HAMPTON -- The Williamsburg Native Plant Rescue Team has finished a series of rescues at the Commander Shepard Boulevard extension site, off Magruder Boulevard.
The volunteer group worked at the site for more than a month to save many of its plants, shrubs and small trees, slated to be destroyed when site work began late March.

Decades ago, WNPR took on maintenance of the wildflower refuge at the College of William & Mary, transplanting hundreds of rescued shrubs and perennials in the area. As with any garden, it needs periodic attention to keep invasives at bay, remove trash and tend to the rescues and their offshoots. Low-maintenance plants? Yes. No maintenance plants? Not quite.

WNPR is working with Newport News Waterworks to coordinate rescues along the length of a new 24-inch-diameter waterline running between Hubbard Lane and Mooretown Road, in York County. Most of the line runs along existing right-of-way, not expected to yield much in the way of rescue-worthy plants. However, part of the line's path goes through a wilder, swampy area, which sounds promising.

After retaining the plants rescued from the site prior to construction for nearly three years, WNPR is slated to replant herbaceous rescues this spring at the National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton. Some of the site native shrubs have already been planted by the building, post-development, on the site. More perennials, including copious Elliott's goldenrod, are to be planted at the institute as well as in an adjacent protected buffer. There are plans to construct trail in the buffer. The site native plants will be featured along this trail.

The National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton contacted WNPR prior to building its new facility. WNPR rescued native plants from the site. After the facility was built, WNPR returned the native rescued shrubs to the site so that National Institute of Aerospace could use them for landscape plantings. WNPR is retaining herbaceous plants from the site that will be replanted in the site's buffer.