The Raritan River is a constantly changing feature of the landscape of New Jersey. As a tidal river, it changes daily. As a geologic feature, it changes its channel with erosion and accretion. The watershed that drains into the river continues to develop, changing the stormwater runoff that fuels the river as engineering simultaneously mitigates and worsens the impacts. Thinking of the Raritan as a static or fixed feature ignores its realities.
In this video clip, Rutgers Landscape Architecture Graduate School student Ana Maria Oliynyk works with AI to mine historic images of the Raritan River at New Brunswick, and engages AI to imagine the future for the Raritan.
By Danielle Bongiovanni, LRWP 2025 Science Communication Intern
Without the hard work of volunteers and support from the borough of Highland Park, the Highland Park Native Plant Sanctuary (HPNPS) could not exist. Maintaining the HPNPS requires the endless mitigation of anthropogenic threats ranging from litter to voracious deer, but the ecosystem services and recreational opportunities are worth the work. On March 23, HPNPS leaders invited members of the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership to tour the sanctuary and discover its ecological wonders.
The HPNPS is almost entirely managed by three long-term volunteers: Susan Edmunds, Andy Warren, and Vicky Kulikow. Kulikow is the main force behind the HPNPS website. Edmunds handles logistical issues such as pursuing sources of funding and collaboration. As the lead volunteer steward, Warren’s responsibilities include replacing invasive species with native counterparts, maintaining trails, cleaning up trash, and leading volunteers.
“We aren’t really an organization so much as several people who stepped up when there was a need,” Edmunds said.
The greatest time of need emerged in 2023 when Mary Denver, who held a leadership role with the HPNPS since the early 2000s, passed. As principal volunteer stewards, Denver and her daughter, Belinda Beetham, were known to work in the sanctuary nearly every day. A banner at the entrance dedicates the three-acre property as the “Mary Denver Native Plant Sanctuary,” and Edmunds is collaborating with the Borough and the Native Plant Society of New Jersey to install a larger memorial in the near future.
Meanwhile, there is always other work to be done. Progress is perpetually threatened by deer and invasive species. Unfortunately, solutions for one often enable the other.
Warren pointed out a recently-planted red twig dogwood (Cornus sericea) surrounded by a tree cage as an example. New Jersey’s overabundant white-tailed deer population devours native plants faster than they can regrow. The cage ensures the sapling grows beyond snacking height and is not killed or damaged by deer rubbing their antlers against its bark. Warren described how the protection comes at the cost of providing “scaffolding for honeysuckle and English ivy (Hedera helix)” that must be regularly removed, lest they strangle the sapling.
Removal alone is not enough, invasive species will return if space is available. Establishing populations of native plants strong enough to crowd them out and hinder their regrowth is difficult due to how much and how quickly deer eat them.
Warren has embraced a strategy of habitat succession planting. He mulches grassy expanses and scatters seeds collected from the area. The resulting “mosaic” of native species deters deer by hiding their favorite snacks. “It demonstrates how having these little diverse pockets helps protect plants that might not be able to grow if you only plant one,” Warren said.
Coupled with aggressive invasive species removal, this strategy has produced visible results. Warren recounted how a large area near the environmental education center was once impenetrable due to Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) and honeysuckle bush (Ionicera maackii). Volunteer efforts made it accessible for public recreation. Warren said, “I love walking through in the summer and watching the native bees and flies swarming around germander (Teucrium canadense) flowers where there was once nothing but honeysuckle.”
Successfully established natives thus far include snakeroots (Ageratina altissima), asters (Eurybia spp.), and goldenrods (Solidago spp.). A recent grant enabled the HPNPS to obtain more plants, including nodding onion (Allium cernuum), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium).
Funding to obtain plants and volunteer labor to install them are essential for the HPNPS to succeed. Perhaps unexpectedly, the latter can be the greater challenge. Most volunteers require training before they can help effectively, and the frequency at which volunteers are replaced means a lot of time and effort are dedicated to getting new faces up to speed. The HPNPS would benefit greatly from more pledges of long-term involvement. Volunteer opportunities include environmental stewardship, writing articles, and taking photos for the website.
“It’s really about finding people’s interests and abilities and working with them individually on that,” Warren said.
Raising awareness of how the sanctuary not only provides free public recreation, but also uplifts the health of the Raritan River, may encourage more people to join the HPNPS.
“They are cheek by jowl. The edge of the sanctuary is the river and vice versa,” Edmunds said. “Over the years we’re trying more and more to create a real soil there.”
