Naturehood Plant Rescue at Arcelor Mittal

Over the last two years, the Museum's Natural Areas Division has been involved with an ad-hoc committee known as Naturehood. The Naturehood committee was formed to brainstorm ways to transform vacant city lots in to urban native plant gardens, and consists of volunteers and staff from various Community Development Corporations, the Earth Day Coalition, the Natural History Museum, the Green Triangle, the OSU County Extension Service and many others. Last Fall, Naturehood began work on preparing our first native plant garden on Holmden Avenue in Tremont and completed the plantings this May. By the end of the growing season, this once barren vacant lot was transformed in to a beautiful display garden consisting exclusively of plants native to Ohio.

The Naturehood group has now begun work on our second vacant lot which is located On West 48th Street in the Stockyards neighborhood. To save on costs, we are trying to salvage much of the plant material from local sites. On November 20, the Naturehood group traveled to the flats to conduct a plant rescue on the Arcelor Mittal Property. Many native shrubs and perennials were dug from the property and transplanted to the Stockyards garden. Transplanted shrubs included staghorn sumac and gray dogwood. Herbaceous plants included umbrella sedge, boneset, evening primrose and dogbane. Thanks go out to Arcelor Mittal for arranging for us to come out that day!