Kiss the Earth

This is a doorway to another time up at Ker-Feal, the Chester Springs weekend retreat that belonged to Albert and Laura Barnes. They bought it in 1941, added two wings to the 1775 fieldstone farmhouse, then filled it with American folk and decorative art and created beautiful gardens throughout the grounds.

Albert Barnes died in a car accident in 1951. Today, the house is shuttered, the grounds overgrown and the future unsure. Ker-Feal is owned by the Barnes Foundation, which has grand - and hard won - plans to move its art gallery from Merion to Center City but no concrete plans to do anything with Ker-Feal.

So it remains apart from the Barnes hoopla and inaccessible to the public except for a horse trail that cuts through the property. (This is actually part of the Horse Shoe Trail that goes from Valley Forge to Harrisburg - and it's the only part of the 138-acre estate that the public can use.)

I was there last week with Ernie Schuyler, curator emeritus of botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences, where he worked for 46 years until retiring in 2000. He's doing a plant inventory, so we walked through the woods looking at what's growing and talking about biodiversity and other fun stuff. He pointed out how many nonnative plants are there now. These were brought in by humans, planted somewhere, not necessarily at Ker-Feal, and ended up here thanks to wind or birds.

For all the talk about native plants these days, it's helpful to walk the walk once in a while. While an untrained eye would never pick this up, with Ernie's help, I saw so much autumn olive and multiflora rose, I couldn't help wondering what the forest would look like in 20 years or so. Some nonnatives he wasn't concerned about - a Japanese holly, for example. But other stuff spreads aggressively, especially in "disturbed" forests, those that were cleared years ago for some purpose and now are growing back.

I'm as susceptible as the next person - including the Barneses - to the charms of some of the nonnatives. It's good to be reminded how well-behaved, useful and beautiful, native plants can be - just in time for all the spring plant sales.