Late Winter Blooms at Veblen House

Even before spring officially begins its sweep through the landscape, the Veblen House grounds come alive with blooms.  

Particularly prolific in expanse and blooms are the snowdrops that grace the grounds with white in mid-March, echoing the patches of lichen on the boulders. 

Down below the Veblen House, near the fishpond, are some other early wildflowers mixed in: crocuses, the yellow of winter aconite, and the blue flowers of Scilla, also called Siberian squill. All of these flowers are nonnative, but they do not spread into the surrounding woodlands.

Veblen House was once the meeting place for the Dogwood Garden Club, of which Elizabeth Veblen was a founding member. These flowers date back to those times, with another pulse of planting energy happening during the Bicentennial in 1976, a couple years after Elizabeth passed away. 

Showing up even earlier than these early spring flowers, and far more subtle, are the catkins hanging in profusion from native hazelnut shrubs we rescued and propagated. These grow near May's Garden, which long ago served as Elizabeth "May" Veblen's garden, and has been reborn in recent years as a teaching garden for kids.

It was quite a job to cut and clear some 25 dead ash trees from the woodlot near the house this past winter. If left standing they would have become hazardous. Thanks to Victorino for his skillful felling of the trees, and to Andrew and Ninfa for cleaning up the debris. This patch of lawn is often used for croquet. Other games like horseshoes and bags can be found elsewhere on the grounds. 

The flowers of mid-March serve as prelude to the bigger show to come, as thousands of daffodils burst forth in coming weeks. Many of these were planted by Elizabeth Veblen herself after she and her husband purchased the property nearly 85 years ago, in 1941. 

We are careful not to mow down the daffodils after they bloom, leaving their foliage to collect solar energy to drive next year's flowers.

Soft Open for Firmer Trails at Autumn Hill Reservation

If you haven't been to Autumn Hill Reservation in a while, this would be a good time to check it out. A three year revisioning of the trails to make them drier and more scenic is now essentially complete, and we're doing what could be called a "soft open" on the newest sections. 

Signs give hikers a gentle nudge away from the old trails and towards the new. 

This winter's revisions bypass wet areas and follow ridgelines and historic rockwalls that date back to when this land was farmed 100+ years ago. 

Our wonderful mapmaker from Maine, Alison Carver, is already converting my scrawl and tracking files into a new map. The new configuration, with a new "blue" trail, should give hikers more options for exploring the preserve.

Thanks goes to Andrew and Ninfa for their help in clearing myriad invasive shrubs that were growing along the trail corridor. One of the satisfactions of trail creation is the habitat restoration that happens at the same time. Spared from our loppers were the many native spicebush, wild grape, and tree saplings growing along the routes.

With safety in mind, after the routes are cleared, our chainsaw virtuoso Victorino comes in with his assistant Wilbur and clears hazard trees, usually ash trees that were killed in recent years by the introduced emerald ash borer. Here, Victorino is checking to make sure the dead tree he is about to cut down will be able to fall cleanly to the ground. Note the clever ladder he cut from a tree branch so that he can reach the trunk to cut it.

Note also the Asian bittersweet vine climbing up the tree in the foreground. We cut as many of those as we can as part of the restoration work.

Occasionally I ask Victorino to sharpen the blade of my little electric chainsaw so that I can handle the small stuff.

Victorino also cuts some potential table tops from fallen ash trees that have interesting grain--tables that will tell the story of this forest in their tree rings.

A lot of thanks goes to those who support the Friends of Herrontown Woods with donations that make the work of Andrew, Ninfa, Victorino and Wilbur possible.

In other news from Autumn Hill, as of Feb. 28, there were still three big diabase boulders being held up to the sky by the rootball of this fallen tree. (I happened to be standing ten feet from this fine dental display when the first one fell, a couple years ago.)

But by March 6, only two remained. This drama has been playing out since the tree fell 5-10 years ago, lifting the root-tangled boulders up out of the ground. Don't you sometimes wish the pace of news in the world was more Autumn Hillian?

