Come next summer, Soldiers Field in Mount Gretna will be alive with the sight of beauty.
On a recent brisk but sunny fall day, an army of more than a dozen local volunteers were laying the groundwork, literally, to create the nine “pods” that will grow next season into Wildflower Meadow.
The assembled work crew was busy removing invasive species and prepping the ground for a variety of local native species to be planted in February.
The planting of native species is a decision made by Pennsylvania Chautauqua Foundation officials to return the area to its original glory when the space was used to train troops at that location, according to foundation president John Weaver.
In its heyday and as the precursor to the Pennsylvania National Guard, Soldiers Field consisted of about 3,000 acres that were part of the training grounds.
“What we’re trying to do here is to really bring back the memory of what was here back in the late 1800s, early 1900s,” said Weaver. “There were so many local Pennsylvanians who camped here for their training but also before going off to battle. And this project allows us to partner with the South Londonderry Township Historical Society and the Mount Gretna Area Historical Society to provide educational programs to keep that memory alive for future generations, which is one of the primary reasons that we want to do this.”
Elyse Jurgsen, owner of Lancaster-based Waxwing Ecoworks, said five native species are still present from when the soldiers trained there, with another five to be added to create the new meadow.
“Example species that are currently present in the Soldier’s Field meadow (we call this “ecological memory” – the seed bank naturally had these intact, and is a sneak peak back into the plant palette of when the soldiers were training there,” wrote Jurgen to LebTown about current plant life.
Those plants are Achillea millefolia (common yarrow), Andropogon virginicus (broomsedge), Antennaria neglecta (pussytoes), Eragrostis spectabilis (purple love grass), and Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem).
Examples of Pennsylvania-based eco-type native species that will be added for more color with seeding in February are: Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed), Penstemon laevigatus (Appalachian beardtongue), Pycnanthemum muticum (hoary mountain mint), Solidago juncea (early goldenrod) and Symphyotrichum oblongifolium (aromatic aster).
“The idea is across the board it’s still going to look like one naturalized meadow,” said Jergen. “We’re just helping it along the way so that it has a few more of those punctuated pops of color that bring in a little bit of design interest, but it’s still all native stuff. It just will add color to the native grasses that are already here.”
Weaver said the parking lot next to the meadow will provide 49 parking spaces for visitors to use throughout the year. It will contain a loop road and a grassy grid parking lot cover.
“This will be a grass grid parking where they’ll cover that with soil and then roll out a grass grid that the grass will grow up through. So the only paving you’ll see is that circle,” said Weaver while a nearby machine was grading the stone that will be the basis to the paved section of the parking lot.
Last spring, when Weaver and John Feather presented a proposal at a public workshop of the County Commissioners while applying for American Rescue Grant Act funding, Feather said that drainage of the parking area, which will also see the installation of low-level, downward projected lighting during this renovation project, has been problematic in the past.
Pennsylvania Chautauqua Foundation officials received a grant totaling $150,000 from County Commissioners for a project estimated to run nearly $481,500.
“That’s one of the problems with Soldiers Field, in an earlier lifetime someone graded it to create a baseball field but when they graded it they took all the topsoil with it, and so it’s very difficult to grow grass. We’re going to have to enhance that parking area so the grass can survive,” Feather told commissioners at the workshop.
LebTown previously reported the parking area is meant to funnel visitors to the walking path, the nearby Lebanon Valley Rail Trail, and Mount Gretna events like the annual art show in August.
Jergen said that the meadow will be mowed to the ground in August just prior to the art show so the field can be used to park cars for that event.
Other portions of the project to be tentatively completed by year’s end, weather permitting, is construction of an ADA-compliant walking path subgrade and completion of a bridge site preparation for a pedestrian walkway to be built next March over Conewago Creek at Route 117.
The pedestrian trail will allow users to experience nature in a wooded area. The ADA-compliant trail will run from the parking area through the wooded area to the south, crossing Conewago Creek, and leading to a pedestrian-protected crossing of Route 117.
“The full project will be completed in the spring when the bridge arrives. When it arrives, the path will connect to the bridge in the spring, and that’s when it’ll be, the full completion will be done,” said Weaver. “This is a new path through the woods, but it will cross the narrow gauge railroad trail, which we’re going to refurbish, and the beach path, which is a path that non-Gretna people used to take to the lake since the beginning of the lake.”
Weaver added that the paving of the path in the woodlands is expected to be completed in the spring of 2025 when weather conditions are optimal.
Additional work will continue beyond completion of the path and the foot bridge.
“And we’re going to be doing additional work with Waxwing Ecoworks to try to restore this woodland area and remove the invasive species that have come in here as well,” said Weaver. “So there we have a Phase One and Phase Two in the meadow. Phase Three is going to be to come back here through the woods to remove invasive species along the creek that you can see are growing out over the creek and so this is you know it’s going to be a multi-year project and that’s all independent of the ARPA funding. Those are all just community-based volunteer projects that we’ll be doing over multiple years.”
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