This post is by Mary Woodward, who served as a Horticulture and Education Intern at Litzsinger Road Ecology Center, August 2018–April 2019. She continues to serve as an LREC volunteer.

After a 30-year career in International Trade, I left behind the corporate rigors and trained to become a Missouri Master Naturalist in 2010. The Missouri Master Naturalist program is a community-based natural resource education and volunteer service program for adults, sponsored by the Missouri Department of Conservation and the University of Missouri Extension. Well-trained volunteers provide education, outreach and service dedicated to the beneficial management of natural resources and natural areas within our local communities for the state of Missouri.

With a desire to learn more about plants, I registered for botany with the St. Louis Community College Meramec Horticulture Department in 2014, which led to my pursuit of the Horticulture Applied Science Associate Degree. I was able to work as a horticulturist on campus in the summer of 2017.

After a couple of introductions to the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center (LREC) I decided that I would like my workplace learning to take place there. I began my work at LREC as a Horticulture Volunteer as well as a Volunteer Educator in September of 2017. At LREC, I’ve been able to practice the horticulture skills gained through my education and experience working in the gardens at Meramec. Plus, I am also able to use the knowledge I am acquiring through my classes in Early Childhood Education at St. Louis Community College, Meramec Campus (StLCC Meramec) as a Volunteer Educator at LREC.

Working at the Meramec campus gardens and greenhouse the summer of 2017 as a horticulturist provided me with opportunities to put my grounds management studies into practice, such as tree planting and using proper pruning, mulching, and weeding techniques. Other duties included greenhouse cleaning and maintenance and water feature maintenance.

Listed below are the essential duties and responsibilities of Litzsinger Road Ecology Center Horticulture Volunteers:

• Work with horticulture staff to maintain and develop native ecosystems.
• Remove invasive plants.
• Propagate and plant native species
• Collect and clean seeds.
• Transplant native plants.
• Prune native shrubs.
• Assist gathering phenology data.
• Assist with prairie burns and prairie reseeding.
• Assist with other projects to improve habitats, safety and accessibility of the site.
• Weekly availability Tuesday or Friday, 9 a.m.–noon.

LREC uses fire events to rejuvenate growth, control invasives and ensure long-term survival of native plant and animal diversity in the prairies. I was comfortable participating in the prairie burns at the ecology center since I had gone through controlled burn training as a Missouri Master Naturalist. A controlled burn can be exciting. I worked the fire perimeter using a swatter to smother small flames that escape from the burn boundary. As I stood watching for renegade flames, I did not expect an adult deer to come running out of the burning prairie headed directly toward me. The deer was startled by my presence as I was startled by it. It darted around me and with lightning speed headed off to the woods. Head-on collision averted.

 

 

Listed below are the essential duties and responsibilities of Litzsinger Road Ecology Center Volunteer Educators:

• Lead small groups of school children in ecological investigations and explorations of the natural world.
• Facilitate outdoor learning activities designed by teachers that support their curriculum.
• Weekly availability for 2–3 hours at a time per children’s visits.

Children’s learning experiences at LREC are guided by seven themes of childhood play as laid out in David Sobel’s book Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators. Those themes are: Adventure, Fantasy and Imagination, Animal Allies, Maps and Paths, Special Places, Small Worlds and Hunting and Gathering.

After training with Eddie Jones, Program Coordinator and Leslie Memula, School Partnership Coordinator, the partnership teachers prepare various curricula for their visits to the LREC habitats. As a volunteer educator, I guide the children on their quest to accomplish their assignments. My focus has been with the 3–8 year old range of students.

One assignment related to the Animal Allies theme was for the children to pretend that they were deer. Being deer, they considered what their deer bodies are like, how and what they feed their deer bodies, how to detect deer danger, how and where deer sleep and the many other things that deer do in the prairie, wood and stream habitats. This allows the children to understand the deer inside and out, before asking them to study them or save them.

Another teacher created a lesson plan based on building structures. I found that this integrated the themes of Adventure, Fantasy and Imagination, Small Worlds and Special Places. The children could use their curiosity about the physical world and use their imagination to create a special place where they fit and make sense and meaning out of the world they are learning how to live in.

 

Some teachers are very creative in preparing lesson plans for the LREC adventure. For example, one teacher began the trip with a book about what lives on a log. She gave each group of children tools to use for making their discoveries, such as, magnifying glasses, small child size tweezers, scoops and containers for collectables and a waterproof chart and marker to record their findings.

The children come ready for the rain and mud. They are prepared and attired with gear such as waterproof jackets, rain/mud boots, hats and gloves. Two of the girls with me on this trip tried catching and holding the roly-poly bugs with some trepidation. It was their idea so they remained persistent. The thorough preparation by this teacher set the stage for the children to truly engage in the themes of adventure, discovery and hunting and gathering.

LREC encourages teachers to reach results by using an active learning approach, small group collaboration, making connections with the community and using imagination and creativity to express deeper understanding and reflection about the world they live in.

The horticulture staff at LREC provide enriching experiences for volunteers. Adam Rembert, Restoration Ecology Assistant, gave the volunteers a presentation on seed anatomy. It was very creative as he became the seed and used his body to physically demonstrate the seed growth process.

What a great idea to incorporate into a lesson plan for children. Show the children a time lapse video of a seed germinating then ask them to use their bodies to act out the physical process of a germinating seed. It would address themes such as alliance with the plant world, kinesthetic learning, and the physics of understanding how their body moves in slow motion.

James Faupel, Restoration Ecology Coordinator has provided volunteers with detailed presentations and training sessions prior to pruning, seeding activities and learning how to use iNaturalist to build data about flora a fauna of LREC. iNaturalist is a citizen science project and online social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe.

During the 2018 growing season I participated in data gathering of bloom times for flowering plants in the LREC forest and prairie habitats during phenology walks each week with Susan Baron, Adult Programs Coordinator. I learned so much in my plant ID classes at Meramec, but the walks at LREC made me realize how much more there is to learn. We had access to some of the best plant id manuals and online ID search sites to help us ID the hundreds of bloomers, but found that they did not always have the photos or descriptions of the finer details that distinguish one species from another. Hairy stems, center disc formations of flowers or the number of flower petals, etc. can be deciding characteristics in correct ID.

Because of my interest, Mary Voges, Horticulture Supervisor, has given me the opportunity to photograph seeds under a stereo microscope to reveal their shapes and complex structures. The phenology walks also inspired me to take photos of plants at various stages of development from seed, to sprout, to maturity and flowering, and finally to the dried seed heads in autumn so I can share that with rest of LREC community.

My educational experiences as a horticulture student have enhanced my ability to contribute to the gardens at Meramec and to habitat restoration at LREC. These opportunities guarantee my lifelong learning about the natural world and human nature.

I am consistently inspired by the children and teachers who come to visit LREC. Kinesthetic learning in the outdoors and being active in the world around them brings learning to life in meaningful ways for children.