Design + Restoration Department: 2025 in Review

Above: David Bellangue leads students from the Peabody School in restoration planting at the Darden Towe Park patch-prairie project in May. Photo by Joanna Currey.

2025

Restoration: With five restoration team members, including our Conservation Nursery Manager, David Bellangue (who wears many hats), we maintained 32 active restoration projects in the greater Charlottesville area, ranging from 210 square feet to 40 acres! 

Four of these projects are open and accessible to the public: Darden Towe Park, our Adopt-A-Spot projects at Belmont Plaza and Hinton Avenue in Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood, and our ongoing restoration work at the Quarry Gardens at Schuyler. 

In 2025, we planted a whopping 22,702 plants consisting of 178 unique species in our restoration projects. Thanks primarily to David’s intrepid efforts in the Conservation Nursery, 79% (or 17,889) of those plants were local ecotype, and include many species that belong in Piedmont natural plant communities but are commercially unavailable.

Through our work designing, installing, and maintaining restorations, the D&R Department generated 38% of PDC’s total revenue for the year, helping to keep the lights on during this period of organizational development and transition.

Education: The restoration team also contributed to a variety of inter-departmental education events, like tree walks at Quarry Gardens, volunteer planting days, and the Fall Bioblitz at our Piedmont patch-prairie restoration in Darden Towe Park. In one day at Darden Towe, PDC staff and members of the public logged 292 species of plants, insects, and birds in the Phase I area, which is less than a quarter of an acre!

Cross-Pollination at PDC: As a small organization, we help each other out and have the opportunity to learn from one another across departments. The restoration team always has a blast assisting the research team during the summer in the ongoing Piedmont Grassland Assessment project, which you can read more about in the Research Department’s report [insert hyperlink to research team blog post]. Participating in PGA days means learning more about—and actually getting to experience—the intact natural plant community remnants our restoration projects attempt to emulate.

Another important research project that required a full-staff effort was our remnant translocation. Housing development threatened to heavily impact and, in some places, completely destroy a critically imperiled (G1 S1) central Virginia system that PDC had documented and visited for years. Through careful planning and teamwork, we successfully translocated some of the highest-quality square footage of the remnant, including a colony of Pycnanthemum torreyi, to be held in a temporary location until development is complete. We also secured a commitment from land managers to restore an adjacent area that we believe contains a dormant continuation of the remnant.

2026

Winter Restoration Work: Winter is a dormant season, which means there is time to wrap up one growing season’s work and to prepare for the next—in other words, lots of email and spreadsheets. Thankfully, even winter includes some restoration activities that alleviate our cabin fever! This winter, we’ve accomplished significant tree and shrub plantings in nutrient-rich woodland restorations. Large ball & burlap trees are best planted while they’re dormant to minimize both transplant shock and the need to water them throughout the year. 

Late February to early March is also an ideal time for fire! We’ve conducted successful prescribed burns this winter at Quarry Gardens in the planted areas surrounding our Center building. Prescribed burns reduce fuel load, return nutrients to the soil via ash, and clear the ground surface for sun exposure, allowing the herb layer to green up vigorously in spring. In restorations where we aren’t able to burn, we manually mimic the effects of fire by cutting thatch low to the ground in late winter or early spring and raking it away.

As we enter the 2026 season, we’re excited to have an experienced, highly-skilled, and mutually supportive restoration team on staff. Though we said farewell to Stewardship Technician, Carter Frazee, who moved in January (we miss you Carter!) we’re delighted to have Paul Cipriani, David Bellangue, and Joanna Currey continuing to work in the Design & Restoration Department, along with Charlie Aller, who has accepted a new position as Stewardship Manager with PDC!

A Look Ahead: Moving into spring, we’re gearing up for our usual whirlwind of planting, which includes gap-fill planting at current projects and breaking ground on new projects. “Gap-fill planting” is, in part, what it sounds like: filling in empty space on the ground. But more importantly, it means filling in gaps on our target plant species list for a given restoration project so that it more closely resembles the intact natural plant communities it’s designed to emulate. 

We’re also cooking up some plans to expand our education programming, and look forward to discovering what possibilities open up with the transition to our new headquarters nestled in the beautiful Quarry Gardens. We hope to see you there!