2023 Accomplishments

We’ve just finished another wonderful year. Details coming soon! (For a sneak peak read our November and December newsletters).

2022 Accomplishments

2022 was our first year in operation. We had a great first year and made a large impact on the forest understory. However this is only the beginning.

*The remainder of the plants we grew this year have been reserved for founder plots, growing to larger sizes for next year, and some went to volunteers as rewards for growing.

Creating our Organization

Wild Woods Restoration Project was born in February and we’ve come a long way in less than a year. We’ve selected a name and written our mission statement, established a board of directors, created a web site, started a Facebook page, issued monthly newsletters starting in March, run a successful fundraising campaign with IOBY, and held a total of 14 events with volunteers. Check out the details below.

Plant Rescue

In May we rescued 130 plants from a private property in Orange County. This was our first plant rescue and our only one so far.

Potting Up Workdays

We had two official partner organizations, Black Rock Forest and Hudson Highlands Land Trust, who hosted workdays to pot up seedlings. We also held some informal workdays. Overall, we had 6 potting up days with a total of 31 volunteers participating.

Growing Plants

After potting up, 25 volunteers took home flats of seedlings to grow up over the summer. It was a difficult summer with a prolonged drought yet virtually all of the volunteers were successful at keeping a high percentage of their seedlings alive with only minimal losses.

They tallied 170 hours caring for their plants and earned a total of 240 plants for themselves as their reward. (Volunteers earned a credit of 20% of the numbers they grew as a credit. Their credit could be used on a variety of native plants grown by Linda & Rich or by volunteers).

Restoration Plantings

Overall, 28 Wild Woods Restoration Project volunteers were involved in planting 1,779 seedlings at 5 restoration sites.

We provided plants to the Westchester County Parks for a corporate volunteer work day at Graham Hills park on September 14. They planted 192 white snakeroot plants grown by our volunteers.

On the Old Croton Aqueduct trail in Yonkers, 5 volunteers planted 63 white snakeroot plants on September 21.

Over three work days at Black Rock Forest on September 17, October 8th & 9th, more than 864 native plants were planted in two sites in Black Rock Forest. Silverrod, blue-stem goldenrod, zigzag goldenrod, white wood aster, and citronella horse balm were planted and many were seen in bloom at nearby sites. Thank you to the 18 volunteers who came to help out!

At our big work day at Granite Mountain on October 22 we had 10 volunteers and planted 630 plants. Silverrod, wild columbine, blue-stem goldenrod, zigzag goldenrod, white wood aster, and citronella horse balm were planted.

Seed Sowing workshops

We also held two seed cleaning and sowing workshops with total of 10 volunteers participating. We sowed over two dozen flats of 13 species for next year.

At the end of 2022, we had sown seeds for 77 species from three ecoregions. We’re so excited to see what 2023 will bring!