Friends of the Trail - Scioto Run Nature Trail

"Friends of the Trail" has adopted the SCIOTO RUN NATURE TRAIL, which is a city park within the Hilliard Recreation and Parks system.  Our team of volunteers works beyond the typical adopt-a-park duties, though.  Not only do we pick up trash, but also, we coordinate with the city to restore the trail.  Our team works three days a week for two hours at a time to pull out or cut down the invasive Honeysuckle Bushes from this park.  We also pull out Garlic Mustard Weed.  We stack the debris, and several times a year, the City of Hilliard mulches up the debris and piles up the mulch.  We can then spread the mulch on the trail.  We cut down and kill vines that smother trees, we pick up litter, and we plant NATIVE tree saplings and spread NATIVE wildflower seeds (did we specifiy NATIVE?  Yes. Native.)

We've been highly successful!  We started in April 2018 and completed our first pass through over 2/3rds of this 11.5 acre park.  About 200 people have served, and we've logged over 2,000 volunteer hours and counting!  We realize that this is a multi-year project to remove all the Honeysuckle, Garlic Mustard, and Vines, and it will take yearly maintenance to keep the invasives at bay, but we are so thrilled to see a more natural Nature Trail that we are very motivated to endure!

We may have started too late, though, for some areas of the park were so infested with Honeysuckle that there are very barren spots after we are done removing this species. 

We are grateful for this program that helps us give Nature a jump start and plant NATIVE trees in some of these barren spots.