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Prairie plants to stay at area cemetery

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By Alma Gaul | Thursday, November 9, 2006 1:36 AM CST | () comments

ROCHESTER, Iowa — The people of Rochester Township have spoken, and they apparently want their pioneer-era cemetery in Cedar County maintained in such a way as to preserve its one-of-a-kind prairie plants.

The future of the cemetery 35 miles west of the Quad-Cities was thrown into doubt over the summer when a petition bearing 110 signatures was presented to the township’s three trustees, asking that the cemetery be cleaned up and mowed like others in the county.

In addition to the petition, Darrell Gritton and Joanne C. Williams — both petition backers — filed as candidates in hopes of unseating one of the trustees and the township clerk in Tuesday’s general election.

But unofficial results from the auditor’s office showed a resounding affirmation of the incumbents: John Zaruba received 146 votes to Gritton’s 53, and Lynn Treimer received 151 to Williams’ 37 votes.

The outcome brought a collective sigh of relief from countless “plant people” who were watching the controversy from the sidelines.

“In my opinion, Rochester Cemetery is the single most valuable natural area in the state of Iowa,” said Pete Kollasch, an employee of the Iowa Geological Survey in Iowa City and an amateur botanist. He has helped maintain the cemetery’s prairie nature by organizing volunteers who visit to remove invasive garlic mustard, black locust trees and staghorn sumac shrubs.

The crux of the controversy is that the people who circulated the petition regard the 13.5-acre prairie remnant as a cemetery first, not an “open prairie for strangers and out-of-towners,” as Deanna Gritton, the wife of candidate

Darrell Gritton and the moving force behind the petition, said.

Gritton said Wednesday that although her husband lost the election, they will continue their fight to keep the property mowed “so that it looks like a cemetery.”

“It doesn’t make a bit of difference,” she said of the results. “It’s a cemetery. That’s the bottom line.”

But she agreed that the grounds look better now than they did last summer.

In addition to the work of Kollasch’s volunteers, township trustee Bob Thumma performed his twice-yearly tractor mowing that reduces the vegetation to about six inches in height. Another man immediately went around the gravestones with a walk-behind mower.

Thumma said Wednesday that the original petitioners “had some gripe coming.”

“We probably weren’t doing a good enough job” of maintaining the cemetery, he added.

Thumma said he also may return to one spring mowing, possibly staggering the date from year to year, to give plants a chance to seed and perpetuate themselves.

The problem with frequent mowings — the petitioners had suggested every four to six weeks — is the practice eventually could destroy the prairie by not allowing the plants to seed, he said.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.