This honeysuckle isn’t so sweet: Efforts are ongoing to save forest in an Olathe park

Plants that look pretty in a garden can often turn invasive when growing on a large scale. Johnson County Park & Recreation District has been fighting to restore plant diversity to Ernie Miller Park after shrub honeysuckle and other invasive plants like garlic mustard caused significant damage.

For the the last five years, there’s been a strong effort to boot the shrub honeysuckle from the whole 116 acres of Ernie Miller. This is just the halfway mark for the plan.

The invasive shrub had taken over the understory, or the underlying layer of vegetation, in the wooded park, said Matt Garrett, natural resource manager for Johnson County Park & Recreation District.

“The shrub honeysuckle basically broke down an ecosystem, and we had no young trees. You couldn’t even see the topography in the forest. You didn’t even know where rocks were,” Garrett said.

That can make it difficult for wildlife to traverse the area, but it also causes other issues.

“When this invasive shrub takes over, you end up with a monoculture in the understory. You just have tall, mature hardwood trees. Since those invasives are shading out acorns, you end up not having any regeneration, so a forest becomes dead,” Garrett said.

County park staff members have been working in combination with conservation contractors and members of Johnson County Extension’s master naturalists group. However, finding enough people with the right expertise has been challenging.

“The Kansas City region hasn’t really invested in a lot of conservation work (in) large-scale projects,” Garrett said, adding there are few companies in the private industry. “We need more in the region and more counties and cities doing this kind of work.”

In addition to the Ernie Miller project, he said teams are removing hundreds of acres of the shrub honeysuckle at Shawnee Mission and Cedar Niles parks.

It’s intense work, requiring chainsaws and brush cutters. Once an area is clear of the honeysuckle and any other invasive plants, they plant native seeds to repopulate the area and keep the honeysuckle from reestablishing quickly. Garrett said Bridging The Gap’s Kansas City WildLands program has helped with collecting and distributing seeds, in addition to the other tasks.

A healthy variety of plants can help absorb stormwater and provide material for wild pollinators. The desired plants include bellflower, brown-eyed Susan, white snakeroot and golden Alexander.

Even when the 10-year plan is completed, keeping the forest and prairies healthy is an ongoing chore.

Garrett hopes by that point, the area will be in a maintenance phase, where all that’s needed is prescribed burn and occasional spray.

“All of the corridors and a lot of the natural areas are just inundated with this invasive shrub. It’s not realistic we’re going to keep every single bad plant out of park,” he said.

Every three to five years, they’ll have botanists come in to monitor how things are going and make sure the maintenance is helping things stay on the right path.

Garrett said the project was born out of a 2019 natural resource plan for the Johnson County Park & Recreation District that took public opinion on where to invest their resources into account.

“One of the areas that staff and the public wanted us to focus on was (on) making sure Ernie Miller Nature Park is a healthy, thriving place,” he said.

Mike Rafferty, a master naturalist with Johnson County Extension, has led five public walks through Ernie Miller already to show off the progress they’ve made so far.

“People seem to enjoy the walks. They ask a lot of good questions,” Rafferty said. “Most of the folks that have shown up are at least familiar with term of ‘invasive plants.’ The reason they’re there is because they want to learn more.”

He discusses methods of eradicating various invasive plants and how to do it without hurting native plants. Rafferty will be holding several more walks for anyone interested in learning about the process at Ernie Miller.

All walks start at 10 a.m. by the learning center building at Ernie Miller. Upcoming walks are on Sept. 7 and 14, Oct. 12 and Nov. 2. No pre-registration is necessary.