NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/new-canaan-land-trust)
The New Canaan Land Trust Youth Advisory Board will hold a fundraiser on Sunday, Nov. 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. outside Tony’s Deli on Main Street. Stop by to meet the Youth Board and support local conservation and stewardship efforts while purchasing 100% pure New Canaan honey from Land Trust preserves ($20), bags of BBQ wood chunks ($15), and “My Dog Likes New Canaan Land Trust” stickers ($5).
One of the community’s most esteemed nonprofit organizations has finished a long-term project in northern New Canaan. The New Canaan Land Trust’s Hawkins Meadow, an approximately 5.5-acre grassland, wetlands and mixed hardwoods preserve with a pollinator field mowed twice per year—includes a 611-foot-long stone wall fronting North Wilton Road. Led by Dr. Haik Kavookjian and mason Greg Faillaci, volunteers such as the New Canaan SLOBs have gathered for monthly work sessions over the past five years “to bring this historic stone wall back to life,” according to Robin Bates-Mason, executive director of the Land Trust. “A lot of our properties were farmland, and the stone walls were built, but they come undone after a couple hundred years,” she said. “Over time and with the heaving of the winter, they just start to fall apart.”
The volunteers used stones found on the property and brought in additional stones to finish the job, Bates-Mason said.
The Summer Internship Program is sponsored by the New Canaan Racquet Club. For months, New Canaan resident and Eagle Scout candidate Josh Trepanier quietly worked behind the scenes to improve one of the town’s preserved open spaces. Trepanier designed and built a new interpretive kiosk at the New Canaan Land Trust’s Browne Preserve while organizing a volunteer day in which fellow Scouts removed more than nine large leaf bags of invasive plants and replaced them with native species donated by Copia Home & Garden. The project, which took more than six months of planning, will leave a lasting impact on both the preserve and those who visit it, according to Robin Bates-Mason, executive director of the New Canaan Land Trust. “Projects like these are incredibly valuable to organizations like the New Canaan Land Trust because this is going to be the next generation of young leaders,” Bates-Mason said.
A hugely popular spot to watch fireflies during the height of their summer season will be closed this year for habitat and trail restoration purposes. The trail to the New Canaan Land Trust’s firefly sanctuary, located off of Sleepy Hollow Road, “needs some work due to water erosion on it,” according to Robin Bates-Mason, the nonprofit organization’s executive director.
She continued: “There’s something called ‘water bars’ which are on trails and they direct water away. We’ll put them in diagonally and it’ll take the water off the trail before it can really build momentum and wash out the trail.”
The trees in the sanctuary also pose a risk for the public, Bates-Mason said.
“We found that there were some trees in the meadow that needed to be addressed, making it not safe to have people up there at the moment,” she said. “One tree had a big limb come down that snagged on another tree, and it’s hanging over a walkway. We need to take down those trees before we’d be comfortable with anyone in the meadow.”
The time off also will give interns a chance to clean up and restore the meadow itself.
“We’ll have our interns coming in this summer, and we’re going to be working getting some of the invasive plants out of the meadow,” Bates-Mason said.
Since 2019, New Canaan’s Ned Monaghan has restored more than 400 feet of historic stone walls at a nature preserve along the Fivemile River. Even creating his own tools to move heavier boulders, Monaghan has worked without fanfare at the New Canaan Land Trust’s Donaldson & Maloney Preserve, according to the nonprofit organization’s executive director, Robin Bates-Mason, who nominated him for this series. Invited by the Monaghan family to see his handiwork, Bates-Mason said she was “amazed by both the scale of what he had accomplished and the dedication behind it.”
“Those who know Ned also know his love of poetry—it’s easy to imagine him reciting a bit of Yeats as he works, stone by stone,” Bates-Mason said in an email. “Just as meaningful, Ned incorporated small openings in the walls to support local wildlife, including weasels he has spotted nearby. The Land Trust is deeply grateful to Ned, who has quietly and independently helped restore these beautiful structures—preserving a tangible link to New England’s past—as well as to the SLOBs and all the volunteers who contribute to this important work.”
Many of the stone walls that Monaghan has restored date to the 18th and even 17th centuries, “when forests were cleared for farmland and stones pulled from the soil were stacked to mark boundaries and contain livestock,” she added.