Article by Mira Engel and Natasha Farmer, 2020 Crew Co-Leads

Working for Santa Fe Botanical Garden (SFBG) as Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) crew leads for the past six months has been a blast. The YCC is a national program that provides grants to local governments and organizations to employ young people to work on community and conservation projects. This year, we got the amazing opportunity to work for the Garden through such a grant, in partnership with the Randall Davey Audubon Center and the Northern New Mexico Master Naturalist Program. Our main projects for the Garden included restoring native habitat at the Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve, facilitating the Northern New Mexico Master Naturalist Program, and working with the Garden’s middle school and high school interns to grow and harvest vegetables in Ojos y Manos: Eyes and Hands ethnobotanical garden.

Thanks to our incredibly hardworking and diligent YCC crew, we made great progress implementing our invasive species management plan at the Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve this year to help restore the rare ciénega, or marsh, habitat. Our crew consisted of Kara McGee-Russell, Sebastian Holtzman, Ben Johnson, and Francesca Galliano. Kara’s curiosity, Sebastian’s positivity, Ben’s hard work, and Francesca’s thoughtfulness made the season a success. From mid-July to the end of October, the crew was hard at work removing by hand a variety of invasive plant species including teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale), burdock (Arctium minus), prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola), and Russian thistle (Salsola spp.) from more than 6 acres of the preserve, extending from the kiosk area to the pond, between the Main and North Loop trails.

The whole crew poses: from left to right, Mira, Francesca, Kara, Sebastian, Ben, and Natasha

Additionally, the crew planted native seed collected from the preserve, including broadleaf and horsetail milkweed (Asclepias latifolia, Asclepias subverticillata), Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome serrulata), and white prairie aster (Symphyotrichum falcatum var. commutatum), to help with pollinator and monarch conservation efforts. We also got to see lots of wildlife and their scat, trails, and nesting spots. The on-site wildlife cameras confirmed that one of the visitors was a bear, which was most exciting!

Sebastian (front), Kara (left), and Mira (right) scan for grasshoppers along the Main Trail at LCWP.

Ben and Francesca left us after August to pursue school adventures, but Kara and Sebastian kept working with us until the end of October to build on the progress we had made. Watching the Wetland Preserve transition from summer to fall was a magical experience. The sunflowers, prairie asters, Muhlenbergia varieties, and cottonwoods were gorgeous, and we all loved taking small breaks from work to simply walk and enjoy the ever-shifting beauty of the preserve. We particularly enjoyed watching the birds this fall. With just the four of us out there it was so quiet that we would often surprise huge flocks of them, causing them to fly up from patches of sunflowers as we walked by. Seeing the seasonal succession of species also helped us better understand the ecology of the place and gave us an opportunity to collect a wider variety of seeds to plant in the restoration zones. 

Natasha (front) and Kara (back) search for the last of this season’s houndstongue.

Planning and facilitating the Master Naturalist Program was a fun and valuable experience, because we got to make so many community connections. Finding and working with guest speakers for the program, we got to virtually meet experts in environmental topics from all over New Mexico and even beyond. Working with our participants to create effective online learning spaces, we learned how to improve our own communication skills, plus a lot about the state of New Mexico from their wealth of knowledge and experience! Twenty-five participants are on track for certification pending completion of volunteer hours. It felt great to create and become part of a network of community members with diverse perspectives who care for our natural environment.

One of our favorite activities was working with the Garden’s middle school and high school interns to grow vegetables in Ojos y Manos: Eyes and Hands ethnobotanical garden. The interns are talented gardeners who started many of this season’s plants from seed at home and nurtured the garden through snow, birds, and many rabbits. Despite the predation, we grew a variety of vegetables including corn, eggplants, radishes, mustard greens, basil, parsley, turnips, potatoes, beans, and carrots. We all had an especially fun time harvesting “magic beans” (aka scarlet runner beans) and watching our favorite turnip, “Scarface” (named for the multiple times it split and healed itself throughout the exceptionally long growing season) grow from seed to mega-turnip. Perhaps best of all, our work in the garden was made to feel truly meaningful by the partnership we created with Kitchen Angels to receive donations of our produce. We ended up donating 280 pounds of pesticide-free produce to this Santa Fe-based organization.

We thank everyone at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, Audubon Southwest, and Santa Fe County for giving us such a wonderful YCC season! The skills and knowledge we gained from our experiences with you are invaluable and will serve us well going forward.

Check out their website and join the Northern New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps crew members on their adventures as they work to conserve their local environment!

Thank you to 2020 Northern New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps Project Partner: