Dutro-Ernst Woods nature preserve
Across the road from Elm Ridge Funeral Home and Memorial Park on Kilgore Avenue, the 33-acre nature preserve-in-progress includes a prairie-in-restoration, an early successional woodland and scrub/shrub wetland. A flat, crushed-limestone hiking trail is about a mile long.
The prairie looked like a newly disked farm field recently.
''This year you can expect to see tilling, called disking, of the field and native seed planting,'' Kelley V. Phillips, outreach coordinator at Red-tail Land Conservancy, explained. ''A successful prairie installation often means repeated diskings throughout at least one growing season. Disking of Dutro-Ernst began last year. Our winter-seeded crop, which will look like long grass, will grow in the coming months. It's designed to out-compete invasive plants which typically germinate in the spring. Once it grows, it will be removed and more disking will begin.''
On-site parking is available.
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