This fall the Clifton Institute, in collaboration with Fauquier County Public Schools and the Fauquier County We Need Bees Committee, is beginning an exciting new project: Lawn Lab. This experiment is all about studying what happens to life in lawns that only get mowed once a year instead of every week. Clifton staff along with students from Grace Miller Elementary School and Liberty High School will be collecting data on changes in plant and animal communities that live in a 3-acre lawn on school grounds as 2 of those acres are taken out of the normal mowing schedule. The adjacent acre will get mowed once a week as per usual. This project is a rare example of a win-win-win-win: students will spend time outside learning how to identify native plants and animals and getting hands-on experience doing scientific research, the school campus will become better habitat for pollinators, the county will spend less money and emit less pollution by mowing less often, and the experiment will serve as a demonstration plot to people in the community.
We invite you to join us for a grand opening and bioblitz on October 19. Our goal is to collect baseline data: what plants and animals already call the Lawn Lab home? Once we have this information, we can visit each year and see what new plant and animals show up (or which ones disappear). We don’t expect high diversity this year, but you never know what we’ll find. If you have experience identifying plants and insects, that’s great. If not, we will give you all the training and tools you’ll need. We’ll send participants out in small teams to survey sections of the experimental fields and we’ll keep a leader board running to see who can find the most species! We’ll also have family-friendly activities for the younger naturalists among us.
At 3:30 we’ll take a break to have an official opening ceremony, with snacks, drinks, and brief remarks.
This event is a chance to get in on the ground floor of this exciting project, contribute to science, and join the local community of people who want to learn about and take care of native biodiversity! All ages are welcome; children must be accompanied by a caregiver.
We are grateful to support from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Warrenton Garden Club, and individual donors for Lawn Lab.
Please park in the Grace Miller Elementary School parking lot. The experimental fields are a very short walk (a couple hundred yards) southeast of the parking lot. There will be signs, but you should be able to see our tables and staff from the parking lots and as you drive in along Catlett Road.
Date and time subject to change dependent on weather. Please check your email for updates on the morning of the event. If we need to cancel or postpone, we will also post any updates on our Facebook page.
By registering for this event, you are affirming that you have read and agree to our liability release policy.
