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Arden Hills Greening & Cummings Park Arden Hills Greening will work with Parks & Recreation and Public Works to do the following where feasible and as staff time allows: • Continue to remove invasive species (as time allows) this summer, • Manage the creeping bellflower and poison ivy with herbicide (as able in 2025) and as a potential scheduled part of the 2026 Work Plan, and • Prioritize removing invasive species & replacing it with native vegetation in the 2026 Work Plan, if possible. I (Kerri) received this message on 2-1-2024: “Good afternoon! I live next to Cummings Park in Arden Hills. Recently, the city has been removing a lot of diseased ash trees from around the perimeter of the park between the trail and the private property lines. When they have removed Buckthorn, and or other “brush” in the past, the Canadian thistle, buckthorn, garlic mustard and other weed crop in their place. I am worried about what will grow on this space. I called the city today to see if they had a plan and they said that they intend on planting a few trees as replacements but they will not be covering all the area. They told me that a good resource might be our community parks committee and maybe start there. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on things that might grow in these “wild rough“ areas in our neighborhood parks.” I put together a list of native plants that would be suitable for that area, as well as made a note of which weedy species would require management. I discussed it with a couple members of the Public Works staff who thought that the general idea was good, but had concerns about maintenance. Earlier this spring, I contacted several employees of Boston Scientific to see if their volunteer groups would be interested in weeding this area. Over June 24, 25, & 30th, 20 volunteers from Boston Scientific spent 28 hours digging up mature burdock on the west side of the park to prevent it from going to seed. The Arden Hills Foundation donated $100 to Arden Hills Greening to cover some of the cost of the seed we bought this year. We now have ~2,500 seedlings to split between Cummings Park & Chatham Trails Park. We also have ~20 shrubs donated by Alliance Tree Care and lots of snowberry plants obtained through the Twin Cities Perennial Exchange group. I also have some woodland wildflowers that were rescued from the new dirt bike trails at Hazelnut Park earlier this spring.