, it is a task that can't be deferred to a more convenient time. In other words, we have to be responsive to nature's rhythms if we are to saving the treasures of our native landscape. Lastly, Garlic mustard is teaching us determination. To successfully remove garlic mustard from any one site requires complete 100% weeding of the species over a span of seven years. After that time, relatively easy maintenance keeps it garlic mustard-free.    

Of our 11 preserves, the most severely threatened areas in the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System are undoubtedly the Ohio River Bluffs Preserve on the Ohio River; and our oldest and largest preserve, the Highlands Nature Sanctuary where the garlic mustard has gotten a head-start along the canyon floor of the Rocky Fork Creek and several side tributaries. At the Sanctuary we have identified ten locations which need our intense concentration. At the Bluffs, although the mustard has taken over a third of this spectacular wildflower-drenched preserve, we managed to reclaim a respectable section of it last spring, attracting over 30 volunteers to the effort. But we only made a dent in saving what what just might be one of the best wildflower displays in all of Ohio-and one of the most imperiled. You can tell from the photos this is not a spectacle we should let fall off the face of the earth "sitting down." Quite simply we need a LOT more people to succeed. CLICK HERE FOR A PHOTO ESSAY OF FLOWERS AT THE BLUFFS.

We hope to attract 100 or more volunteers to the effort this year. Might you be willing to dedicate a weekend to this worthy cause? You can sign up for either location - HNS or the Bluffs - or you can let us assign you to where we need the help the most. The Ohio River Bluffs is approximately 1.5 hours from Cincinnati just west of Manchester on Rt 52, or an hour and fifteen minutes drive southfrom the Sanctuary. You can carpool with us to the Bluffs from the Sanctuary, or meet us directly there. Realistically, the Bluffs is probably too far from Columbus for a day drive unless you come to the Sanctuary the night before.

WE ARE TAKING registrations NOW Sign up for ONE DAY, TWO-DAY or FIVE-WEEKDAYS in 2009, and sign up for our offer of free optional lodging. Please click here to register. We will meet at the Sanctuary's Cave Canyon Parking lot at 8:00 am Saturday and Sunday to carpool to Ohio River Bluffs, and 9:30 am to work at the Sanctuary. Wear good hiking boots, light garden gloves if you have them, and pack a lunch and water. Plucking garlic doesn't take strength, but will be spending the day reaching downward to around waist level and lightly pulling upward. On the Bluffs, we will be working on the side of rather steep inclines. The woodlands are beautiful this time of year in both locations - the trees are unfolding and are filled with the return of tanagers, grosbeaks and warblers in full song. For directions to the Highlands Nature Sanctuary. For directions to the Ohio River Bluffs.

A word on behalf of Garlic Mustard. A bit of natural history...and some philosophy too. Please read before you attend.

  Garlic mustard is one of 1000 species of non-native plants now established in eastern USA, most of which have recently arrived and settled into peaceful co-existence in their respective niches, increasing our local biodiversity. Most often, the victors were the ones who could successfully adapt to the brand new habitat created by our agricultural and industrial practices -- open, sunny, disturbed ground. Plant immigration is nothing new - the process is literally as old as the hills. Most of the 2000 native plant species of Ohio, if you go back in time long enough, came from somewhere else, just like most of us did. So what makes garlic mustard so "bad?"

  First of all, garlic mustard is not "bad." It is a perfectly well-behaved and community-minded plant at home in the British Isles where it grows in modest numbers along streams and floodplains. However, it is one of many plant species that reached our continent without its assemblage of inter-dependent comrades, species that keep it in balance in its native home such as seed-devouring fungi and beetles. In England, the biennial Garlic mustard is naturally adapted to soils disturbed by flooding, and when it first established itself in Eastern USA's woodlands in the nineteen sixties and seventies, it exploded in numbers. It is easily observed that garlic mustard makes its entry most readily into forests that have suffered some disturbance to the soil, most commonly after a severe logging when the soils have been opened up by logging roads and heavy equipment. Once garlic mustard gets established, it usually over time sows itself so thickly on the forest floor that our perennial native wildflower species - their populations already highly diminished by human disruption - begin to disappear in its wake.    Garlic Mustard Feast below. Garlic Mustard is a delicious cooked green when added to a number of recipes.

  There is no use blaming garlic mustard for its fecundity - plants are devoid of malice. Perhaps we could blame ourselves for bringing itover to our country with such a sense of incaution, or for causing so much unprecedented soil erosion in our forests and fields, thereby inviting in a new species to cover our wounds. Or perhaps we could humbly admit that we may be seeing in garlic mustard's "aggression," simply a mirror of our own, since we too are rapidly taking over the world as a single species. Or, perhaps we can choose to blame neither ourselves nor the mustard plant, and simply accept the inevitable impact of our one-world economy on diverse landscapes that have heretofore grown for eons in isolation. Guilty or innocent, we must accept the reality that collectively our species is sowing the seeds of a new world, and now we must choose with our actions what we want that world to look like. We hope that you will find yourself admiring of garlic mustard's vitality and lime-green radiance. We also hope you choose to weed it, not as an enemy, but with the calm determination of a person who has made a choice for native bio-diversity, and will continue to weed until that day when the garlic mustard finds its natural balance in the new world. And that day shall surely come, because it is the nature of things. Let's hope we learn to do the same!