Reflecting on our past and with an eye to the future, celebrating 20 years of Fieldcote Museum's history.

Special to The News

I really took notice of it that first day I began volunteering at Fieldcote Memorial Park and Museum seven years ago. It massed thickly under the trees in the woodlot, marched along the boundary fences, made sorties into the flower beds on the hill above Sulphur Springs Road and threatened total rout of the ground ivy between the tool shed and the car park.

"This is garlic mustard. Smell it," said Trish Brookfield, a graduate in botany, member of the Ancaster Horticultural Society Board and director of Fieldcote's volunteer gardening.

I took the proffered plant cautiously. Its spiky leaves reminded me of nettles. It certainly smelled of garlic, and until I had learned to recognize it in its various stages of development, the smell was the most reliable way to identify it.

Garlic mustard is a biennial. In early spring and fall, when most other plants are dormant, its leaves are dark green and kidney-shaped, and are arranged in rosettes close to the soil. In May, the leaves are sharply toothed and triangular, arranged alternately up the stem, at the end of which are many small flowers.

Usually, the weed is single stemmed, but specimens with many stems from a single root are not uncommon. Garlic mustard propagates from seeds developed in long narrow capsules. These burst in August, dispersing thousands of tiny black seeds which remain dormant in the soil for 20 months and germinate the second spring after ripening.

Repeated controlled burning in spring and fall is the preferred method of eliminating the weed, but it is not feasible at Fieldcote because of its location in a residential area. A second method of weed control is the use of herbicides. Fieldcote is opposed to the use of herbicides or pesticides on the property.

The third method is cutting and pulling. Jim Green takes time from his volunteer work as archivist, local historian, sleigh collector and builder to mow areas in spring and fall. Grass is now supplanting the weed in these places. Pulling by hand is the only method where the mower cannot go.

The best method here is the use of wood chips. Fieldcote volunteers spread hundreds of barrow-loads of chips. These prevent seed germination and make a loose rooting medium so that the garlic mustard can be pulled out easily with minimal disturbance of the soil.

While the work of eradicating garlic mustard goes on, the flower beds continue to be tended with excellent results. Fieldcote has won the Diamond Trillium Award. The large area of grass in front of the band shell is neatly trimmed for patrons of Music in the Park, and the Garden Club of Ancaster volunteers maintain their rock garden with its charming bronze statue.

In a following article, the reader will become acquainted with some plans for the continued restoration of our environmental heritage in the woods at Fieldcote.