Lunar New Year Celebration - 2025

About 150 kids and adults came to the Barden at Herrontown Woods on Feb. 23 to celebrate the Year of the Wood Snake. 

A wood snake might be a harder sell for some than 2024's Year of the Dragon, but all was fun and pleasure. 

The main organizers again this year were Danni Zhao (right) and FOHW board member Inge Regan. 

Artist Hope Van Cleaf created some powerful and charismatic interpretations of the Wood Snake, and 

coloring opportunities for the kids.

We took the dragons for a walk in the woods.

Towards the end, anticipation was running high for FOHW's first ever raffle.

Thanks to Herrontown Woods' caretaker Andrew Thornton, MC'ing with his able assistant Vadim, as they helped Danni with the raffle. 

So much thanks to all involved, including Perry Jones, FOHW intern Ninfa, Molly Cooke, and photographer Vera Zhao. 

Photo below by Inge Regan.

Princeton Birding Society Leads a Great Backyard Birdcount

Even in the middle of winter, a woodland comes alive when you walk with skilled birders.

Thanks to grad student members of the Princeton Birding Society for leading our annual Great Backyard Birdcount walk at Herrontown Woods again this year. The Princeton Public Library helped promote the Feb. 15 event.

The main leaders, Irene Sha and Kade Jackson, were able to detect and identify even the faintest bird sounds in the forest. 

In this photo, we're gathered at the Veblen Cottage farmstead, which includes a corncrib where black vultures have raised their young in the past. The black vulture family, which we've learned to respect and even admire for their devotion to parenting and their important ecological role, paid a visit a couple weeks prior, but whether they will raise their young here again this year is uncertain. 

The walk offered an opportunity to try out a new plankway trail we created through a wooded swampy area of Herrontown Woods. 

Kade posted the birdlist on ebird. The list included no revelatory sightings, but much interesting knowledge about birdlife was passed along, and as one of the students said, "All data is good data."

Thanks again to the Princeton Birding Society for joining us and sharing their knowledge on a brisk winter's day.

Autumn Hill Trails Get a Redesign

One project we've been saving for cold winter weather is some more rerouting of trails in Autumn Hill Reservation--the 78 acre preserve across the road from Herrontown Woods. 

It's a perfect time to work in the woods--no ticks, no mud, lots of light being recycled by the snow, and the dense invasive vegetation is less intimidating in its dormant state. I can wear heavy clothes that protect me (mostly) from the thorns of multiflora rose, and the cold air balances all the body heat generated by the physical labor.

Improvements to trails started three years ago, as we began shifting trails away from some chronically wet areas, and built plank walks where wet ground was unavoidable. Last winter, we bypassed some wet areas along the yellow trail. 

This pulse of energy comes fifty years after the YMCA built the original trail loop in 1972, and some 30 years after Bob Wells and the local boyscout troop expanded the trail system in the late 1990s. This according to a little history of Autumn Hill I compiled.

This winter, Andrew and I explored off trail to find drier, more scenic routes, and were gratified to find them. One new trail will follow a ridge. Another will follow an old rock wall previously hidden from hikers' view. 

The process of trail building requires cutting through some dense stands of invasive shrubs. Linden viburnum and winged euonymus are especially numerous, with some having grown to astonishing size. Border privet, Asian photinia, multiflora rose, and autumn olive add to what can be called "thickets of inedibility", that is, the dense, nonnative understory that deer refuse to eat. Birds eat the berries, but if nothing is eating the foliage, solar energy collected by the plants can't move up the foodchain.

There are also many fallen trees that need to be cut through to make a new trail. Ash trees in particular, killed over the past decade by the introduced Emerald ash borer, periodically get blown down during wind storms, their trunks rutted with the zigzag pathways cut by the EAB larvae.

It's rewarding to be able to cut the vines of asian bittersweet and Japanese honeysuckle that have been quietly strangling trees and native shrubs. Cut them at the base and all the growth above will die and eventually fall off. A quick tap on the cut stems with a Buckthorn Blaster helps prevent regrowth.

