Every time I go into the park with a couple of hours to work, the same question presents itself– “what is the most impactful, most important thing to do?”  Over time, I created an overall strategy, which now guides me at the aggregate level, and this blog post is to describe my approach.  Comments are very welcome as I have made it up more or less.

When I first started, there were invasive vines high up into the canopy of even the big trees.  English Ivy was present on at least 90% of the trees regardless of size; on the big trees it was fruiting.  The invasive coverage was the most dense along edges of the forest– along the river and where trees had fallen.  Most of the time, these invasive vines were Oriental Bittersweet, Kudzu, and Porcelainberry.

So strategy was not that difficult at the beginning– get the invasives out of the canopy.  If the trees die, the rest will be very difficult.  And that took me about a year and a half to get about 3/4 of a mile up the river and have the high canopy clear.

But then it got difficult to decide.  Should I clear the mid-level trees?  The shrubs?  Perhaps start with English Ivy on the ground?  Or should I go by species– clear bush honeysuckle everywhere?  Should I try to get every invasive species in an area and then move on to the next area?  Should I start where the invasives were the most dense or  other less polluted areas?

I landed a bit in the middle–

1.  Completely remove some species to try to eradicate them– stop the ability of specific species to create seed and spread.  I chose this path with bush honeysuckle and with multiflora rose, in part because they were finite in number.  They were not ever-present and so could theoretically be tackled without consuming all of my time.   There was also one kudzu field that fit this category.
2. Clear the forest edges (even the small trees) of invasive vines- mostly bittersweet, honeysuckle, and porcelainberry.   This was a very time-intensive decision as there are so many smaller trees.  I chose this path because I found that these species spread so rapidly in the sunlight — if I did not clear them from the small trees the larger ones were soon covered again.
3. Selectively clear ivy and other lower invasives from likely beautiful natural features, such as large boulders, cliff faces, and other spots where the ivy seemed to be covering something interesting.   I did this because I found it fun — revealing the hidden sights gave more dimension and interest to the entire landscape.  I expected the new vistas to be rapidly covered again with the ivy, etc. but have been surprised how durable these new landscape features have become, particularly when in the shade.
4. Ignore the invasives on the ground — particularly the English Ivy– so as not to consume all of the time available.  Also, I have seen it is more effective to go more slowly and accomplishing each of the above objectives, rather than leave a few of the targeted invasives in place in order to hurry to the next spot.

How do you choose?