Armed with garbage bags, gloves and keen eyes, dozens of Fairport Central School District students, parents and staff met in the parking lot of Johanna Perrin Middle School on a Saturday in mid-May. They were ready to do battle against an invasive species filling up the wooded area between that school and Brooks Hill: the garlic mustard plant.

Despite its innocuous name, the garlic mustard plant is a nuisance species that crowds out and kills many kinds of native plants. A team effort between Fairport’s new Sustainability Committee, a local organization called Color Fairport Green and Finger Lakes PRISM targeted the area between the two schools as a good spot to start weeding out garlic mustard plants. On May 14, volunteers struck out into the heavily wooded spot to tear out as much of the invasive species as possible.

Natasha Besch-Turner is a Fairport parent, a member of the Sustainability Committee and Color Fairport Green and was at the event to help organize the teams of volunteers.

“This is a wonderful community-building event. [Through this project] our outdoor spaces will be more accessible and thereby more used,” said Besch-Turner. “During the pandemic we realized how precious our outdoor spaces really are.”

The family-friendly event lasted several hours, with just enough time for a snack break from an ice cream truck in the Johanna Perrin parking lot.