The most numerous native shrub is spicebush. The deer numbers are down enough that spicebush has been able to make a spectacular comeback, but the shrubs can still be stymied from growing new stems by deer browse.

When the time comes to mark the new trails, we'll remember this word to the wise: Don't nail the trail markers tight to the tree trunk. The tree will slowly swallow the marker. 

Once the new trails are done, the Autumn Hill experience will be drier and more scenic, and I'll have gotten some good winter exercise.

FOHW's Annual Appeal Letter -- 2024

Eleven years ago, when three community volunteers teamed up to reopen an overgrown nature preserve along Princeton Ridge, we held to the premise: “Restore it, and they will come.” 

Today, people of all ages come to the preserve—not just for a peaceful walk among the trees but also for diverse events and activities that have breathed new life into Princeton’s first nature preserve. What was once abandoned is now a beloved place of community, discovery, and joy.

FOHW’s efforts to restore this special place go hand in hand with an innovative approach to stewardship and programming. In the cultural zone of Herrontown Woods–composed of the Veblen House, Cottage, and Botanical Art Garden–we go beyond a passive human presence to actively collaborate with the landscape in a way that is healing for both nature and people.

Through our rallying cry, “Incrementalism!”, we have made the critical links and preparations needed to take the next step in “restore it and they will come,” including at last the rehabilitation of the Veblen House and Cottage.

• Completed undergirding Veblen House for future public assembly, and began stabilization work on the Cottage, with detailed architectural drawings to rehabilitate and utilize both structures.
• To FOHW’s ongoing partnerships with Gratitude Yoga and the Princeton Public Library, built new collaborations with the Princeton Public Schools, ceramicists at the Arts Council of Princeton, and Grow Little Gardener.
• Hosted hundreds of visitors at the third annual FOHW Earth Day celebration, the autumn outdoor concert, and new events—Year of the Wood Dragon Festival and Fairyland Halloween—as well as hikes on history, plants, mushrooms, and geology
• Completed the Voulevarde—a scenic boardwalk and pergola crafted from wood milled on-site, which connects the Botanical Art Garden to the Veblen House.
• Established the Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade, engaging students and community volunteers to protect amphibians crossing Herrontown Road during spring mating season.
• Strengthened stewardship with trail improvements and invasive species removal, hiring our first grant-funded summer interns
• Created a Tour of Trees.

One comment often heard is that Herrontown Woods is not a static park. Along with the dynamism of nature, changing through the seasons, there’s always something new to discover in the Botanical Art Garden, and now on the Veblen House grounds as well. Building community through stewardship, we continue to host the popular monthly May’s Café, where coffee and conversation blend in a forest opening filled with native wildflowers.

Our community of volunteers, hikers, donors, supportive local leaders, and a dedicated Board are on the way to realizing a vision that began with Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen. Your support will help us to restore and maintain the preserve’s trails and flora for posterity, teach and learn about its natural and cultural heritage, and build a center where people of all ages engage creatively with nature, art, and history.

Making a Table Out of Local Wood

Recently, a student at Princeton University named Frankie reached out. He had taken part in a tour of Herrontown Woods we gave in October to professor Andy Dobson's class on the Ecology of Fields, Rivers and Woodlands. Each student does a special project, and Frankie wanted to build a table out of local wood. He's from California, and has memories of a table his grandfather once made out of a slice of redwood. More than ten feet across, the slice had taken a day to cut by hand.

We arranged for Frankie to come on a day when our chainsaw virtuoso Victorino was working at Herrontown Woods. Lacking a car, Frankie took the 606 NJ Transit bus from Princeton University up to Princeton Community Village, then hiked through Herrontown Woods to meet us at Veblen House at 7:30am. 

Victorino first showed Frankie some tables he had made from a fallen maple tree. 

