Health Campus Landscaping

     I've been taking my dad to the Health Campus of Lancaster outside Lancaster City, Pennsylvania for treatments and noticed the beautiful landscaping done in several strips of soil between parking lot deserts southeast of the Health Campus building.  That landscaping is not only lovely to see, but is also beneficial to adaptable and common wildlife.  I studied those strips of vegetation in two, one-hour times toward the end of July of this year from the black top to experience the plants and animals in them.  The vegetation planted in them is native to North America, including a few kinds of warm season grasses that grew tall and a couple patches of cattails.  Flowering plants there include goldenrod and evening primrose with yellow blooms, purple coneflowers, wild bermagot that have pale violet blossoms, blue vervains, common and swamp milkweed that have pink flowers, and asters that haven't bloomed yet.  And summersweet bushes and young river birch, red maple, American elm and tamarack trees were also planted in those parallel lines of soil.
     But, of course, several kinds of alien plants are growing among the natives, including small patches of ten-foot-tall phragmites, which is a kind of emergent wetland plant, foxtail grass, pokeweeds, Queen-Anne's-lace with white flowers, chicory that has lovely blue ones, and Canada thistles, red clovers and burdock that have pink flowers. 
     Pokeweed was introduced to those overgrown islands of vegetation by seeds in bird droppings.  The other aliens blew in as seeds on the wind.  But all these plants, both planted natives and free-roaming aliens provide shelter and food for a variety of wildlife adaptable enough to take advantage of it.    
     Those islands of tall vegetation, including grasses, flowering plants, bushes and young trees are beauty to our souls amid blacktop wastelands.  And all those parking lots together are surrounded by short-grass lawns, dotted with trees and shrubbery, let-go clumps of trees, overgrown meadows and a few cultivated fields, all of which are green in summer. 
     I saw several insects among the flowers, including bumble bees, the usual common butterflies, such as cabbage whites, yellow sulphurs, red admirals, tiger swallowtails and silver-spotted skippers.  A few kinds of dragonflies zipped back and forth over the parking lots and rows of flowering plants in search of insect prey to eat. 
     I saw a couple of gray catbirds in one of the vegetated strips as they search for insects and berries.  They probably hatched in the lawn shrubbery, as their kind does.
     But mostly I saw small birds that are adapted to eating seeds, though most species of them also consume insects during the warmer months.  Beautiful American goldfinches were the dominate species of the small birds in those islands of vegetation between parking lots.  Males are particularly striking and handsome in their yellow feathering, set off by black wings, tails and jaunty caps set forward on their heads.  Little groups of these birds flew cheerfully from one patch of seeds to another in their typical up and down, roller-coaster flight. 
     Strips of flowering plants and their seeds amid young trees are perfect nesting places for goldfinches.  Females build lovely cups of grass and thistle down in small trees, and both genders, and their young, eat the seeds of nearby plants in summer and through the year.
     Other kinds of small, seed-eating birds that I saw in those vegetated islands between parking lots included a few chipping sparrows, a song sparrow, and several each of house finches and house sparrows.  Chippers and song sparrows nest in shrubbery, house finches hatch young in coniferous trees, such as the blue spruces on a nearby lawn and house sparrows rear offspring in crevices in buildings.  During the two hours I spent on the health campus parking lot, I saw these small birds and goldfinches eating seeds from Canada thistles, wild bergamots and other types of plants, as well as insects.  And I know that house finches and song sparrows, in particular, sing beautiful songs.       
     Although this is a modest start to the fauna that will live in these overgrown islands of plants between parking lots, it already is lovely and interesting, considering where it is.  Hooray to the health campus, and other organizations that plant wildlife habitats like this one.  Other groups can do the same.  Those islands of beauty are certainly more uplifting than plain mowed grass.  And they provide cover and food for the wildlife that is also interesting to experience.  I intend to return to those health campus plantings about every couple of months to see what's happening.  I know I won't be disappointed.