Invasives at Pierce’s Pond:
Help oust the Bishop’s weed!
Saturday, August 13th, 2022
10 am – noon
Pierce’s pond fish ladder, penobscot, maine
Join the Penobscot Alewife Committee, the Open Air Arts Initiative and the SEED Barn for a creative workshop centered on tending the rivershore along the restored Pierce Pond Fish Ladder. We will be working together to sculpt a ‘habitat sculpture’ using material found on site which will sit atop a patch of invasive Bishop’s weed. While exercising our creative muscles, we will also learn how to quell the invasive Bishop’s weed using NO chemicals through the approach of community centered restoration. Read about the project as featured in the Weekly Packet’s ‘Another View
how to participate in the ongoing restoration
This effort is not limited to a singular event. Bishop’s weed is incredibly tenacious, and will take extended time and energy by community members to eradicate.
Here is how to help tend the site:
 Peter Leonard of the Blue Hill Garden Club works on digging out Bishop’s weed | DIG IT OUT For small patches, dig out the Bishop’s weed, making sure to remove ALL segments of plant and root. Place all plant material in a garbage bag and take it to the dump. |
 Make sure to remove all plastic tape from the cardboard boxes before using them to tamp out the Bishop’s weed. | CARDBOARD & MULCH For larger patches, place several layers of cardboard over the offensive plants. Conceal the cardboard with leaf litter, sticks and mulch, which will decompose into the soil while tamping out the Bishop’s weed. |
Ongoing projects: Maps
Bagaduce Watershed
Collaborative map offering guidance on how to tend restored fish passages that support shared resources offered by the sea.
Surry Forest
Interactive map exploring the many layered forest restoration of a tract of heavily forested land.
Furth Wildlife Sancturary
With a focus on the way non-human species MOVE through the landscape, this interactive map invites the public to get OUTSIDE and create in nature!
A series of virtual prompts offers ideas on how to recognize then translate movement through creative acts.
SEED Saving Cards
SEED :: disperse
The SEED Barn | Maine
Demonstration gardens, craft, Native & Heirloom seed libraries, fine art installations, Sensorium, localvore feasts, platform for socially engaged artworks & artist residencies.
SEED Fieldworks
Mowing to Support Wildlife
A recent afternoon at the Tapley Farm in Brooksville explores how mowing practices can support wildlife in Maine’s meadows. In collaboration with the Open Air Arts Initiative and the Tent Project, we gathered to consider how to tend meadow spaces in ways that will support wildlife. Featuring an artist talk by Carol Gregor about the history of sacred geometry and how it has informed her creative process as an architect. Participants are invited to walk through the meadow to the Tapley Farm Labyrinth to meditate on our relationship with the land in an open meadow context. Explorations and observations of the wet meadow ecology led to conversations on maintaining meadows to support wildlife and helped us understand how to tend meadows to support birds and pollinators.
Read more about our discoveries here
Plant Mobilities
Colonial Medicine Chests & Tea Gardens at the Pendleton House
Blue Hill Falls, Maine
SEED :: Haiti
An ongoing collaboration since the 2013 Ghetto Biennial cultivating food sovereignty, sacred/medicinal plant relationships and re-wilding efforts.
.debris.
.debris. is an international, collaborative project created as a response to the issues surrounding single use plastic. The work reflects the literal problem of plastic in marine environments while offering a symbolic representation of the chemical body burdens carried by wildlife and humans alike. In presenting these issues, we are asked to consider misplaced notions of “disposability” calling in to question consumer driven waste which has devalued what is in fact a very important material.
Networked Urban Mobilities
The Taos Distillery
The Taos Distillery is an historic adobe which housed a bootleg operation during prohibition. The moonshine supplied the speakeasy in the back of the Taos Inn run by Vincente Mares, who tended this land at that time. We think of it now as a place for the distillation of ideas and restorative acts as we explore how to cultivate the desert through a combination of ancient practices and emergent technologies. SEED to table, hugelCULTURE, Acequias, and native plant restoration are all themes that have been explored on this platform. Our newest venture is hosting storytellers who explore our relationship with the land. Storytellers from across disciplines are invited to apply for a residency to learn from the ancient ways of cultivating dry ecologies and share ideas on how to reverse desertification, restore ecologies and preserve traditional practices.
Learn more
