What began as a practical way to disguise dozens of septic-system covers on the New Suffolk waterfront has — after six years of digging, planting and relentless battles with mugwort — grown into a flourishing meadow of native plants.

On Sunday morning, members of the New Suffolk Waterfront Fund gathered on First Street in front of Minnow at the Galley Ho to celebrate that transformation and unveil a new plant guide designed to help visitors understand what is growing there.

The project has evolved considerably since volunteers first began reclaiming the weed-choked property in 2020. The volunteers who maintain it — the “Meadow Mavens” — gather every Sunday morning during the growing season to weed, plant, transplant and otherwise tend the waterfront garden.

The new display, mounted on a slab of historic mulberry wood, identifies plants that visitors can find in the meadow during different seasons and includes QR codes linking to additional information online.

“We started pulling weeds in 2020 — mugwort — and we planted in 2021, and this is the result,” volunteer Barbara Butterworth told the gathered crowd on Sunday morning. “But this is the result only because there is a group of people called the Meadow Mavens who are here every Sunday morning, April or May through October, pulling weeds, planting, moving, taking care of the place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t happen.”

In 2016, when the Waterfront Fund renovated the historic Galley Ho building, the project required installation of a substantial septic system beneath the waterfront property. Meadow Maven Patty Lowry said on Sunday that there are roughly three dozen septic tanks beneath the area, each requiring an access cover — a vital piece of infrastructure that didn’t exactly lend itself to a pretty waterfront landscape.

Architect Barbara Schnitzler and landscape architect Stacy Paetzel came up with a plan for a meadow. Volunteers planted the area, and for a while, Lowry recalled, everyone thought the job was finished.

“We planted all these plants, and then we walked away,” she said.

By 2020, invasive mugwort had overwhelmed much of the original planting. What had been envisioned as a meadow had become a rangy field of ugly mugwort.

“We just decided we’re either going to mow it down, or we’re going to do a real meadow,” Lowry said.

‘A team effort’

In 2020, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the restoration became an unusually well-timed outdoor project. Volunteers could gather outside, spread out and work.

In 2021, the meadow was replanted, with an emphasis on native species. Over the ensuing years, the informal group of volunteers became the Meadow Mavens, recognizable on Sunday mornings by their pale lemon yellow shirts. Six growing seasons later, they are still at it, each Sunday morning from spring through fall.

“The whole thing is a team effort,” Butterworth said.

The Mavens include Butterworth, Lowry, Lucy Maitland, Gloria Baume, Susan Braatz, Margaret Brown, Linda Carlson, Susie Fox, Carolyn McCall, Doris Brautigan, Susan Noonan and Shannon Simon.

Standing beside the meadow Sunday, Lowry pointed to the butterflies moving among the plants as evidence of what the volunteers were trying to accomplish.

“You can see how many butterflies are flying in,” she said. “That’s the whole point of everything — the pollination.”

In 2025, Butterworth and Baume enrolled in Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Program.

‘Just gorgeous’

The Mavens want visitors to do more than just enjoy the flowers. They want people walking through the waterfront property to recognize what they’re seeing and understand more about the plants. But they didn’t want to do that by filling the meadow itself with a forest of individual markers for every plant and flower.

“We didn’t want to put little signs all over the place,” Butterworth said.

The crew decided that whatever they installed should not look like an institutional sign dropped into the middle of a natural landscape.

“We gotta make this just gorgeous,” Butterworth said. “It’s gotta feel just part of the meadow.”

They turned to Cutchogue woodworker Will Paulson.

Paulson built the display around a slab of mulberry wood believed to have come from trees planted by the Tuthill family in the 1830s or 1840s.

The trees were planted as part of an effort to establish a silk-making enterprise using mulberries to feed silkworms. The business never came to fruition, but some of the wood survived.

“This is a very, very special piece of wood,” Butterworth said, describing how Paulson put the structure together “with so much love and attention.”

Creating the informational panel itself presented another challenge. Lowry said it took time to find a company that could create a sign to the standard the group wanted. The finished panel is powder coated, digitally printed and then clear coated, using durable car paint designed to withstand the elements. Paulson also engineered the display so the information panel can be removed during the winter while its supports remain in the ground.

The effort received financial support from North Fork Side by Side, which has also helped fund other educational signage on the New Suffolk waterfront.

Despite Sunday’s celebration, the Meadow Mavens were crystal clear about one thing: their work isn’t finished.

In fact, they’re recruiting.

“We’re looking for new members,” one volunteer said.

“Young new members,” Lowry shot back, and everyone laughed.

But after six years of Sunday mornings pitting hardy Southold seniors in yellow t-shirts against invasive plants, a recruitment drive makes sense.

“Mugwort doesn’t stop on holidays,” one Maven observed. “It just keeps on going.”