One invaluable service Victorino and his assistant Wilbur do at Herrontown Woods is to fell dead trees that pose a hazard along trails. After some discussion, it was decided to take a slice of wood from one of the many ash trees that unfortunately have had to come down.

The markings of insects added interest to the grain. The tree rings tell the story of the tree's life before it succumbed to an introduced insect, the Emerald ash borer.

With remarkable precision, Victorino cut legs for the table and discussed with Frankie various ways to attach them to the bottom. Having lived and traveled in various latin american countries, Frankie could easily converse in Victorino's native tongue. 

On a wintry day, brisk and bright, the whole adventure made us as happy as Frankie, as we gave him a lift back to the university with his freshly hewn table kit. 

Seed Collecting Event Captured by Local Journalist in the Making

Recently, a beautifully crafted article about Herrontown Woods appeared in The College Voice--the student newspaper of Mercer County Community College. The article, entitled "The Barden at Herrontown Woods hosts wildflower seed collection for springtime blooming," was written by Jill Weiner for her first big assignment as a new journalism student. She had originally intended to write about the Friends of Herrontown Woods more broadly, but instead captured the spirit of our enterprise in her account of a seed collecting event we hosted as part of October's Sunday morning May's Cafe.

Mathilde Burlion, on the right in the photo, teaches gardening workshops at Herrontown Woods, both at the Barden and up at May's Garden near Veblen House. Part of Mathilde's mission is to reconnect kids with the land and all it provides us with. (photo by Inge Regan)

At the event, FOHW board member Inge Regan helped kids associate the seeds with the plants they turn into. Inge, a physician, is on a mission to cure kids and society generally of what can be called "plant blindness." She has been learning plants one at a time, and wants to help others do the same.

Thanks to Jill for telling the broader community about our work.

A Free Little Library at the Barden

Step behind the sturdy kiosk that greets you at the trailhead at Herrontown Woods' main parking lot, and a world of books opens up. This Little Free Library, stored in a cabinet beneath the kiosk's protective roof, is part of a global network meant to inspire readers who may find a personally relevant book on these shelves.

The nearly 200,000 Little Free Libraries around the world are created and maintained by volunteers. In our case, that would be Laura Heil of Montgomery, NJ, whose son-in-law Adrian has been a FOHW board member. My indelible first impression of Laura came during a workday, when she showed up with a chainsaw to help clear fallen tree limbs. Creating and maintaining this mini-library shows another dimension of her devotion to the community. 

Though this quiet, unassuming collection of books doesn't call out for attention, and may be missed by those passing by to walk the trails, its location is particularly auspicious given the many places to sit and read at our Botanical Art Garden. The Barden, as we call it, is many things to many people, but with two shelves of books at the ready, the Barden becomes an outdoor library, with many little nooks for cozying up with a good book. 

Thanks to Laura for realizing and maintaining this vision. In her own words:

"The Little Free Library is regularly cleaned up and organized, and restocked with new titles for kids and adults.  Fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, craft books, children's board books  as well as paper, books for teens, and copies of Nat Geo for kids are all in here!  I have been doing this since the beginning of the LFL."

Fairyland Halloween Brings Delight

It was a trick to pull off the first ever Fairyland Halloween at Herrontown Woods, and a treat to witness the joy and whimsy that it brought to the grounds of Veblen House. 

The "magical and spooky adventure" began with a fairy treasure hunt, followed by decorating pumpkins and skeletons. 

May's Garden, site of Grow Little Gardener classes run by Mathilde Burlion and Andrew Thornton, played a big role in the festivities. At some point, the kids got to trade their found treasures into candy. 

Mathilde and Danni Zhao were two of the organizers of the event, along with Inge Regan, who took the photo. Andrew played the facilitator extraordinaire. 

Fabulous fall colors cooperated to make the grounds truly feel like a fairyland. (Photo by Inge Regan)

Participants made lanterns to carry on their "spooky lantern walk" back down to the Barden 

After the skeletons had collapsed in exhaustion from all the attention and fun, we stayed on our feet long enough for a group photo (below).