Our Environment: “Rejuvenating Break on Our Journey” by Scott Turner
Sunday, September 01, 2019
We received a strong feeling of welcome from the flower beds and meadows scattered around the entrance to the two-year-old Claridon Woodlands park in Chardon, Ohio.
Chardon is east of Cleveland in the northeast corner of the Buckeye State. Karen, Noah and I stopped into the park, during a visit to Karen's parents. We were on the way to drop Noah off at Ohio University for the start of his sophomore year. The roundtrip drive-spread over four days-covered more than 1,700 miles.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe 127-acre Claridon Woodlands is part of the Geauga (County) Park District. A welcome sign notes that the park is home to "forested areas of various ages, two man-made ponds and Cuyahoga River tributaries."
Interpretive signs in the park say that the gardens and fields contain "a wide-variety of wildflowers and native meadow plants" that will "develop into a habitat that will support a wide range of dragonflies, amphibians, and songbirds."
With summer simmering down, there was a lot of flower color in this park-a sign of its diversity and its presence atop rich lowland soil.
One field contained purple coneflowers, a type of yellow coneflower and black-eyed Susan. From it came a steady hum of clicks and chirps produced by several types of crickets.
Goldenrod dominated another garden, which also featured both tall ironweed, with its purple disk flowers, and New York ironweed, displaying blooms that were deep reddish-purple, deep lavender or violet. Both ironweeds grow naturally in fertile, moist soil.
Park planners included all sorts of flowering vegetation in "bioretention cells." These low areas of the landscape between the parking lots and ponds in the park were designed to help filter runoff.
Interpretive signs noted that the bioretention cells "help keep the surrounding wetlands and ponds cleaner and healthier."
Other flower beds looked like swathes of prairie. These included meadows rich in goldenrod; bonset, with its white flower tops; white sweet clover; and several types of Joe-pye weed in various shades of pink, purple and violet.
Various sizes and shapes of sunflowers also dotted this landscape. One new flower for us was dense blazing star, a marsh type of aster, featuring dense spikes of rose-purple flowers.
Several milkweeds were present. Swamp milkweed was still in flower, while other types were well into setting their pods, which will open later in fall.
The native grass, little bluestem was also used in the plantings, as was a fine-textured bunchgrass, called prairie dropseed. Also present was an abundance of sedges, which look like members of the grass family. Grasses often have cylindrical, hollow stems. Plus, grasses may be annuals or perennials. Sedges are perennials that display solid, usually triangular stems. At the park, they fitted seamlessly into the prairie-like scheme of the plantings.
Instead of benches between flower beds and meadows, park planners employed great slabs of tan sandstone, which likely came for local quarries, for visitors to sit, rest and observe.
The park provided a bountiful, rejuvenating break on our journey, while underscoring a part of the mission of the Geauga Park District, which is to "preserve, conserve and protect" local natural features.
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
