Sierra Club members clean up Fairfield entrance monument

FAIRFIELD – A couple members of the Southeast Iowa Sierra Club have spruced up the entrance sign to Fairfield on Pleasant Plain Road.

Resident Steve Taylor said fellow Sierra Club member Carole Simmons showed him a picture of the condition of the sign in August. He went to the site to see for himself, and he was not happy with what he saw.

'It looked like people didn't care,” he said. 'It was overtaken by weeds such as wild parsnip, dandelions, nutsedge and foxtail.”

Taylor met with the Fairfield Beautification Commission and asked if he could weed around the sign. They were thrilled he would volunteer for the task.

In September, he and Gloria Foster, another member of the Sierra Club, spent about two hours pulling weeds. They collected the weeds on a tarp and disposed of them in a compost pile.

After weeding, what remained at the sign were some stonecrop, daylilies, phlox, tickseed and junipers. Later this month, Taylor said they plan to add native prairie perennials to the ornamental plants. He said he found low-growing prairie petunia in a nearby ditch native. He plans to plant these in front of the sign. The taller, false sunflower and big bluestem will go in the back.

'We prefer these native species because adjacent to the sign is a prairie remnant,” Taylor said. 'This prairie remnant is a rare ecosystem in Iowa these days. By weeding out the invasive species at the sign and favoring the native species, we hope to help preserve the prairie remnant and also make it look like we are happy to be living in Fairfield.”