Discovering Fresh Science and a Recovered History at Blandy
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Blandy Experimental Farm: Boyce, VA
In the summer of 2016, I spent a swelteringly hot summer on Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, Virginia. Tucked away in a small farming town about an hour and a half west of Washington, D.C., Blandy holds many titles. This 712 acre property was formerly a part of The Tuleyries Estate, an ante-bellum plantation whose inheritors donated two-thirds of the original property to the University of Virginia (UVA) as a place to teach agricultural practices to its students. It has since been named the Virginia State Arboretum, housing 8,000 trees from 1,000 species, and giving me the impression that I had been dropped into a life-sized fairy garden for my time there.
I was an undergraduate researcher during that summer, both working and living in the main quarters building that greets guests near the community garden upon arrival. It is covered in what I can only assume was one time an even coating of white paint which has since weathered to show the rusty brick beneath. It attracts year round spectators who wish to capture photos beneath the building’s central archway with views of the manicured lawn and native flowering plants peeking behind their silhouettes.
This is the main quarters building and is probably what is one of the most visited spots at Blandy. For the summer I spent here, I lived on the west wing, just right of this picture.
I studied under the advice of Dr. Mary McKenna, an associate professor at Howard University who guided me through my first ecological research project. It seems from my perspective that the entirety of this experience occurred equal parts yesterday, and in a completely different lifetime. So, I actually dusted off the old manuscript to refresh my memory while having to simultaneously try my best to ignore the more painful aspects of 21-year-old Maddie’s writing style. I studied what is known as hyperaccumulator plants, a fascinating genre of plant species that intentionally absorb heavy metals out of the soils they are grown in. They evolved in naturally occurring serpentine soil which is produced through the weathering of metal rich ultramafic rocks. At the time that I was learning about this, researchers much brighter and more educated than me speculated that these plants could be grown in soils which have been polluted by heavy metals from industrialization. The plants could then be harvested, taking the metals with them and thereby repurposing these currently uninhabitable areas.
However, how metal dense plant matter may affect herbivory was not yet understood, and since heavy metals are toxic in high concentrations to most animals, understanding this relationship was an important step toward predicting how such a remediation practice could impact the overarching food chain. Insert undergraduate Maddie right here, who was more than willing to collect herbivores from the field, slugs to be precise, and then proceed to eagerly watching said slugs in petri dishes as they chose between a lunch of two hyperaccumulator leaves: one grown in metal rich soil, and one grown in “normal” soil. As it turns out, after many nights spent searching for soft bodied, slimy herbivores out in the Blandy grasslands, the slugs showed a preference for the plant material which was not grown in the metal-rich soil. I presented my findings to the group of other Blandy students and professors, handed my lab notebook over to Dr. McKenna, and headed back to Pennsylvania, having successfully played a cog in the monsterous machinery that is academic research.
I was one of the last people to ever use this greenhouse at Blandy. It has since been replaced by a new version, and this one is slated for demolition. I love this old structure though, and the time I spent in it.
Community Involvement in Blandy Research
Then, in October of 2021, as Drew and I sat planning our southern descent to escape the oncoming winter, I noticed that Blandy could be a convenient spot for us to hang our hat for a few nights. After I cracked my fingers, found an old contact, and wrote an email to the director, I promptly got the news that not only did they remember me, but they offered us a weeklong stay alongside their research village.
This is our RV becoming a temporary member of the research village at Blandy. Many undergraduate research students return here to visit, although I may be the first to come back in a little home on wheels.
Coming back onto the grounds felt as if time had stood still in my absence. I walked through that archetypical arch, remembering the moment that summer when Drew kneeled beneath it and asked me to be his wife, and sat on the bench with Dr. Dave Carr, the director of Blandy, UVA faculty member, and active researcher at the farm. As we spoke, I quickly realized that time had not stood still like the reality that my egocentric brain had projected. In fact, Blandy had been busier than ever. He gave me an update on Kate LeCroy, a recent PhD graduate, and T’ai Roulston, a professor and researcher at UVA who were both actively working on a large scale citizen science project when I worked at Blandy. Their project was devoted to understanding the recent decline in blue orchard mason bees. Mason bees are solitary, meaning they are not a member of a larger hive, and are therefore more gentle then their hive-minded counterparts who must actively work to protect the hive as a whole. The blue orchard variety are also beautiful, as their name, and proceeding photo suggests.
