Oak Crest Farms Rewilding Open Garden Event
On April 26, 2025, Delaware Audubon board member, Robb Mapou attended the Open Garden event at the Oak Crest Farms development in Lewes. The event allowed members of the public to view the progress of a restoration project members of the community’s Rewilding Committee have undertaken to turn a 17-acre decommissioned septic drainfield into a natural habitat for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife.
The idea took root last June 2024 when two residents contacted the project manager at Delaware Coalition for the Inland Bays (CIB) with their initial ideas. CIB had previously assisted another downstate community with a similar restoration project. CIB expressed interest in helping, and Oak Crest Farms residents were enthusiastic. A committee was formed, and Meghan Noe Fellows at CIB, who had assisted the other community, was engaged to write a grant and to order trees. The area was surveyed by a Master Gardener, and residents recorded wildlife and pollinators seen in different areas. First year objectives included planting a mini-forest and establishing a monarch butterfly zone.
By November 2024, a large group of community volunteers began clearing and preparing the land. A thousand plants were selected, and the septic pump house was converted into tool storage. Loblolly pines were dug up from a nearby resident's yard and replanted. Community members made donations. Bird houses were made available and additional donations were sought to support putting them up in the area.
On January 1st, 2025, the community’s committee was notified that, with the help of the CIB, they had received a Community Water Quality Improvement Grant of almost $54,000 from the Delaware Water Infrastructure Advisory Council. Planting began in March 2025, and by April volunteers — including local Boy Scouts — had put in hundreds of hours and dollars to get the restoration project underway. Ten “mini-forests” of 126 plants, a small monarch butterfly garden, and a small pollinator garden were established. Plans were also made to establish a several-acre pollinator meadow. Having achieved all of its first-year goals, the community hosted its April 26th Open Garden event. Proud organizers hope to inspire other communities to realize land preservation and wildlife habitat restoration is possible.
Downstate Delaware is home to important and oftentimes endangered coastal and inland birds including saltmarsh, Nelson's, and seaside sparrows, piping plover, American oystercatcher, and black rail. The region includes critically important migration sites for red knot, ruddy turnstone, sanderling, semipalmated sandpiper, and dunlin. Terns and gulls nest in large numbers and large mixed colonies of herons, egrets, and ibis. Estuarine complexes and embayments created behind barrier beaches in this region are extremely important to wintering and migrating waterfowl, including approximately 65% of the total wintering American black duck population along with large numbers of greater scaup, tundra swan, gadwall, Atlantic brant, and canvasback. (Source: 2015 – 2025 Delaware Wildlife Action Plan)