Are you tired of seeing Garlic Mustard? If so please visit our stewardship area of scope in Morris Park, Philadelphia, where you will see no Garlic Mustard. If we are around we will gladly give you a tour. If not, just walk along the trail starting at the end of Morris Park Road  and you will not see any Garlic Mustard. Enjoy your walk and appreciate the wonderful variety of native, localized species of trees, herbaceous plants and shrubs in this once degraded patch of urban Forest! It’s been since 2006 that we started working on the infestations of Garlic Mustard in Morris Park. We have kept up with the efforts, yearly pulling in the same sites that we started at and expanding our area of scope to the point where we are satisfied with our  progress, ever mindful of our limitations.
Next: the alternate opening to this 2014 Garlic Mustard update:
Garlic Mustard: You cannot just pull one. Once you start it, you cannot stop year after year, area by area, and if you do not pull it out one year you will be canceling out the many hours of  your work during the previous years.  This is the reality of the seed bank depletion method of invasive control.  Harsh as this may sound, this is a biological reality in the world of managing and controlling plants.
This is Alliaria petiolata, the Garlic Mustard.
So it’s been a long nine years removing Garlic Mustard from this site. What is our motivation? Why do we do it? What has changed and evolved on the site and will we keep doing it? How many hours have we spent?
Our motivation is experimental and hopeful at the same time. We started out believing that removing Garlic Mustard was  the thing to do. We continue to do it as we see the fantastic results. It really makes a difference.
The Oaks (note the one above) and other trees are seeding themselves in and have enough of an advantage to continue to grow. Â More and more herbaceous native plants are growing in once invaded areas. There is less and less Garlic Mustard to pull every year, freeing ourselves up to do other things like visit other places or work on the garden. This year we pulled and trashed 31 bags, Last year we did 78 bags. This year about 30 hours of time spent.
We hope to inspire anyone out there with Garlic Mustard to keep up the work, and be realistic in your area of scope so you can continue to go back year after year and follow through on depleting the seed bank. If anything you will learn your area and the habits of this plant quite well and have fun doing it!
