Winter a Busy Time for Museum

William Aguilar, from right, Fernando Silza, Josh Erickson and Brian Batchelor work Friday to cut bluestem grass in one of the gardens outside the south entrance to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. The men work for Crystal Bridges’ trail and ground staff that maintains the gardens and trails around the museum.
William Aguilar, from right, Fernando Silza, Josh Erickson and Brian Batchelor work Friday to cut bluestem grass in one of the gardens outside the south entrance to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. The men work for Crystal Bridges’ trail and ground staff that maintains the gardens and trails around the museum.

— A stillness settles over the grounds of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in winter as fallen leaves muffle footsteps and naked trees await spring.

But for the museum’s grounds crew, the season is anything but calm.

The landscaping staff uses the break from mowing and planting to work on projects they didn’t have time for during the blooming seasons, said Scott Eccleston, director of trails and grounds.

“Wintertime is when we’re able to breathe,” Eccleston said. “We have all these jobs and wish lists that the staff puts together. We’re busier in the winter because we’re trying to get all these jobs done.”

At A Glance

Volunteers Needed

To volunteer with the museum’s new gardening group, the Avant Gardeners, call the Volunteer Department at 479-418-5700 or visit www.crystalbridges.….

The landscaping staff of eight people has a big job, maintaining about 30 acres within the museum’s 120-acre site. One of the winter jobs this year has been to uncover and redevelop Dr. Neil Compton’s trail gardens.

Compton, a pioneering conservationist in Bentonville, owned some of the land now part of Crystal Bridges. He would often bring plants back from around the Buffalo River and plant them in trial beds on a hillside near the museum’s Tulip Tree Trail.

Cody George, field horticulturist with Crystal Bridges, uncovered the beds while clearing leaves at the spot in 2010. The staff now has a notebook of Compton’s outlining what he planted in the beds and when.

Horticulturists have worked to revitalize the beds with native plants, occasionally finding some initially planted by Compton.

“Sometimes I’ll pull one up while I’m working, and I’ll always stick it back in,” George said.

George planted one of the beds with four types of hardy orchids, their green leaves sticking above the ground alongside two rhododendrons planted by Compton.

“I asked the team to put themselves in the mindset of what Dr. Compton would have seen,” Eccleston said. “We’re putting plants back in that are truly native.”

The beds are an easy hike from the museum’s south entrance and have an “eco-box” that explains the history behind them. The museum’s new eco-boxes are outdoor audio boxes users can power with a hand crank. While the eco-box at Compton’s trial gardens is the first, four more boxes are scheduled to be installed in the coming months, according to the museum’s website.

Another winter project has been the Second Generation Tree program. Experts estimate the hills around Crystal Bridges haven’t seen a forest fire in about 80 years, Eccleston said. Without a fire to burn away underbrush, a thick bed of leaves has kept acorns and pine cones from finding their way into the soil.

“For the last 80 years, we’ve had no second generation growth,” Eccleston said. “We’ve identified areas where we have really lost a lot of trees. We’re going back with the Second Generation Tree program and planting trees.”

The staff conducts a prescribed burn each March in partnership with the Nature Conservancy. They wait for the perfect day when conditions are safe, and wind will carry smoke away from the museum.

“We wake the forest up, and we do most of our spring planting right after that,” Eccleston said.

The staff also is working to shake up the entry drive from Northeast J Street into the museum. Eccleston said new landscaping will be colorful and provide a more intense arrival statement for the museum.

Joggers and hikers who use the museum trail may have noticed neat stacks of wood from downed tree limbs along some trails. Eccleston said all of the wood is “repurposed” with much of it going to make natural wood coasters children paint in the museum’s Experience Studio. Excess wood also is given to organizations that can use it, he said.

Another important project is expanding the irrigation system to reduce hand watering. Eccleston estimated staff spent 78 hours a week hand watering plants last summer. He said the larger system will “help tremendously.”

Help for the grounds staff also is on the way through new volunteer programs. The museum started a wildflower preservationist group in September.

“They are responsible for all the wildflowers at the museum,” Eccleston said. “They have done an incredible job.”

The huge response to the wildflower group prompted museum staff to create a second volunteer group, the Avant Gardeners. Volunteers will meet once a week and participate in educational programs.

“We think we can have a couple of hundred volunteers that will meet and help take care of our site,” Eccleston said.

The museum’s trail system has remained popular throughout the winter months with a mechanical trail counter tallying 7,300 people on the Art Trail from Jan. 2 to Jan. 31. Eccleston said he was surprised to see most of those visitors came to the museum from the south — from Compton Gardens, city neighborhoods or the downtown square — instead of migrating from the museum to the trail.

“A lot of people don’t park here,” he said. “We never figured on that many people in the winter.”

Eccleston said visitors can be on the lookout for further developments to the museum’s grounds, including future art projects. He said the staff is working to “activate” the north lawn, the largest green space at the museum.

“Some exciting things are going to happen,” he said.

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