J.M. SIMPSON: RESTORATION OF TRAINING LANDS ON POST >>>

Music is playing a crucial role in the propagation of prairie grasses destined to preserve Fort Lewis training land.

Think this is off key?

"We play music - all kinds of music - to the plants growing here," said Inger Gruhn as she walked through a state-of-the-art greenhouse near the DuPont Gate. "Believe it or not, music does help plants to grow."

Gruhn is the coordinator of the Integrated Training Area Management, or ITAM, and Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance, or LRAM, programs at Fort Lewis.

ITAM is the program sustainment program designed to sustain the training lands - about 76,000 acres - at Fort Lewis. LRAM is the program that centers on the actual repairing - the painstaking work of propagating specific plants - of training land.

This is where music comes into play.

In 1973, Dorothy Retallack's book, "The Sound of Music and Plants," laid out the results of an experiment that tested the effects of music on plant growth. Using three separate laboratories containing the same species of plant, Retallack played music and recorded daily growth.

The results rocked the plant world.

The plants in the laboratory where music was played daily for three hours grew twice as large and became twice as healthy as those in a music-free environment.  On the other hand, plants in the laboratory where music was played for eight hours a day died within two weeks from the start of the experiment.

And in case you are wondering if the type of music plays a role, the answer is yes.

Empirical data subsequent to Retallack's study suggests that soft, soothing music tends to promote healthy plant growth.  Rock music, on the other hand, tends to result in weaker plants.

Putting both Mozart and Van Halen aside, the mission that Gruhn and her associates - Ashley Lyon and Erika Ressa - focus on is the sustainability of the environment and mission readiness.

"We fix and sustain the prairie," continued Gruhn. 

In doing so, the focus is not only on preserving what is one of the last pristine prairie lands in this part of the country, but the work Gruhn and her associates do also enhances training.

In order to preserve and repair the training areas, the program harvests specific native seeds, sorts and cleans them, propagates about 27 different species of plants, hardens them off and then replants them in areas where training has disturbed the environment.

Approximately 30,000 various plants are planted in the spring; another 30,000 are planted in the fall.

"We're very specific about repairing the damage on the prairie," emphasized Gruhn. 

In removing non-native plants such as the seemingly omnipresent Scotch broom, Gruhn said doing so allows for the replanting of native species.

"With the removal of the Scotch broom, soldiers gain a better line-of-sight during their training."

In sustaining the prairie training land on, Gruhn acknowledges that other agencies closely watch the results of their work.

"This is just awesome work," commented Ressa as she headed over to the music filled greenhouse. "It is groundbreaking work to work with plants native to this habitat."

PHOTO: Ashley Lyon and Inger Gruhn pull weeds from a "mono bed" of blue eyed grass, which is part of the native plant propagation program on post. Photo by J.M. Simpson