A small forest garden is taking shape beside Sandburg Creek in Ellenville, where volunteers and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation personnel recently planted young trees and shrubs. In a bylined Oct. 24 report, Shawangunk Journal reporter Chris Rowley described the planting as an early step in a longer project at the Wawarsing Watershed Educational Park, a public site intended to connect visitors with the area’s waterways, plants and history.
The planting area sits at the eastern end of a grassy property behind the Bob Mangels Botanical Garden, near the meeting of Sandburg Creek and the Beer Kill and across from the Village of Ellenville’s wastewater treatment plant, Rowley reported. Andrew Faust of the Permaculture Land Trust invited volunteers to a workday in an Oct. 1 organizer notice. The notice and DEC’s official event listing both scheduled the planting for Oct. 17 and described a plan for 150 trees and shrubs. Rowley confirms that planting had taken place but does not give its exact date or say how many of the planned 150 plants went into the ground.
The recent report describes volunteers and DEC personnel digging holes and setting saplings along the streamside property. Faust’s notice lists his Permaculture Land Trust, the Town of Wawarsing, DEC’s Hudson River Estuary Program and the New York State Water Resources Institute as project partners. Rowley independently reports that DEC personnel joined the planting and says funding came through Trees for Tribs, supplemented by donations and fundraising through Faust’s organization. Faust calls the planting a “Native Food Forest” within the larger educational park, which he is developing with local partners.
The planting includes 29 kinds of trees and shrubs, Rowley reported. The list ranges from maples, ironwood and black willow to persimmon, pawpaw, hazelnut, elderberry and serviceberry. It also includes shagbark hickory, basswood, red and pin oaks, chokeberry, dogwood and hackberry. The mix combines native plants with trees Faust describes as historically significant or productive, including species that can provide nuts and berries. The report documents the variety at the site; it does not offer a survival count or measure how the plantings are changing the creek.
The state program behind the project focuses on streamside buffers. New York DEC says its Hudson Estuary Trees for Tribs program provides free native trees and shrubs for qualifying projects along tributaries in the estuary watershed. The agency describes healthy stream buffers as a way to reduce water pollution, erosion and flood damage while providing habitat for fish and other wildlife. Those are general program benefits, not outcomes measured at this Ellenville planting.
Faust’s notice described the local project as a long-term effort to shade the creek and add leaf litter as trees mature. It lays out a food-forest approach, bringing together trees, berries and other useful plants instead of planting a single species. Rowley’s report says the site is in a riparian zone, where land meets water, and presents water quality, streambank protection and habitat as goals. The sources do not report that those changes have already occurred.
Education is part of the plan from the beginning. The organizer notice proposed signs about stream corridors, the watershed, plant species and local history, including Indigenous and colonial-era land use. It also suggested helping visitors “read the landscape” through its plants and geography. Rowley reported that the Permaculture Land Trust plans to develop watershed signage with the Rondout Creek Watershed Alliance, Riverkeeper and other nonprofit groups. The plans also include explaining how a food forest may provide nuts, berries, fuelwood and lumber. Those are potential uses, not harvests the report says have begun.
The park is open to the public, though Faust says some areas have more limited access. The project is intended for nature enthusiasts, school field trips and students from SUNY and other colleges. For now, the reporting describes a planting and a set of plans, rather than a finished outdoor classroom or a measured restoration.
That makes the work a beginning people can follow. The trees and shrubs are in the ground, and the next steps include caring for them and building a way for visitors to learn from the site. Rowley’s report names the species and describes the planting; Faust’s notice explains what the partners hope the streamside garden will grow into.
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