The Conestoga Club is a club to be recognized.
They are working wonders with the vegetation along the Conestoga River. Originating in the 1990s, Dr. Ambler, the head of the Conestoga Club here at Millersville University, and Professor of Biology explains the ongoing effort the club puts forth to keep the environment enriched. According to Dr. Ambler “The Bush along the Conestoga River was once a farm pasture in the 1950s and now has grown into a forest. This is a natural process called succession and called ‘old field succession’ when abandoned farmland becomes a forest again.”
There are now more than 50 species of trees in “The Bush” and wild flowers. Former professor, Dr. Keever, that studied the succession in “The Bush” and her work is still recognized in ecology text books today. The Conestoga Club works in “the Bush” planting wildflowers and even pulling seeds left over in the soil from previous years to avoid invasive planting so the native plants to the area can live.
An effective way you can restore an area, like a yard, according to Dr. Ambler would be to “have more native wild flowers and pull non native species.” You can buy native plants at the Native Plants Conference at Millersville this June.
The Conestoga Club sponsors Earth Day every year and the proceeds are donated to the Lancaster Farmland Trust. The Earth Day celebration will be held on the Quad April 17 where Earth Day t-shirts for sale!
