Stewardship and Discovery at Herrontown Woods

There are many reasons to visit Herrontown Woods. Many people walk their dogs there, seek tranquility and relief from a fractious world, or simply want a good hike up to the ridge amongst trees and boulders. Others come to learn the story of the Veblens, as told on the walls of Veblen House. And some are talked into coming by their kids, who want to play and explore in the Botanical ARt GarDEN (Barden for short). 

Sometimes we lead nature walks in the woods, as we did on Nov. 2 after the monthly May's Barden Cafe. This fall offered many glorious days for a walk in the woods, and that was one of them we shared together.

A week later, as someone who stewards and studies Herrontown Woods, I had a much different agenda as I parked my car at a little known entrance to Herrontown Woods, on Windy Top Court.

That's the entrance closest for doing a quick check of a 3 acre patch of wisteria that we've been steadily fighting back. It probably originated long ago as a lovely little vine in a garden that later was abandoned, allowing the vine to expand on its own into the woods. Decades of unfettered growth turned it into a wisteria monster, tearing down trees and smothering all other growth in the woods.

Through persistent effort in recent years, we've reduced it to little sprouts rising from a massive root system that gets weaker and weaker as we cut and treat the myriad stems, using loppers and a wonderfully frugal, minimalist applicator called a Buckthorn Blaster. We've begun planting native wildflowers in the areas freed of wisteria. Our confidence in this incremental approach arises from success in having freed the Veblen House grounds of a similar massive patch of the vine.

The main target for this two hour solo visit, however, was a new invasive species whose striking fall color in late fall made it easy to spot. The source of the new invasive is a bit of a mystery. Even its name is not certain. We know it's in the genus Pourthiaea, but there's disagreement about its species name. One thing's for sure: it is very pretty in the fall. It is also a threat, smothering and displacing native species as it spreads. If deer and other wildlife reject its foliage, the woods becomes less and less edible over time. 

Fortunately, I'm catching this new invasive early, in much the same way we were able to prevent the super aggressive lesser celandine--a big problem in other preserves--from coating the ground of Herrontown Woods in the spring. Vigilance and early intervention are by far the best way to protect the native flora when stewarding 230 acres of public open space.

Not everyone has accepted the assertion that Princeton's woodlands have a new invasive shrub/tree to contend with. Some claimed it was a species called asian Photinia (Pourthiaea villosa), which began spreading in and beyond Princeton decades ago. In spring, the new invasive has flowers similar to asian Photinia, but in fall, the asian Photinia turns various shades of yellow and gold--also attractive but strikingly different.

Another item on my to-do list was to take a closer look at a mysterious tree that had been knocked down along the yellow trail. A dead ash tree had fallen across the trail, in the process bringing down another tree that I couldn't immediately identify. Sourwood, I wondered?, remembering a beautiful native tree species from days in North Carolina. Or just a tupelo with longer leaves? Uncanny how the ash had knocked this tree down onto the trail, as if to say, "Look at this!"

A native mapleleaf Viburnums along the trail had turned a special color.

Also great to see a big patch of a native grass with long, graceful awns on the seeds. Until I can be more definitive with the identification, I'm calling in northern long-awned wood grass (Brachyelytrum aristosum). 

Early November is the time of the color-coded forest, when you can stand in a woods, look around you and identify every plant in sight. Walking down the yellow trail, I spotted a big clump of green amidst a sea of pinkish winged euonymus. What could be so big and still have green leaves this time of year? My guess was bush honeysuckle, a nonnative shrub that has invaded many woodlands in Princeton, but is fairly rare in Herrontown Woods. Wanting to keep it rare, and thinking about how many seeds a big clump like that could produce, I launched into the brush to try to reach it. 

The footing was very difficult, because the clump was in the middle of a large boulderfield hidden by the dense growth. Though the nonnative shrubs can turn pretty colors in the fall, their dense growth has blocked many fine vistas and features that we'd like to restore. Each boulder in Herrontown Woods is a work of nature's art, mottled with varied shapes of lichen and moss, like the mottled skin of whales navigating the oceans.

Here you can see the shrubs literally perched on top of the boulders. I cut and treated the bush honeysuckle, navigated back to the trail, and returned down the trail to the car. The nonnatives are not inherently bad. Their rambunctiousness makes them too much of a good thing. Since the deer don't eat them, our loppers play the role. It was a classic session, mixing the satisfactions of stewardship with little moments of serendipity and discovery along the way. 

