If you set out to create an ecologically diverse landscape in Lancaster County populated by native species friendly to wildlife, would you think of that expansive suburbia known as Manheim Township?

Why not? That would be the reply of an energetic and determined grassroots group called Habitat MT.

Already, the group, with help from a lot of willing volunteers, is making noticeable changes in transforming pockets of the Overlook Campus into a showcase for ecological landscaping that protects land and waterways.

Environmental friendliness aside, it's darn attractive.

Habitat MT, which has gotten the full blessing of township commissioners, is already thinking much bigger than the township's 12 parks, totaling 450 acres, and public school properties.

By working with homeowner groups and free educational seminars for homeowners, the group hopes to spur entire neighborhoods into planting more diverse backyards, more sustainable trees in yards and along streets. Also pushed will be streetside "beauty strips" and conversion of sterile stormwater swales into green reserves.

"Habitat MT is dedicated to making a difference in the environment regardless of the fact that we are mostly built up," says Marylou Barton, a Master Gardener and one of the dynamos behind the fledgling effort.

The group was formed in January 2010 and spent little time diving into a series of makeovers at the Overlook Campus where 30 of 70 acres are made up of wetlands or floodplain.

In March 2010, a swarm of volunteers, including township staff, descended on an overgrown copse of trees adjacent to the Destination Playground.

They ripped out poison ivy and invasive non-native plants such as multiflora rose, mile-a-minute weed and Asiatic bittersweet. Native plants were dug in.

The result was the 100-foot-by-70-foot Children's Woods, a shady nook where kids can get a respite from the sun. It includes pathways, bench and stump table and stools.

Next, 80 volunteers responded to requests for help and planted 2,000 native grasses, plants, shrubs and trees around the Destination Playground.

One of the most ambitious projects has been restoration of a wetlands and meadow area around an old springhouse.

"The idea is to give it back to the environment," says Lydia Martin, a Master Gardener and field coordinator for the group. She's designed many of the plantings at the park.

Again, many invasives had to first be plucked. Some park users complained that Bradford pear trees were cut down, not aware that they are invasive species carried there by birds.

That was followed by the plantings of 233 trees, 436 native shrubs and 335 native herbaceous plants such as ferns, sedges, switchgrass and goldenrod. Pollinator species were favored to help species as bees and beetles.

So impressed was the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay group that they have chosen the riparian forest buffer project as one of eight pilot sites in Pennsylvania to demonstrate how it should be done.

The driveway and entrance to the new library are sporting clusters of little bluestem grass, hawthorn trees, the red hues of ninebark shrubs, as well as chokeberry bushes favored by birds.

Much of the sloped ground surrounding the library has been seeded with sheep's fescue, a perennial grass with a beautiful seedhead that gets about 18 inches high and removes the need for mowing.

Many of the group's plantings are based on a book by Douglas Tallamy, "Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens." The book rates plants and trees according to their benefits to wildlife.

A list of recommended species for home plantings and their wildlife value will be available on the township's website, www.manheimtownship.org, within the next several weeks. To volunteer to help Habitat MT on projects, contact Margie Earnest at mearnest@manheimtownship.org.

Just under way is a Discovery Meadow just outside the children's room of the library.

As with all the other projects, materials, plantings and labor are donated from the community. Unfortunately, the list of businesses and community groups that have gotten involved is too numerous to note here.

"We're all kindred spirits," observes Barton. "It's just been incredible. We're really just having fun."

Commissioners have not earmarked any taxpayer dollars to the improvements, though township workers are involved in the projects.

"The support is there big-time," says Carl Neff, the township's longtime public works director who is tickled pink that there is a group to make happen many of the green ideas he's bandied about for years.

For example, when the park was built, Neff had the three roundabouts for vehicles made so they drained to recharge groundwater. Native plantings now will transform them into true rain gardens to control stormwater runoff.

Neff is no longer a lone wolf crying in the wilderness, laughs Barton, an attorney and longtime township resident.

There are other changes at the park, giving it a face unlike the typical suburban park of well-manicured lawns.

The adjacent golf course has no-mow zones. The new disc golf course is carved from meadows of cool-season grasses. The entrance to the swimming pool is now framed by native plants and trees that will grow to form layers of ground cover, understory shrubs and topped by a shading canopy of useful mature trees.

In all, more than 3,500 native ground covers, flowers, grasses, shrubs and canopy trees have taken root so far at Overlook.

"It makes it a healthier ecological system and that's what we're trying to do," says Bill Ebel, a former township commissioner who serves wholeheartedly on Habitat MT's core committee.

Other members include Neff, Barton, Martin, Carl Martin of the Lancaster County Conservancy, Hannah Bartges, township school board president, Margie Earnest, township recreation director, and Martin Stolpe, a forester from Lancaster.

And Overlook isn't the only park undergoing a change. Formal gardens at Stauffer Park have been replanted with native species. Pearlman Park similarly got native plantings in a project spearheaded by Lydia Martin. Invasive plants are being uprooted from Landis Woods.

The Lancaster County Conservancy likes the initiative thriving in Manheim Township.

"The work at Overlook is exactly what the conservancy is pushing in regards to landscape restoration and backyard stewardship," says Carl Martin, the conservancy's director of stewardship and education.

The battleground will turn to neighborhood groups and individual property owners.

"We have to get people away from exotics. We want people to understand canopies and understories," says Barton.

For example, the Grandview Heights neighborhood is popular partly for its mature trees. But 90 percent of them are Norway maples, a tree now considered an undesirable foreign invader because it crowds out native species.

As trees die off in the neighborhood, Neff said homeowners will be encouraged to plant medium-size native trees set back a safe distance from streets and homes.

Lydia Martin says of Habitat MT's long-term effort, "We're just giving back diversity to the communities. No, it won't be perfect, but it will be way better than it was."

Pointing out a fox den in a walk through Overlook, Neff begins an observation: "These small successes..."

"Are huge," finishes Barton.
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