On Wednesday, June 28, a truck and trailer attempted to turn around in the parking lot connected to the Oxford aquatic center at the Oxford Community Park and pulled its trailer through the pollinator garden planted this spring.

The garden is the centerpiece of a traffic circle that caps off the end of the parking lot. It is sponsored by the Audubon Miami Valley to instill natural wildlife into public spaces around Oxford.

The trailer left a rut through multiple rows of plants, bringing clay to the surface. According to Audubon member Peggy Branstrator, the clay will bring up many weed seeds and will create more work for volunteers even without fixing the trench that the trailer made.

“The more clay they dig up, the more weeds we’re going to have,” Branstrator said. “This is going to be a mess.”

The culprit has been tracked down by the parks department. Contractors working inside the park were driving the truck and trailer at the time. According to Branstrator, the contractors will be charged for the damages while still working in the park.

The pollinator garden was started as a class project with David Prytherch, a geography professor at Miami University. The project’s end goal is carbon sequestration, but that doesn’t come without hurdles in the process.

“If you want to plant native plantings, you have to deal with the fact that there are all of these existing turf grass seeds and weed seeds,” Prytherch said.

He also acknowledges a hand in play outside of nature.

“Sometimes stuff happens like contractors driving their trailers through your garden. It’s not for the faint of heart,” Prytherch said.

Amid this, Branstrator is hoping for more volunteers to help fix and maintain the garden. The 81-year-old has done what she predicts is “90%” of the work for the garden with her husband and is looking for community members to lend a hand.

“It’s gonna cause a lot more work,” Branstrator said. “We could use a lot more volunteer help.