Marina Park Project

Summary

Foster Marina Park, located in Sayville in The Town of Islip, New York, was chosen by The Long Island Conservancy as a top priority as the organization launched this October.   It’s eight acres, sitting on The Great South Bay, was infested with invasive species of all sorts.   Porcelain Berry, Wisteria, Oriental Bittersweet, Bamboo, Multiflora Rose, Burning Bush, Mugwort, English Ivy, Japanese Honeysuckle, Wisteria, Garlic Mustard, Grape, and Norway Maple just covered the wooded areas.  The park is about 95% invasive.   It is a major vector for these weeds as far as a bird can fly or the wind can carry them.   The plants in this park are now all over our parks and in our yards.   

It is only now that people are really noting the enormous problem we face on Long Island when it comes to invasive species.   That is because we are losing badly.   Their growth is spiraling out of control — everywhere, all over Long Island.   It was here then that The Long Island Conservancy decided to make a stand:   Remove the invasive species, and restore nature to this park, and show all of Long Island just what is possible in terms of habitat restoration and community action.

We approached The Town of Islip with our plan.   With 107 parks alone to maintain, they welcomed the help.   On October 17th, The Long Island Conservancy kicked off its work with an invasive removal event that drew 65 people — The Rotary, The Chamber of Commerce, The High School, and several student groups within it took part.   We rented an excavator, and all worked for 4 hours.   We planted a wildflower bed 2000 sq ft long, and planted a grove of some 50 native trees and shrubs.  All labor and expense, which we estimate was worth $20K, was donated.  The Town of Islip carted off 8 truckloads of invasive weeds the next day.  The park was on its way to being transformed.   

On November 14th, in response to repeated calls from local neighbors to keep at it, 14 of us worked for 4 hours to clear around the Elm Street Entrance and in so that a pollinator garden could be planted.  The patch also had (has) a horrific wisteria problem. 

Before:

After:

We’d also proposed to the TOI that the park be re-commemorated in honor of Frank Jones, and a descriptive sign be placed at this location.

During this last week, much progress was made removing the wisteria roots from the patch in front, to the point where we are at a good place to take a step back and draft this document for The Town of Islip, offering here our vision for this park.

We were out in the park most mornings continuing to work away, and on weekends, and we were met with almost universal support — the dog walkers, the young mothers with their carriages, the power walkers and runners, the couples from the nursing home, wheeling in every day, one pushing.  All this has demonstrated what we’d hoped:  Local stewardship was how we could heal our public spaces.  The people of Sayville cared so much for this local park that they would jump in, families, school kids, retirees, all working in common effort. 

This park stands to be a showcase for how to return Nature to our public spaces.   The Long Island Conservancy’s expertise is drawn from habitat restoration’s leading practitioners.   By putting back what would be there if we weren’t, what should be there but was pushed out, we can heal our land, even if it’s only one lot at a time.

The park will, through the use of QR codes on signage, inform the public as to what plants they are looking at, what invasive plants to watch out for, best yard practices, etc — whatever web content we want to send them to, really.

The ultimate goal of the project will be this:   Create local wildlife habitat, particularly for birds.  WIth nothing for native insects, and therefore native birds to eat, the park is eerily silent.  The park’s woods are now lifeless and with all the English Ivy, a potential vector for Lyme ticks, an issue we would do well to avoid.

Here are the invasive species now in the park that we have been removing:

1. Wisteria
2. Oriental Bittersweet
3. Porcelain Berry
4. Japanese Honeysuckle
5. Mugwort
6. English Ivy
7. Multiflora Rose
8. Burning Bush
9. Norway Maple

Here is a partial list of the native plants now planted in the park so far around “The Mother Oak”:

1. American Chestnut
2. Red Maple
3. Sassafras
4. White Oak
5. Scarlet Oak
6. Bayberry
7. Sassafras

We also created a wildflower bed 12’X250 ft along the north side of the tennis courts.  This involved running an excavator to remove a truckload of invasive growth and having a truckload of wood chips delivered and dispersed over the area.   We donated 10 lbs of native wildflower seeds and raked them into the bed.  TOI DPW then extended the bed 50 feet further east, excavating yet more invasive growth and spreading out the remaining chips;  additional wildflower seeds ought to be raked in here as well.  A 3000 + square foot wildflower field will greet us in 2022.

We seeded:

1. Big Bluestem
2. Shelter Switchgrass
3. Scout Indiangrass
4. Virginia Wildrye
5. Black Eyed Susan
6. Partridge Pea
7. Oxeye Sunflower
8. Showy Ticktrefoil
9. Wild Bergamot
10. Common Milkweed
11. Narrowleaf Mountainmint
12. Canada Goldenrod

Next Steps

The invasive removal and the native plantings were made possible by a $20,000 donation, plus the efforts of dozens of volunteers. For the park to be fully cleared of invasive plants and modestly planted with more natives would cost about $30,000, based on our initial progress.

The Conservancy is ready to proceed, subject to approval of our native planting plans by The Town of Islip. We are preparing a rendering of the completed plan to be posted here as an update.