Category Archives: Gardening

Shady Area Rain Gardens topic of New Quarter Park program

. Gardening

Visit New Quarter Park on Saturday, May 11 at 10 a.m. and learn how a unique rain garden was built to capture runoff in a shady area. The program will be presented by Jeanne Millin, Virginia Master Gardener, Tree Steward, Water Steward, and Virginia Master Naturalist.
Jeanne will lead visitors to the Rain Garden on the park’s Teaching Garden Trail, which has been developed with a variety of native plants that grow well in the dappled shade and are heat and drought tolerant. She will explain how the rain garden was constructed by several local groups and volunteers with native plants (lists of plants will be available). The rain garden calms and filters  stormwater runoff from the parking lot while taking advantage of the natural slope and not damaging tree roots. Participants are invited to explore the demonstration garden and ask questions about building rain gardens on their property for similar beautiful and environmentally sensitive results.
New Quarter Park is located in upper York County at 1000 Lakeshead Drive, next to the Queens Lake neighborhood. For more information, please call Parks and Recreation at 890-3500.

Flora Foray at New Quarter Park on April 6

. Gardening, Other

Donna Ware, curator emeritus of the College of William and Mary herbarium and Flora of Virginia Project member, will lead a Flora Foray at New Quarter Park on Saturday, April 6, from
10 a.m. to 12 noon. The Flora Foray will celebrate the publication of Flora of Virginia, a landmark botanical reference book which describes 3,164 plant species and natural variants growing wild in the diverse habitats of the Old Dominion. After discussing the Flora of Virginia, Ware will lead a foray through New Quarter Park’s forests and ravines to find living specimens of some native Virginia plants described in the Flora. 
More than 10 years in the making, the Flora is the first comprehensive catalog of Virginia plants since Flora Virginia, published in 1762, when the Commonwealth was still a colony and the Virginia landscape was dominated by the American Chestnut tree.
The Flora Foray is part of New Quarter Park’s 2013 Saturdays in the Park education and recreation program series. The 545-acre park includes diverse mature forest, ravine, and wetland habitats.
New Quarter Park is located in upper York County at 1000 Lakeshead Drive, next to the Queens Lake neighborhood. For more information, call York County Parks and Recreation (Monday to Friday, 757-890-3513) or New Quarter Park (Friday to Sunday, 757-890-5840).