‘It just takes over’: Augustans fighting back against invasive plants at local parks

With more than 1,500 acres of parkland, Augusta has a ton of greenspace. But is the “Garden City” growing friendly florals or botanical bad guys?

JP Moss is a consultant for wildlife management at Fort Gordon. But on his off-time, he is managing a combat operation of his own: locating and killing Pendleton King Park’s invasive species.

“The misconception people have is if it’s green, it’s wild and good,” he said.

On a recent stroll through Pendleton, Moss pointed out some of the trees, vines, bushes and other plants in question. While they don’t particularly stand out as dangerous, they are actually a foreign, rapidly-reproducing problem doing damage to the local ecosystem. What’s worse is that these plants make up a majority of the 64-acre park and are flourishing in other spots across town.

Fancy Some Florals: Gaze at some of the Augusta area’s gorgeous home gardens

Dig In: Easiest garden crops, flowers for novices to grow in Augusta

The Invasion Plan

Augusta University Professor Emeritus of Ecology Donna Wear explained that residents will often grow these plants at home because they are pretty. But the problem comes when plants like the silver berry grow fruit.

“Birds that are opportunistic are going to eat those berries, and then the birds fly away,” Wear said. “They defecate later, and people don’t understand that when you have a seed in bird feces, that feces is absolutely loaded with everything that seed needs after it germinates to get it started.”

But while birds love these plants, they can actually be very bad for them.

“The birds aren’t really used to a lot of these plants being here,” Moss said. “Things like Cedar Waxwings actually eat Nandina, another plant we have problems with, and they will die.”

Birds have spread these seeds to Phinizy Swamp, the Augusta Canal, Reed Creek and everywhere else in between. Once there, Augusta University Ecology Professor Brandon Cromer described how these plants grow at an extraordinary rate because they have no predators, throwing off the biodiversity.

“When someone brings a species like this in here, it has no natural controls, so it just takes over an area,” he said.

Plan of attack

There are various programs and organizations whose mission it is to clean up local parks. On Pendleton’s end, Moss has been raising money to replace the invasive species with more Augusta-friendly plants. Now he is gathering volunteers to help pull the invasive plants out of the ground and has a blog providing updates on the project. AU students like Austin Plagens have been among the volunteers.

“Knowing that there’s people out here trying to learn more invasive species and get the community involved has been a big thing for me,” Plagens said. “I wrote a big paper on it for my English class. Involvement of the community actually produces healthier ecosystems.”

Closer to home, residents can do their part by learning everything they can when considering what to plant at their home or business.

Now Opening: New restaurant is taking shape at Columbia County’s Pollard’s Corner

No Resettlement Agencies: Other Georgia cities bring in hundreds of refugees while Augusta hosts barely any

Villainous vegetation

In addition to those already mentioned, here are some more of the common plants seen in gardens, parks and other green areas that are actually bad for the local environment:

• English Ivy
• Bradford Pear (Also known as the Callery Pear)
• Elephant Ears
• Japanese Honeysuckle
• Monkey Grass

It’s important to note that just because a plant is foreign doesn’t mean it’s invasive. For example, lavender is not native, but it is not harmful or a super spreader.

Friendly fauna

Here are some of the native plants that would be good to replace invasive species with:

• Sunflowers
• Native Honeysuckle
• Tickseed
• Mountain-Laurel
• Sonias
• Muhly Grass
• Dogwood
• Yaupon Holly