The Land Connection
March/April 2021
The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT) protects land where you live, work and play.
We protect land that supports healthy habitats where wildlife thrives and people can connect with nature.
Boxes for Bluebirds
One of the joys of spring is watching the activity of birds as they search out and prepare nests. The Mary Kistner Nature Center has had a single bluebird box in the herb garden for years. Every year bluebird parents assess it, then build a nest and raise a family – indeed, two or even three over the summer season. When the original box became unusable, a Gwinnett County Master Gardener kindly donated a replacement box. That one, too, exceeded its useful life. A new box has been constructed and is now being used by a current bluebird pair.
 
Since many people are eager to support bluebirds with boxes, why not build more boxes for the Kistner Center and gardening projects in the area? GPLT successfully applied for a grant from the Gwinnett County Master Gardener Association to build and provide information about a number of boxes. Two of them will be installed as demonstrations at the Kistner Center. The Audubon Society suggests placing two houses around 15 to 20 feet apart, one for a bluebird pair, another for a different species that may compete for nesting cavities. Bluebirds prefer locations in the open although siting them to avoid intense summer heat is important. Some boxes will be constructed to be donated to other Master Gardener projects in the County. Not only will the project provide nesting boxes, but will offer a showcase for information about economical construction and proper protective steps. We’ll have more details as the project progresses.
Carol Presents
Do home gardeners have an impact on natural spaces and wildlife habitat? This connection may not have occurred to many gardeners, yet our gardening choices can have significance well beyond garden boundaries. Executive Director Carol Hassell recently was invited to give presentations to the Gwinnett County Master Gardener Association and during the Gwinnett County Public Library Garden Fest.
 
The presentations emphasized the value of selecting native plants for home gardens and leaving native trees healthy and standing. This is based upon the extensive research of Dr. Douglas Tallamy, professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware (author of Nature’s Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home). Creating home landscapes using native plants can help provide necessary habitat for some native bird species and other wildlife, since extensive areas of land converted to human uses offers no habitat for them. 
 
Moreover, a number of plant species that have been introduced into human landscapes now have escaped these supposedly controlled environments and are reproducing in natural areas in a way that damages and degrades them as habitat. A graphic in one of Hassell’s presentations demonstrates this connection and the sequence that results in degraded habitat. Protecting natural habitat is a compelling reason to select native plants for home gardens.
Wahoo!
In 2013 the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust accepted title to a tract of land in Coweta County bordering a segment of Wahoo Creek. Maps of the area at the time showed a lake, Bibbs Lake, on the property. Some years earlier, the creek had been dammed to be an “amenity lake.” Residential development around the lake ensued. For reasons not entirely clear, the owner of the land under the lake breached the dam partially. Some years later after the land changed hands, it was donated to GPLT as a conservation property. A violent storm in 2017 completed the breach so that today, the creek meanders peacefully through the floodplain, now returned to a more historic condition. 
“He that plants trees loves others besides himself.”—Thomas Fuller
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Photos Courtesy of Hank Ohme, Carol Hassell & Dale Higdon