Pictured after a day or orchard preparation at Western Maryland Research and Education Center (WMREC):  Robert Strasser, Matthew Royal, Cay Savel, Jim Hill, Mary Phillips and Karen Buchsbaum.  Royal and Phillips are Lockheed Martin employees.  Buchsbaum is interning with the Maryland Chapter as part of her Masters Degree program with the Audubon Expedition Program.

The Maryland Chapter’s fifth planting season since gaining chapter status is its most ambitious, with all spaces in eight existing orchards now planted, three new orchards established at school sites and three additional new orchards established.  The spring planting puts Maryland’s target twenty lines from the Clapper source of resistance in the ground, and makes significant progress toward establishing the desired number of B2 lines from the Musick source of resistance.

Orchard plantings at three Carroll County school sites will support hand-on student learning activities now underdevelopment by the school district.  Chestnut restoration is one of three focus areas for a STEM grant received by Carroll County Public Schools to integrate teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics with hands on curriculum enhancements. Karen Buchsbaum, a Masters Degree student in the Audubon Expedition Program, took a leadership role in the Carroll County school plantings. Buchsbaum has been working as an intern with TACF Restoration Biologist Robert Strasser since last winter and has supported the Maryland Chapter effort in a variety of ways.

Learning and research potential will also be enhanced by test plantings of advanced backcross seed from both Pennsylvania and Virginia seed orchards at ThorpeWood. The ThorpeWood orchard, established with the help of the Pennsylvania Chapter before Maryland gained chapter status, is located on mountain terrain where chestnut has grown naturally in recent history. ThorpeWood and its orchard have hosted several student learning events and teacher training programs since establishment of the orchard in 1999. The orchard also enhances ThorpeWood’s programs for at risk youth. Students from a Hood College introductory environmental science class carried out the 2008 planting after a classroom introduction to American chestnut restoration science by Restoration Biologist Robert Strasser.

The Maryland Chapter’s productive partnerships with the Izaak Walton League and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources have grown with the addition of two new orchards at Izaak Walton facilities near Damascus Maryland and near Waldorf  in Southern Maryland, and a new orchard at a 4-H camp on DNR land in western Maryland.

 Capacity of the established orchard at the University of Maryland’s Western Maryland Research and Education Center was increased with the help of a group of volunteers employed by Lockheed Martin in Frederick, Maryland. Students from a Middletown, Maryland High School environmental science class were responsible for completing the final plantings of Maryland’s largest orchard at Fox Haven Farms near Jefferson, Maryland.

Below: Planting Crew at the University of Maryland's Western Maryland Research and Education Center near Keedysville.