by Martha Tancock
Trent Communications

Environmental consultant Cathy Dueck takes inventory of the trees and shrubs around the buildings on Trentıs main campus as a first step to preparing a plan to naturalize the grounds.

Trent may be going for the natural look next year. It won't be scruffy and ungroomed nor will it be the manicured and weedless perfection of a golf course. It will be something in between.

        That's what Cathy Dueck is aiming for. The Peterborough-based environmental consultant has been hired by Trent's Physical Resource Department to help develop a long-term plan to naturalize the university grounds outside the nature areas. Her work, says Stephen Bocking, chair of the president's environmental advisory committee, could eventually lead to a campus with more diverse plant and wildlife communities, and that needs little or no pesticides or herbicides. "I'll be looking at the campus from an ecological and landscaping viewpoint and how to maximize environmental health but still make the campus appealing," says Dueck.

        Indeed, public criticism over Trent's resumption of herbicide use in 1996 spurred this project. About seven or eight years ago, the university stopped spraying altogether following a two- to three-year period of reduced spraying. Complaints about the appearance of the grounds led to a decision in the summer of 1996 to reinstitute the spraying program, says facilities manager Bob van Dompseler.

        "This department [Physical Resources] would like to see a management program that allows us to spray in areas where it is really required -- like athletic playing fields -- and ignore the areas where it isn't," says van Dompseler.

        Dueck's challenge will be to identify which lawns might require a judicious use of herbicides and which can be returned to a more natural condition.

        Two weeks ago, Dueck began surveying the vegetation on the main campus outside the nature areas. She is distributing a questionnaire with a map and asking people to mark areas of concern and interest. And she encourages them to contact her by e-mail at cadueck@trentu.ca. She will present her recommendations to the president's environmental advisory committee and Physical Resources in the new year. Her plan could get underway by late spring, early summer.

        As an environmental consultant with lots of experience "naturalizing" landscapes, Dueck favors a landscape featuring vegetation indigenous to the Peterborough area over exotic, imported trees and shrubs, especially if the foreigners are squeezing out the native plants. So far, she has discovered a rich diversity of native trees and shrubs on campus, including white and red pine, white spruce, sugar maple and white ash. Norway maple, an "exotic" tree not native to North America and potentially invasive, is next to the Environmental Sciences Centre. The imported European buckthorn, too, poses one of the most serious problems in the Peterborough area and on the Trent campus, says Dueck. It has aggressively invaded and choked out the native nannyberry shrub -- upon which migrating songbirds feed and which is more nutritional than the buckthorn berries -- and other vegetation, especially close to the river, and is spreading rapidly. To get rid of it, Trent may choose to experiment with various eradication methods, including chemicals, she says.

        Dueck, who graduated from Trent in 1991, has been forging a career in a young and rapidly expanding science. Returning cultivated landscapes to natural and ecologically balanced landscapes -- a process called naturalization -- takes a combination of specialized horticultural skills and a solid knowledge about local ecology. "It's not enough to be a gardener. It's not enough to be a botanist. You have to be a combination of the two," she says. Her recent projects have included co-ordinating Peterborough ecology park at Beavermead, naturalizing Rotary and Beavermead parks (returning mowed park lawns to meadows or forests or tall grass prairies), and working with elementary school children to improve schoolyard habitats. "Fifty per cent of elementary schools in Peterborough County are working on naturalization projects." She says it's a great opportunity to teach children about the environment.

        At Trent, "my hope is to link the implementation of a grounds plan with some of the courses offered" here. "I'd love to see a summer course in restoration ecology," Dueck says.

        "Naturalization is much more complicated a process than one would think," says Dueck. And rather than expect the grounds crew to manage the whole ongoing process, she sees others -- students, faculty and staff -- getting involved. "It's a wonderful opportunity for research" and learning about your own environment, she says.