Bigbee Field Pollinator Meadow Emerald View Park

Grass, steps, and meadow area of Emerald View Park

ESTABLISHING A POLLINATOR MEADOW Located near the border of the Mount Washington and Allentown neighborhoods and directly above the Liberty Tunnel, Bigbee Field boasts impressive views of the Downtown Pittsburgh skyline and welcomes nearby residents and park visitors into trails within Emerald View Park.

Learn more about how you can install a pollinator habitat in your own backyard!

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Thanks to the generous support of The Garden Club of Allegheny County, a member of The Garden Club of America, and in partnership with the Mount Washington Community Development Corporation, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has established the Bigbee Field Pollinator Meadow. In alignment with the Emerald View Park Master Plan, this meadow:

Features a diverse array of native flowering plants selected for their ability to bolster the pollinator value and serve as habitats for pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, and birds.
Improves a prominent trailhead and entrance to the park.
Beautify planter beds atop Bigbee Field, which are cared for by community volunteers, to create a unified experience for park users.
Pilots use of hardware cloth to suppress the invasive knotweed currently growing there and invigorate the hillside with new native pollinator plants. The effects of the trial will be monitored and could be replicated on other hillsides throughout the park system. The results will be shared with the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works and other key partners.
Protects the viewshed, a critical goal of the residents of Mount Washington, Duquesne Heights, and Allentown.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “Three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce.” In other words, pollinators, including bees, butterflies, moths, birds, and bats, are responsible for one out of every three bites of the food we eat. Unfortunately, pollinator species are experiencing a sharp decline, which has been exacerbated by climate change, habitat loss, use of chemicals, and invasive species.

Project Resources

How can I install a pollinator habitat in my own backyard?

You can help to protect pollinators in your own backyard by planting native plants and avoiding the use of pesticides. Simple actions can help the population of bees, birds, and butterflies thrive. You can learn how to create a pollinator habitat by using the links below:

https://www.dep.pa.gov/OurCommonWealth/Pages/Article.aspx?post=97

https://extension.psu.edu/planting-pollinator-friendly-gardens

https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/about/national-initiatives/plant-for-pollinators

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/pollinators/helping-in-our-own-backyards.htm

Planting Guides | Pollinator.org

What types of pollinator plants are featured at the Bigbee Field Pollinator Meadow?

Penstemon digitalis – Foxglove Beardtongue
Zizia Aurea – Golden Alexander
Heliposis helianthoides – False Snnflower
Pycnanthemum albescens – Whiteleaf Mountain Mint
Aster novae-angliae – New England Aster
Asclepias tuberosa – Butterfly Weed
Amsonia tabernaemontana – Blue Star
Aquilegia vulgaris – Common columbine
Ratibida pinnata – Grey headed coneflower
Allium cernuum – Nodding onion

What is the hardware cloth method?

Knotweed out competes other species by growing quickly in the spring and shading out other species that might have rooted there in the past. Because they dominate light capture and have a long photosynthetic period, they form large root masses that permit rapid expansion and make them very difficult to remove.

By laying hardware cloth (a metal mesh of ½ inch squares) over the crowns of small patches of knotweed, we hope to suppress this plant through passive and repeated ‘topping’ of the knotweed shoots. When they first emerge, young knotweed sprouts will be small enough to fit through the holes in the hardware cloth. As they grow larger the diameter of the shoots will exceed the ½ inch hardware cloth squares, causing the knotweed shoot to become girdled and die.

As the medium-sized shoots die back, we hope to see two outcomes. (1) Other competing plants will be exposed to more light, allowing for increased photosynthesis and the chance to put out leaves above any new knotweed shoots. (2) Over time, the knotweed will experience a deficit of energy, losing more to the costs of producing new shoots than it can gain through photosynthesis from that new growth, thereby losing vigor and competitive advantage.

Concurrent to laying the hardware cloth, we plan to plant species specifically selected to compete with the knotweed. These species will have smaller diameter stems at maturity, so that the hardware cloth will not impair their growth and will have a mature height of at least 3 feet so that they can cast shade over the second or third flush of new knotweed sprouts by mid-summer.

Maintenance: Each spring we lift and re-lay the hardware cloth over the infested area. This will be done to ensure that debris and roots do not cover the hardware cloth, which would, over time, make it extremely difficult to remove and disruptive to the new species that have been established.

THIS PROJECT IS MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM

PROJECT PARTNERS

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