Portapotty Capers

Location, location, location. 

This porta potty, rented by the Princeton recreation department, leads a humble but much appreciated existence at the bottom of the Herrontown Woods parking lot, ready whenever nature calls.

We almost lost it yesterday, though. While I was pulling stiltgrass, over across the creek from the Barden, I heard a big truck lumber into the parking lot to service the portapotty. No big deal. This happens every week. 

But then a half hour later, another big truck showed up. As I pulled bunches of stiltgrass here and there and stuffed them into a bag, in an effort to prevent the uber-invasive from releasing thousands of seeds that would make our work harder next year, I started to wonder what that second truck was doing. 

It slowly sank in that the truck was about to take the portapotty away. I broke into a run, headed the truck off at the pass, waved down the driver and, when he stopped, asked him what was going on. He said he had an order to remove the portapotty. I told him that we had in years past twice had the portapotty mysteriously disappear. Each time, after telling us that the portapotty had evidently been stolen and that we owed them $1000, the company eventually figured out that through some internal miscommunication, they themselves had been the thieves. 

This time, I caught them in the act. The driver said he'd look into it, then drove away. Bye, bye portapotty.

But in less time than it takes to say "Why do weird things like this happen to us?", the truck came lumbering back to the parking lot and put the portapotty back where it belonged. Mistakes had been made, and were now being corrected.

It's a classic Hollywood storyline: Preserve gets portapotty, preserve loses portapotty, preserve gets portapotty back again. Why did it happen? These days, so much is happening that doesn't make sense. I could have asked, but part of me really doesn't want to know. The portapotty's back. That's what matters.

A New Sign for Herrontown Woods

Thanks to the municipality of Princeton for installing a new sign along Snowden Lane for Herrontown Woods. The sign was designed by a consultant with input from the town open space manager, Inga Reich.

Importantly, it includes an arrow to point visitors in the right direction, and a salamander to celebrate the various species of amphibians that call Herrontown Woods home. 

Thanks to Britt for these photos of salamanders she and her kids recently found in the preserve.

Here's a red salamander, 

and here's a northern two-lined salamander.

The new sign is greatly welcomed. One of the posts of the old sign had rotted, and the words had nearly faded from one side. 

The old sign included the word "Arboretum." That was not original to the Veblens, but was added later by the Mercer County, more aspirational than official. We have, however, started towards getting arboretum designation. Volunteer Alastair Binnie has been leading an initiative to create a "Tour of Trees" with maps and signage to identify many of the 55 species of trees found at Herrontown Woods thus far.

The old sign may prove useful if we create an arboretum area within the preserve.

Our Annual Birthday Celebration of the Veblens

Every year we throw a Veblen Birthday Bash in June to honor Oswald and Elizabeth Veblens' role in founding the open space movement in Princeton. They were born on the 24th and the 2nd of June, respectively.

This year's celebration was particularly successful, with lots of socializing, lawn games, live music, and displays documenting our accomplishments and plans for the future. 

Of particular note was a display put together by our new architect, Paul Buda, who showed off some of his past work and ideas for restoring the Veblen House and Cottage.

While pianist Phil Orr and I, known as the Sustainable Jazz Duo, performed our original latin and jazz music.

There were all sorts of productive conversations about where the Friends of Herrontown Woods has been and where it's going. Town council members David Cohen and Leighton Newlin came to learn more about our work and offer their ideas. 

Inge Regan, seated on the right, was the primary organizer of the event, with lots of help and encouragement from board members Angelique, Hope, and Pallavi. 

Clifford Zink, an architectural historian who has been our longtime advisor, came to join in the conversation.

Mathilde and Ninfa gave tours of May's Garden. Located just down from the Veblen House, where Elizabeth ("May") Veblen once propagated flowers, the expanded garden now serves as a setting for Mathilde's Grow Little Gardener classes.

Later in the evening, as the fireflies began to join us, it was very moving and healing to have a Native American, Carlos Eagle Feather, sing a song of gratitude, honoring and connecting the work we do to the love his ancestors had for the Herrontown Woods lands.

