AMBERLEY VILLAGE, Ohio – Scott Puthoff crouches on a path in French Park and jumps up with his enemy in hand.
“You idiot! So annoying! What’s wrong with you?” he says, holding his opponent above his head.
Then he disposes of his arch-nemesis – a two-foot-long piece of tree trunk with new honeysuckle growth – and records another victory in the fight to rid Cincinnati’s second-largest park of its worst invasive species.
That makes Puthoff a true friend of French Park as the group continues to try to remove honeysuckle and other growths that are choking out native plants.
By their count, within two years they have removed tens of thousands of invasive plants from an area of 13 acres and replaced them with over 600 new trees and shrubs and 700 wildflower and grass plantings.
Without Puthoff, his team of Friends of French Park, and thousands of other volunteers, honeysuckle and other invasive pests would spread unchecked in Cincinnati’s parks.
Volunteers become trained grease painters
When Greg Torres was hired as a natural resources specialist four years ago, the park administration began receiving calls about the growth of invasive species in French Park.
“It is the citizens themselves who are taking the lead,” Torres said.
Torres helped recruit some of them to form Friends of French Park in June 2022. Since then, more than 300 volunteers have spent more than 2,700 hours improving the popular Amberley Village site.
Recently, some of the volunteers have enrolled in a park program to become trained service workers. During classroom, online and on-site training, volunteers learn, among other things, how to work with pesticides and train others in how to use them.
About honeysuckle, they are taught, “you can’t just cut it and walk away,” says Puthoff, the current president of the Friends of French Park.
“A blitz is not enough,” Torres said. “It took the parks a long time to understand this.”
Instead, volunteers must treat each fresh cut with an herbicide to prevent regrowth, applying it using swabs—like those filled with bingo card ink—to deliver the chemicals exactly where they need to go.
“There is no overspray or unfortunate contamination,” said volunteer Erik Brueggemann, one of the eight key members of the Friends of French Park.
Invasive species “serve no higher purpose”
Native plants feed insects, birds, mammals and other plants – and generally support a forest’s ecosystem. Invasive species, on the other hand, do not make this contribution and crowd out the growth that does.
Honeysuckle is considered invasive because “it eats almost nothing,” said Phillip Schaefer, former president of Friends of French Park. “It serves no higher purpose.”
Honeysuckle was once planted in Ohio’s parks because it was hardy, fragrant and fast-growing. In Mount Airy Forest, Cincinnati’s largest park, Works Progress Administration workers planted 5,000 honeysuckle plants on barren hillsides in 1941 to counteract erosion, a 2011 Ohio Valley History article reported.
In French Park, it grew particularly densely in the early 2000s where ash trees used to stand. When these were attacked by beetles, the so-called Asian ash beetle, and died, the honeysuckle took over – it sucked light and water, exhausted the soil and invaded the park paths.
“We need to connect with the community”
Cincinnati Parks relies on volunteers across its more than 100 properties and 5,200 acres. Some help for a day, others participate in one of 35 advisory committees.
Parks cannot maintain its facilities, including 3,800 acres of forest, on its own, said Parks spokesman Rocky Merz. “We don’t have the resources,” he said. “We have to partner with the community.”
In French Park, members of the Friends Council meet two or more times a week to begin the fight against the honeysuckle.
The work is done – for now – when fresh seedlings, surrounded by wire cages, are placed in open ground along the paths. In the future, even more young trees will join the hundreds already planted in French Park.
“It’s like a pension plan,” Puthoff said. “We pay something in every year.”
