Huge planting day

DENTON- University of North Texas ecology students and Denton community members gathered for a huge planting day Saturday morning.

The planting day took place at UNT’s pollinative prairie located at Discovery Park. With about 800 Texas native plants to work with, community volunteers and students prepared for an all-day planting event.

The plants used for the event were a part of UNT student, Molly Burke’s, research project that aimed to see how different pot sizes affect plant root structures.

Organized by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) and funded by the We Mean Green fund, the planting day did not only benefit her research but also added a diversity of Texas native plants to the prairie.

“So it’s kind of a good way to sort of play around with plants and see how those root structures are growing naturally in their habitats and seeing how that’s affecting that plant survivorship,” Burke said.

The pollinative prairie is a 4-acres site, but Burke says her research plot takes up less than a quarter acre.

Burke has received help from Jaime Baxter- Slye ,Ph.D., who works at the University of North Texas as a lab instructor for environmental science.

Over the past two years, Slye says ecology students have been doing these kinds of work days and have successfully replaced Bermuda grass with over 100 different kinds of flowering plants and Texas native grasses.

Bermuda grass is one of the most commonly used grasses in Texas but it is not a native grass.

Slye said she hopes students and volunteers take home what they learned at the planting day so they can make their own small prairie at home.

“If you’ve got the opportunity to do something for the environment then you should do it. I had the opportunity to get some funding to plant Texas native plants and try to reconstruct a Texas native prairie and that’s what we’ve done here,” Slye said.

Future planting events to look forward to are being planned for fall of 2019 and predict a grand total of 7,000 plants for the pollinative prairie.

List of Texas prairie plants:

• Green milkweed
• Butterfly milkweed
• Purple prairie coneflower
• Indian grass
• Big bluestem
• Little bluestem

How to Identify plants and living organisms:

• Download the iNaturalist app onto your phone
• Take a picture of any plant with flowers, insects or any living organism
• Post it on the iNaturalist app with a general name tag (flower, insect, tree..etc)
• Wait for an expert to identify your plant or organism
• And share your findings!