The west side of the Veblen House provided a backdrop for displays of the past year's accomplishments.

There was the Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade's work to protect salamanders during their spring migration, 

a special approach to circus called Circus Quercus, led by Zoe Brooks in the stone circle next to Veblen House, 

our interns, Ninfa and Moss, funded by a grant from Green Matters,

a Herrontown Woods Community Collage project led by our board member and Artist in Residence, Hope Van Cleaf, 

May's Garden Club led by master gardener Mathilde Burlion, 

and scenes from our work this past year with Princeton High School students to manage two PHS detention basins for native flora. 

Earlier in the day, Robert Budny and his daughter Sophia had helped me display our work in front of one of the basins, as part of a Ciclovia event. 

All in all a full and joyous day for the living, honoring those who came before. Thanks to everyone for making it possible. 

What's Bloomin' in the Barden? -- July 2, 2025

The Botanical Art Garden at Herrontown Woods, nicknamed the Barden and packed with more than 150 species of native plants, has a steady stream of blooms through the summer. This is a rich, complex, dynamic landscape that contrasts with the more static "trees n' turf" landscapes we tend to see around town. Walk the paths of the Barden and see if you can find the latest flowers to unfold.

Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) is a popular shrub for landscaping. Native to the southeast U.S., it creates abundant flowers in the shape of a bottlebrush, pollinated by many kinds of insects, including the beautiful syrinx moth.

Another attractive shrub of the southeastern U.S. is the oak-leaved hydrangia (Hydrangia quercifolia). Though its natural range is centered in Alabama, it graces many yards in Princeton with its large blooms and rich fall color.

Growing in the swale next to the parking lot is lizard's tail, named for the shape of its squiggly spires of flowers. It's latin name is pretty squiggly as well: Saururus cernuus. Like pickerelweed and arrowhead, it thrives in wet ground, and can be found growing along the shores of Lake Carnegie. It can spread once established.

Shrubby St. Johnswort, deer resistant and growing to four feet high, provides a month-long display of small yellow flowers. Its latin name, Hypericum prolificum, could refer to its many flowers or the many new plants it can produce from seed, which we pot up and make available for sale.

One of my favorite wildflowers is tall meadowrue (Thalictrum pubescens), which grows in an informal way with tall, topply stems. Its clouds of delicate, miniature flowers attract miniature pollinators. 

Pokeweed can get as big as a shrub, even though it dies back down to the roots each fall. It can provoke ambivalence, looking sometimes weedy, sometimes elegant. The course vegetation contrasts with the beautiful flowers and berries. In North Carolina, I once saw a man carrying an armful of the spring foliage home to cook in a special way. 

While pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) can imitate a shrub, its relative in Argentina, the ombu (Phytolacca dioica), forms an unorthodox tree with spongy wood.

The Barden is a special habitat seldom seen in Princeton. We intentionally manage it as an open woodland where shrubs get enough sunlight to form abundant berries for the birds. My love of elderberries extends back to childhood and the delicious pies and jellies we made from its berries, which will turn dark purple when ripe.

Pagoda Dogwood -- A Comeback Story

It was a great surprise, many years ago, when I first encountered a pagoda dogwood in Herrontown Woods. Though its leaves have the classically arc-shaped veins, this is not the highly ornamental flowering dogwood. Nor is it the silky dogwood often found in floodplains. Also called alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), its discovery took me back to field botany days in the 1970s, when a charismatic University of Michigan botanist, Herb Wagner, introduced us to many of the less common flora. 

I'm guessing the discovery in Herrontown Woods was about ten years ago, and at that time I could find only two specimens of pagoda dogwood in the preserve. One was thriving, the other dying, possibly of an introduced anthracnose disease. Encountering no others, I assumed the species was barely hanging on and in danger of succumbing altogether. 

But the one remaining specimen continued to grow, now more than twenty feet tall, and fortuitously created many progeny when a lower branch touched the ground and took root. Some of these I carefully dug up and divided, then planted in various spots where I'd remember to care for them. 

Initially caged and watered, two of the new specimens took hold in the Barden, thriving in spots sunny enough to generate many blooms this spring. 

