Barcroft Bog is only a small part of Barcroft Park, about half of which is developed as a sports facility. The bog area lies in the forested part of the park, along one of the park boundaries. Between that forest and the recreational areas there is an old, unused baseball diamond, shown here. The purpose of our planting was to reclaim the baseball diamond as forest, to help buffer the bog area. (November 2005)

The plants came from our Wild Plant Nursery and consisted entirely of species already present in the bog forest. Here, two of our George Mason University interns put in a green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) seedling. (November 2005)

The planting area lies right next to the bog forest, as you can see. You might wonder what the point of planting is in such a situation, since the forest would obviously tend to seed itself into any adjoining area that isn’t mowed. But planting confers some important advantages. It can create a diverse assemblage of trees right away—something that might take a long time with natural regeneration. It can help control invasive alien plants, by giving native cover a head start over any invasives in the area. And it can help politically, by “advertising” an area as an ecological asset. (November 2005)

This is what our planting looked like immediately after it was done. The area is not browsed by deer, so we didn’t have to use deer shelter “tree tubes.” Here, our planters begin a tour of the bog area, organized by Arlington County Naturalist Greg Zell. (November 2005)

Greg, in the green shirt, interprets the bog forest for our volunteers. Greg organized our planting here. He’s the key player in restoring and maintaining this site and many others in Arlington County. He’s also a walking encyclopedia of local plant lore! (November 2005)

The bog is actually not all bog. Greg and fellow botanists have identified two very rare plant communities in here; there is also some not-so-rare but nicely developed forest. The two rare communities are an “acidic seepage swamp,” and a kind of seepage magnolia bog—one of only ten such bogs known to exist in the mid-Atlantic region. Both communities have been reduced by development. This is what most of the swamp-bog complex looks like. (November 2005)

This is the magnolia bog, with one of its signature plants, sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana), much in evidence. Those stems with bright green leaves are all sweetbay. Both the magnolia bog and the seepage swamp contain plants that are uncommon or even rare in the region's remaining natural areas. But the special value of these places is not just a matter of rare species, since the overall assemblages—the plant communities as a whole—are also rare. That’s why conservation must work on the community level, and not just focus on individual species. (November 2005)

The canopy over the swamp-bog complex has to be thinned periodically, to keep the rare plant communities intact. Without thinning, the trees would eventually shade out many of the plants beneath them. Under a more natural state of affairs, occasional fires would have kept parts of the canopy open. But since Arlington Parks no longer burn, park managers must sometimes mimic the effects of fire in order to maintain the natural balance. So while it’s a good idea to add forest around the bog, it’s also a good idea to subtract a little from the middle of it! (November 2005)

A view of the old baseball diamond nearly four years after the planting. The trees have done very well! This photo was taken from roughly the same spot as the first photo in this slide show. (September 2009)

Another view of the same area, also in September 2009. The area is well on its way to becoming "woody oldfield," a community type composed of meadow plants as well as small trees and shrubs. Woody oldfield is valuable for wildlife but is increasingly uncommon in the Washington region. (September 2009)

Unfortunately, this site, like so many natural areas in our region, is infested to some degree with invasive alien plants. The problem at Barcroft Bog is not very great—yet anyway. But in this not-very-good photo, you can see one of the many problems that invasive alien vegetation causes: that green blob on the left is a swamp chestnut oak sapling (one of the trees that we planted) overtopped by two invasive east Asian vine species: Oriental bittersweet and porcelainberry. The vines were cut after the photo was taken; had they been left as shown, the tree might not have been able to grow through them. (September 2009)