PASA Education Event- Productive Riparian Buffers
This field day will be an in-depth look at a 5-year old riparian buffer that both follows Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) guidelines, as well as addresses different uses outside the CREP boundaries. Farm Service Agency employee Don English and wife, landscape architect Ann, have designed a buffer that uses a wide variety of native plants in the CREP area, such as elderberry, hollies, aronia, and viburnums, as well as a broader range of species outside the CREP area–including a number of heritage apples. Principles of buffer design, plant selection, working with government programs, and finding value in the buffer– ecological, social, and economic– will be discussed. The Englishes will also share the lessons they have learned over five years of buffer installation and management—what’s worked for them and what, in hindsight, they’ might have done differently.