Tillery
Park and surrounding areas are within the broader Forest Park/Fort Worth Zoo, just off
Forest Park Boulevard and Rockridge Terrace.
The Zoo and Forest Park Swimming Pool are just down the steep slopes on
the west and south side. The park has a
wonderful playground area that was built entirely with donated
funds, materials, labor, and tools, all raised from local businesses, civic
groups, families, and individuals, and a grant from the FW Parks & Recreation
Department (tillerypark.org).
Nice open areas are maintained behind the play area (photos; map).
Cedar
elms (Ulmus crassifolia) are the most common trees around the playground
area. Live oaks and hackberries are
scattered around, and a Chinese elm, Chinese pistacio, and sycamore are at the
front of the playground. Breath-of-spring
honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is a common “escaped” shrub
in the area, perhaps the offspring of a large individual on the north side of
the parking area in front of the playground.
To
these eyes, though, the most prominent botanical feature of the park area is
the profusion of Quihoui privet (Ligustrum quihoui). Impenetrable masses of it. Great green gobs of thicket. If you want to see what a rampant weedy
shrub can do, look here. The privet is
held back from the open areas and doesn’t destroy the beauty and use of the
park, but one can almost feel the invasive energy looming on all sides, ready
to crowd in at the release of restraint.
You also can see the privet thicket along Park Place Drive, paralleling
the Zoo toward the pool –– look along the slope and upward (toward Tillery
Park). There’s also a large area along
the road where shrubby vitex has become part of the thicket. For a very similar privet experience
(thicket on all sides), stand within the nearby Zoo overflow parking area (Trees and shrubs of Forest
Park).
At
the back end of the Tillery Park, at the edge of the slope, is an overlook
bounded by a low stone wall. In
pre-privet days, there surely were good views of the zoo to the west and
northwest. Walk along the edge to the
south and there’s a broad vista toward
the St. Stephen Presbyterian Church (see photos) –– the Forest Park pool, nearly
directly below, is hidden from view.
Near
the zoo overlook, a little trail leads steeply down a stone walkway from the
open area, crosses the creek, and then goes back up to another broad open field
in the park area to the north (bounded on the north by Kensington Court, on the
east by Rockridge Terrace). The creek
and ravine, once a wooded grotto, now is completely privet-filled and the trail
has become a rabbit-hole tunnel.
In
the open field, each of the trees is curiously enveloped at the base by a mass
of the privet, like a ballooning skirt, as if the trees were launching like
rockets and blasting out a cloud of privet.
On the west side of the field, the steep slope toward the Zoo is a
natural terrace boundary of the Trinity River floodplain. Before its privetization, it apparently
would have been seen as an open rocky slope with scattered small trees, shrubs,
yucca, prickly pear cactus, and native species of grasses and flowering herbs
(including Opuntia macrorhiza, Yucca pallida, Liatris
mucronata, Eriogonum longifolium, Grindelia texana, and
others). Vestiges of the original
vegetation still persist along the lip of the slope.
To
clear the privet thickets from the overlook, the grotto, and the zoo slope
would be a great restoration project.
Much energy would be required and it would take persistence through
several years to permanently remove the privet, but what a great reward for the
restored beauty and natural ecology of the area.
-------------------------
Guy Nesom, www.guynesom.com
Last update 24 Aug 2009