A “real soil” depends on the strong root systems of native plants. By restoring the riparian ecosystem, the HPNPS helps more rainwater absorb into the ground instead of washing dirt and trash into the river and making it flood. Minimizing stormwater runoff reduces the amount of pollution in the Raritan River and the likelihood of flooding, benefitting all Highland Park residents.
Getting involved with the HPNPS is as easy as emailing highlandparknativeplants@gmail.com or attending an event. Warren will lead a “Walk-and-Talk Tour” on Saturday, May 10 at noon and is excited to welcome new faces into the fold.
Danielle Bongiovanni is a lifelong New Jersey resident who graduated with a B.S. in environmental science from Ramapo College in 2024. She is passionate about local journalism, ecosystem restoration, and her dog, Banjo.
A spring peeper, a diminutive frog with a big voice, joins in chorus to sound the promise of spring on cold rainy nights in scattered vernal ponds. This species, hyla crucifer, has a large brown cross on its back. Hyla the genus name, has both Greek and Latin origins. Hyla, a companion of Hercules, was drowned in a fountain amid cries for help from the crowd of onlookers. So the connection to the singing frogs.
The bright green blanket of spring is unfurled over the faded brown landscape, abandoned by winter’s hasty retreat. Tilting in deference to the sun, the earth leans over enough to help slowly roll the green cover northward.
The appearance of green, dotting the muted landscape, can be taken as a signature on an official document, declaring the end of winter and the reappearance of life from the state of dormancy. The vagaries of early spring weather may argue and protest in the form of an errant snow flurry or heavy frost, but their cold objection is dismissed by the next warm sunny day.
As in an organized event, where the drop of the green flag signals the start of a race, so does the emergence of greenery generate sparks of color as energy begins to infuse the terminal tree buds and early wetland ephemerals.
At a distance, wooded low land areas, whose soils support a variety of tree species, rival the fall brilliance with the emergence of colorful buds. Set against a background of intertwined pale brown branches, woven into a rough cloth, tree buds appear as countless points of colored light. Each kind of tree features different colored velvety buds and within a species color will vary. Reds, ranging from pink to scarlet, to maroon and plum, fading into bronze and autumn orange, are scattered across the tan canvas and seem to flicker like a thousand candle flames. The intersecting branches, tie the scene together as the colors appear to escape and scatter among the branches to confuse identification, as pale greens mix with pink and orange and maroon buds. Standing alone as a true spectacle of early spring is the native redbud tree with tiny round, intense magenta buds tightly clinging the length of its fine branches.
The first green messenger, aside from snowdrops and skunk cabbage, which bloom locally in midwinter, are the green lily pads protruding from the silty river bottom in the shallows. Like a cobra raising up and swaying to the sound of a flute, the gangly green plants swaying in the moving water rise to the influence of the growing intensity of spring sunlight.
Among the wet lands along the river, yellow trout lilies, purple trillium, white blood root, sky blue Virginia bluebells, yellow crocus, pink striped white petals of spring beauties dot the emerging green carpet.
A pixie face looks out from the center of the spring beauty, note her cupids bow lips and dark eyes.
The now washed-out monochrome tan pasture, bordering the river, appears to the eye as a sepia photograph. It is an empty canvas awaiting the hand of nature to apply the first swath of emerald paint.
On occasion, an itinerant floral traveler appears, an escapee from some orderly upstream garden, now on a downriver journey to enjoy the uncertain life of a vagabond. One self-transplant is a unique variety of daffodil, with ragged yellow flowers which has established a home along the river. Each year, it faithfully decorates the edge of the river shore. The original pant conveys the soul of a happy recluse offering a bit of joy to any passerby, even an unappreciative mink, whose tracks mark the soft soil in the shadow of the bright bouquet of yellow flowers.
Another floral journeyman who sailed downriver to find a new home and propagate, is the pale blue Virginia bluebells. Their origin appears to be somewhere upstream on the north branch of the Raritan, as the trail of flowers, follows that course to its confluence. Finding favorable conditions, its settlements expand to cover the ground en masse with its perfect pale blue carpet.
The sound of great horned owls and the occasional songfest of local coyotes, heard throughout the winter night, are now accompanied by the chorus of spring peepers. A vernal pool, a quarter mile away in the pasture, along the river, is the prime venue for this spring bacchanal. Like turning a radio dial to get the strongest broadcast signal, the northwest wind amplified the sounds of the diminutive frogs’ earnest efforts to attract a mate. The tiny thin-skinned frogs emerge from hibernation to sit immersed in ice cold water in the dark of night, confident in the promise of warmer weather. The faith exhibited by these delicate creatures, that winter has ended, gives hope to all who listen.
Flightless great horned owl among the maple buds in early spring.
Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.
