March 22 is World Water Day!
Help the watershed by reducing your lawn! 40% of the Olentangy Watershed is made up of lawns. If everyone reduced their lawn to plant native trees & plants there would be less mowing, an increase in wildlife habitat and diversity, reduced water usage, and reduced flooding. It also looks beautiful! It’s a win-win situation.
Help the watershed by making sure Only Rain Down the Drain!
Reduce your use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. These chemicals are often washed from your grass and plants into the nearest storm drain, where they will eventually end up in the river and harm wildlife, pollute drinking water and cause algae blooms.
The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio contracts with a local company to safely dispose of household hazardous waste (HHW) such as chemicals, gasoline, oil, pesticides, batteries, and more. Visit @swaco_green for information on what items are accepted and HHW drop off locations. Never dump chemicals or fertilizers down the storm drain.
Another way to make sure “Only Rain Down the Drain” is by adopting a storm drain. Find a nearby storm drain and keep it free of trash, leaves, and sticks. This prevents clogs at the storm drain, which reduces the chance of street flooding, basement back-ups and damage to property.
One way to help the watershed is to pick up litter. The litter you see while out on a walk or driving around is very likely to end up in our rivers and streams. When taking a walk, take along a bag and pick up the trash you see. If everyone did this we’d find a lot less in our waterways.
We often find plastic water bottles, takeout containers, straws, aluminum cans, cups, cigarette butts, snack bags and masks at our cleanups
Bradford Pear, Winter Creeper and Amur Honeysuckle. What do these three have in common? They’re all invasive non-native species of plants that you can see all over Ohio. These species were introduced to the area and quickly took over. Why is it important to remove them? We remove invasive plants because they don’t offer good food or habitat for local wildlife. They also crowd out the native plants, shrubs and flowers that are greatly beneficial to the wildlife.
If you have a hedge of non-native honeysuckle in your backyard or a Bradford pear we ask that you’d consider cutting it down and planting a native tree or shrub.
If you have winter creeper taking over a tree please cut the winter creeper at the base of the tree. Winter Creeper can cause your tree to lose limbs and die over time.
FLOW will have two opportunities coming up later this year to purchase native plants for your yard. Franklin Soil & Water Conservation District also has a sale going on through the March 26th on Spring native plants and trees. (https://www.franklinswcd.org/tree-and-plant-sale)
Help the watershed by planting native plants and trees. Native plants and trees not only provide food and habitat for our wildlife friends, but their extensive roots also absorb rainwater that otherwise might cause flooding.
FLOW has many upcoming opportunities to volunteer to plant trees and help at one of our tree nurseries.