The blue orchard mason bee has a unique appearance featuring a metallic blue color on its exoskeleton. Photo provided by the USDA website.
Mason bees are integral to a healthy ecological landscape, and are excellent pollinators for apples, peaches and pears whose flowers they forage for pollen and nectar. After mating, the females individually lay their eggs in small cavities in tubules alongside this pollen and nectar which sustains the larvae once they have hatched.
Trouble with the native mason bee population most likely started back in the 1970s when the USDA decided to introduce the United States to the hornfaced bee, an exotic mason bee whose presence was originally intended to increase pollination and aid orchard farmers. The intentional introduction of an exotic species may sound like a foreign concept, and that is most likely because the USDA has largely abandoned this practice after realizing that the complexity of our ecosystems made it so that the consequences of doing so were nearly impossible to predict. LeCroy and Roulston suspected that the decline of blue orchard bee was linked to the presence of the hornfaced bee, and so LeCroy designed an experiment to test her theory, enacting the help of residents throughout the commonwealth of Virginia who were willing to allow LeCroy access to their land and to host one of her many homemade “bee hotels”.
LeCroy spent a labor intensive field season collecting data on the population counts that could be found at each bee hotel, the analysis of which allowed her to report that in almost all of her bee hotel locations, not only were blue orchard populations getting smaller, but hornfaced populations were getting bigger. As Dave Carr told me this story, we went on to explain that it is suspected that the real trouble with the hornfaced bee isn’t the bee itself, but the fungi that it harbors, one that it likely leaves traces of in the small cavities that it uses to lay its eggs, and thereby contaminating the cavity for native mason bees who may similarly try to use the cavity in future seasons. LeCroy has set out to investigate these suspicions as she completes a postdoctoral position at Cornell University, proving that the journey of a researcher is never brief.
Although the story of the blue orchard bee may be disheartening, Blandy is now more than ever a center for cultivating hope. The involvement of the public in LeCroy’s project is an extraordinary example of citizen science, an instance where anyone could make a difference in the scientific community and humanity’s never ending journey toward expanding our knowledge.
This idea of citizen science is an inspiring one for many, and Blandy has chosen to invest in this inspiration. Carr explained to me that one of the central roles of their new Director of Scientific Engagement position is to increase accessibility for participation in citizen science to their visitors. He emphasized that, “we want to create opportunities for the public to not only learn about science, but maybe even become part of the process.”
The involvement of the community in science is not a new goal for Blandy. They have a longstanding tradition of offering a variety of general public education programs on their grounds, and even designing programs that could be completed in classrooms or in the safety of home when the pandemic forced many schools to close and limit field trip activities.
At the Intersection of Art and Science
A noticeable installment from my time working on the farm is what is casually called “The Bee Wall”. The soft yet obvious color of a creamsicle caught my eye as I walked past the community garden, and I couldn’t stop my feet from going over to explore it. The roughly 20 foot long, crescent shaped structure sits under a clear awning and is completed with a soft linework design along the surface that reminded me of the texture wind makes as it blows across the ocean’s surface.
The bee wall shown above, is composed of cob and placed atop a repurposed stone cattle wall. The box just right of the wall is where its first generation of bees were overwintered by T’ai Roulston.
This structure, while being a striking piece of art, was also designed to provide habitat for Blandy’s solitary bee communities. Designed by Sarah Peebles, the structure is officially named “Dwelling: Shenandoah Valley”, and is made out of cob, a material which Carr explained to me is composed of clay, sand, straw and water, and while it hardens to be structurally sound, nesting bees can bore into it to create their nests. If you look closely, you can even see small holes on the outside of the structure, evidence that the bee wall is working, and that both art and science can not only be harmonious, but also play complementary parts in one another’s advancement.
In Remembrance of the Past
As Carr and I wrapped up our conversation, I asked him if there was anything additional that he wanted to share with me. After a moment of reflection, he straightened his hat, and said, “Yeah, actually. There is one other big thing that we’ve been working on.”
You see, back when Blandy Experimental Farm was still a part of The Tuleyries Plantation, before it became the quiet retreat that it is today, it was cared for and tended to by the hands of dozens of enslaved people. The quarters building, picturesque as it stands today, was originally used as their barracks, holding as many as 60 enslaved humans.