Then, within the past couple years, much to my surprise, I began encountering the distinctive reddish stems of young pagoda dogwoods scattered here and there in the preserve, along a stream or up on the ridge. I'd say they are expanding on their own, without any help from people, but it's also true that the town's deer-culling may have reduced the browsing pressure on native woody plants sufficiently for these younger specimens to grow large enough to be noticed. As they grow, their branching will take on the characteristic tiered, pagoda-like shape.

It's rare, in this tragic time, when treasured species like ash and beech are being laid low by introduced pathogens, to find what looks and feels like a resurgence. This post is written in mid-spring, when the foliage is fresh, the birds have returned, periodic rains soften the soil and feed the vernal pools, and a string of deliciously cool days ease the tending of nature's garden. So much in the world is broken. There is so much to grieve, and yet the woods can still fill one with good news.

Postscript: Another comeback story is the butternut tree, a native that had been laid low but is becoming more numerous in town due to some timely intervention years back, along with some ongoing care. Kind of a fun story: I was telling a resident at Princeton Community Village about the butternut tree the other day. She had never heard of it, but a light went off in her head. Charmingly, the roads at PCV are named after trees. with names like Juniper Row, Sassafras Row, Tupelo Row, and Red Oak Row. She had always wondered why there was also a Butternut Row, which she assumed was named after a squash. Now she knows it too is a tree, one that still grows in Princeton, like and unlike all the others. 

Herrontown Woods in the News -- Salamanders and Wet Meadows

There have been some excellent recent writeups in local news media about the Friends of Herrontown Woods' work in the community, in Town Topics, TapInto Princeton, and the PPS District News.

The first was by Carolyn Jones in TapInto Princeton, entitled "How To Save the Salamanders? In Princeton a Volunteer Brigade Helps Out," about FOHW's Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade--a group put together by FOHW board member Inge Regan that includes community volunteers, high school students, teachers, professors--all taking a keen interest in helping amphibians migrate safely across Herrontown Road in the spring on their way to vernal pools, where they lay their eggs. 

Soon thereafter came a student writeup in the Princeton Public Schools District News about FOHW's collaboration with PHS Environmental Science students and teacher Jim Smirk to turn a detention basin at the highschool into a native wet meadow. 

Don Gilpin followed up on that with a front page article in the Town Topics about our work at the high school. Along with collecting data in the basin, the students are weeding out invasive species and planting natives. Our "Iwo Jima" photo shows the students lifting a tool shed into place that will also collect rainwater for watering plants. The shed was built from scavenged materials by FOHW volunteer Robert Chong. The rainbarrels were donated by Jenny Ludmer of Sustainable Princeton. 

The outdoor learning the students are getting, ranging from applied analytical skills to plant identification, including how to safely and effectively use garden tools, will serve them well in life. Combining the physical and the intellectual, whether helping amphibians at Herrontown Woods or tending to a complex plant community at the high school, reflects the active stewardship Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen valued and hoped to encourage when they donated Herrontown Woods nearly 70 years ago. 

Princeton Grad Students Help Out at Herrontown Woods

One of my favorite things to do at Herrontown Woods is to restore habitat with a group of grad students from SPIA. That's the Princeton School of Policy and International Affairs, formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson school. 

Mariah Lima is the organizer. She somehow discovered Herrontown Woods last year, and this time, for what she called "SPIA Forest Crew Part 2", she brought six friends: Nadia, Rebecca, Caroline, (Mariah), Derek, Veronica, and Matteo.  

It was one of those inspiring spring days, when the shadbush is in bloom, 

when the opulent leaves of skunk cabbage form green ribbons along the streams, 

and when newborn tadpoles nibble algae growing around masses of salamander eggs in a vernal pool.

We decided to work in an area of intense restoration, where years of work had finally slain a giant 3-acre wisteria monster, making room for native species to be planted. 

There were still some garlic mustards to be pulled, and considerable satisfaction to be had in digging out remnant sprouts of thorny Japanese angelica trees with the claw of a hammer, for lack of a better tool.

Rebecca and Nadia planted loci of native seed--ironweed, JoePyeWeed, and coneflower--covering the seed with a thin layer of soil and tamping it down.

Mariah, Derek, and Matteo made cages to protect newly planted elderberry shrubs from browsing deer.

A pileated woodpecker had preceded us, chowing down on insects hidden in a fallen log. Such a pleasure to participate in nature's dynamic cycling of life with a spirited crew at Herrontown Woods.