Preston farmer wants people to have messy lawns

Sep. 3—EDITOR'S NOTE — Ever wonder what's the story behind that person you see picking up roadside garbage in Old Lyme? Or what's the deal with that usher at the Garde Arts Center in New London who takes your tickets with a giant smile? The Day is launching a Get to Know Your Neighbors series, where for the next week you will learn about the people in your community who make a big difference but often go unnoticed.

Preston ― Gary Piszczek would like his neighbors to consider messing up their lawns a bit to allow wildflowers to grow for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

"A butterfly is not going to land on your shoulder and say, 'Thank you,'" Pisczcek said of backyard efforts to attract pollinators. "It's like farming, it's a leap of faith."

Piszczek, 72, a third-generation Preston farmer and longtime chairman of the town's Conservation and Agricultural Commission, is launching a new project to encourage homeowners to start pollinator gardens.

Town Planner Kathy Warzecha printed a poster-sized aerial map of the town with its property boundaries outlined. Piszczek attached it to a cork board and bought dozens of bright yellow bee pins.

Last spring, he asked elementary students at the Preston Veterans' Memorial School science fair to draw pictures of pollinators. Last week, Warzecha enjoyed stapling brightly colored cutout flowers, bees, caterpillars and butterflies to the border of Piszczek's map.

He hopes to hang the "Preston Busy Bee Pollinator Map" in the library and invite anyone in town with pollinator gardens, from container pots with flowers to larger farm fields, such as Piszczek's 3-acre meadow on Miller Road, to tack little bee pins onto the map.

"If it's covered with bees, that's good," he said of the map and the little bee pins.

Standing at the edge of the meadow on a warm afternoon in mid-August, the constant buzzing of insects could be heard. Dragonflies darted about and birds sang in the distance. Bumblebees were especially plentiful this summer, he said.

The meadow had been a pasture for Piszczek's dairy cows in years past, and he decided to allow it to grow into a natural wildlife habitat. The area slopes down to a wetland, where a grove of swamp maples and red cedar trees provide a neat border.

"In spring, the woodcocks do their thing back there," he said, referring to the mating antics of the birds that prefer wet forest edge habitats.

Piszczek cleared the pasture of invasives as it started to grow wild.

"I had every invasive plant you can think of," he said.

And he seeded with a cover crop of buckwheat to choke them out. The buckwheat's mid-summer white flowers were a favorite for the bees and a few white flowers remained blooming in the August heat. Goldenrod and asters also bloomed. In the wetter areas, taller Joe Pye weed and bright purple New York ironweed rise from the meadow.

In late fall, he will spread a winter crop of wheat, vetch or rye, after he consults with a specialist from the Natural Resources and Conservation Service.

"To the untrained eye, this is complete chaos," Piszczek said. "We had a biologist come out, and we both agreed. You've got to embrace the chaos. Some people don't like that. They prefer to have things manicured."

Behind his home ― a saltbox cape he and his father, Henry Piszczek built in 1980 with wood harvested from their property ― his wife, Carol, a retired project manager at Pfizer, has planted a more typical collection of flowering plants to attract pollinators from Hosta and sweet potato to flowering bushes and vines.

Piszczek said he started getting interested in promoting pollinator attracting plants with the No Mow May movement. He chuckled at the misconception that came with it, as neighbors questioned if the property owners were just being lazy. He said one neighbor knocked on a woman's door and asked if her husband was OK, because the lawn hadn't been mowed.

Piszczek encourages homeowners to select a portion of their lawns and allow it to grow naturally. He said setting the mower blade higher in spring will allow the clover flowers to grow and would require less maintenance.

The Conservation and Agricultural Commission hopes to add an educational segment to the pollinator attraction effort by organizing a plant exchange for residents to share excess plants or to obtain native pollinator plants. He also would like to bring in an expert to speak about the types of plants to try.

Piszczek said his passion for public service came from his father Henry Piszczek, who served as first selectman in the 1970s and '80s.

"I used to yell at him for spending so much time with the town," Piszczek said. "But when you get older, you appreciate it more."

Gary also is active with the Preston Historical Society and is a member of the town's Sustainability Team, part of the Sustainable CT effort to improve efficiencies in town government to save money, energy and benefit residents.

Piszczek's grandfather immigrated from Poland to the United States in 1919 and first settled in New Jersey before buying farmland in Preston, which became an enclave for Polish immigrant farmers.

Piszczek now has about 600 acres on both sides of Miller Road that various family members had owned over the past century. At one time, he ran a dairy herd of about 100 cows. Now semi-retired, he has 20 cows, grows corn and hay and has a large vegetable garden.

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