“Blandy has a history, one intertwined with slavery … and we have been trying to reconcile with that history in the best way that we know how: by telling it.”
Century old documentation told Blandy that there was likely an unmarked grave within the arboretum, although, whether due to malice or complacency, lack of property detail made its exact location a mystery until recently. It took the initiative of T’ai Roulston, who poured over old property surveys, to narrow down the suspected location of the graves, and ground-penetrating radar to verify. This effort surfaced evidence for 40 graves within the site, and although identities of the victims who lay rest there are still unknown, the boundaries of the site are now protected so that they may no longer be invisible.
It seems that discovering the stories of these humans lives stolen by slavery has become as prominent a mission as ecological research at Blandy. They hired Antonio Austin, a graduate student of history at Howard University, to uncover their identities, although this endeavor is not without difficulties. Carr explained the problems that must be overcome in this exploration, with surnames of the enslaved often being disregarded in documentation, and improper care given to maintaining any such paperwork. It is a laborious journey, but one worth doing in order to ensure that all those who labored on The Tuleyries’ soil can be honored if only by a fraction of what they are owed.
With the beauty that lies around every corner of Blandy, it would be easy to forget its ugly past. For the current researchers and caretakers of the land, this is all the more reason to tell it.
I spent three months living in that quarters building, and despite what the upcoming Hallows Eve holiday may have you believe, I can give you no stories of ghosts, no strange happenings that gave the building a sense of unease. I would never have known the truth about this building unless someone had told me, and the graves of the people buried at Blandy would still be lost to time if somebody didn’t take the effort to search for them. Blandy is an example of one of the many landmarks in United States soil that was built on the backs of enslaved people, but if there is some hope in all of this, it is that Blandy has chosen to unearth its past instead of continuing to bury it. It is our obligation, as people who benefitted from the forced labor of others, to first find and then share their stories. It is this reason that the bee wall was placed atop a repurposed stone cattle wall found within the Blandy fields, as a way to memorialize the unnamed 67 people who labored there. And it is this reason that I choose to write about it, because although our knowledge so far is incomplete, maybe we can make progress if we all continue to spread the word. It is only in efforts like this one that our nation as a whole can begin to heal from its cruel history.
The pieces needed to complete the stories of those enslaved is difficult to find, and often only exists by word of mouth. As Blandy continues this effort, they ask that you contact them if you know of any documentation or familial stories that may provide information as to the history of slavery at The Tuleyries Plantation.
Rediscovering what Blandy Taught Me
If you were to briefly drive through Blandy, you may see it as an oasis of natural scenery, or a beautiful place to enjoy an afternoon walk. I argue that it is more than that. It is a place where people convene to search for knowledge, a place where you don’t have to be a scientist to play an integral role in science, a place that chooses to remember its past so that it may create a better future.
After my time as an undergraduate at Blandy, I forged headfirst into graduate school, and then proceeded to hate every single moment of it. I was enrolled in a PhD program at Penn State, convinced that if I ever wanted to make any sort of splash in the scientific ocean that I needed to become a researcher. It was a pivotal moment when I finally stopped punching the brick wall in front of me, and admitted to myself that I had walked down a path that I was never supposed to see the end of, that just because I loved science, performed well in school, and respected ecology, didn’t mean I was under an obligation to devote my life to researching it. Science is composed of much more than men in lab coats, and we are all worth much more than our credentials, or our history, make us believe. If you look for them, you too can find countless ways that you can make a difference in whatever scientific niche you find yourself fitting in.
I choose to honor my love for science by sharing that passion with you all, and for right now, no matter where that takes me in the future, it is enough. Like Blandy, I choose to remember my past so that my future may appear brighter.
To add to the endless sources of inspiration that Blandy can provide, I submit to you this sunrise, which I unexpectedly saw out of my bedroom window as my head was still on my pillow.
If you’re ever in that summit shaped point of Northern Virginia, Blandy Experimental Farm should be on your list of places to visit. It is a melting pot of scientific exploration, community engagement, humanitarian efforts, and enjoyment of the natural world. In the time that I have spent there, Blandy has pointed me in the direction towards being a better person, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to tell you all about it, so that it may do the same for you.
Thank you for joining us at Discovery Detour, where the destination is always unknown.
