If you ever find yourself walking past the Kendeda Building on a Friday afternoon, chances are that you’ll probably see a motley group of students across Ferst Drive, toiling away in a slow but steady battle against non-native plants. Each Friday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., a handful of students and faculty suit up, armed with just gloves and small garden tools, launching a guerilla-style attack upon invasive species that had once taken control of part of campus. With no natural, native predators, invasive plant species can cover up, push down, or choke out native plant species with nothing stopping them, getting rid of good sources and habitats for local animals and insects. Once these invasive species are removed, the health and biodiversity of the entire local ecosystem thrives. 

When the ivy pull effort was founded by former Kendeda Horticulturalist, Steve Place, and former Georgia Tech Eagle Scouts Leaders Donald Gee and Jacob Verner, the group focused almost exclusively on English Ivy, hence the name. Soon to be officially renamed the ‘Ivy League’, the program became a collaborative effort between Trailblazers, Students Organizing for Sustainability, and the Scouts. Since its founding, the Ivy League has maintained a close working relationship with those organizations.

As the group continued to uproot and eliminate the ivy, they expanded their scope to include other invasive plants such as Chinese holly, cherry laurel, and privet. Task assignments each week are fluid, generally based on what tools are available. Some weeks, some volunteers may be hacking away at Chinese holly with loppers while others are either sawing down cherry laurels or digging them out with weed wrenches and shovels. 

While day-to-day operations may vary, the Ivy League boasts a consistent and passionate base of student volunteers, which is what draws in Brooke Vacovsky, Building Manager for the Kendeda Building and staff facilitator for the ivy pull.

“For me, Georgia Tech is all about working with the students,” Vacovsky said. “Recruitment is never a problem, and as the same group of students return each week, it becomes a community thing too.”

The Ivy League is an extension of the Kendeda Building’s ongoing environmental and conservation efforts, with Vacovsky in charge of identifying, measuring, and assessing the success of their objectives such as determining which areas and species of the first to focus on and how effectively the efforts are preventing the local trees from being weighed down and killed by ivy and other large invasives. While Vacovsky has an important role, she emphasizes that Ivy League remains largely a student-run program. Gehrig Harris, a fourth-year Business Administration, Strategy, and Innovation student, is organizing efforts this semester since the official student lead, Gavin Baker, has been away due to a co-op. 

Although progress may at times be slow and interrupted by setbacks, such as when English Ivy makes an unwelcome reappearance in spring, it never seems to dampen the team’s resolve.

“We’re motivated by a desire to have a clearly visible impact on the environment in our own small way, and it’s always fun to de-stress with some time outside,” Harris said. “We went from zero American hollies to one. That’s an increase of well over 100 percent.” 

One of his favorite experiences at the Ivy League is when they have ‘ivy battles’, where volunteers see who can get the longest ivy vine.

“We have managed to get some truly remarkable roots!” Harris said. “Plus, we all love some friendly competition.”

Even when faced with bad weather, the leadership team ensures there is still a place for their community to come together through something called “Trash to Treasure”, where students can cut and paint scrap slate slabs.  

The most effective way to get people involved with conservation and volunteering, Baker and Harris found, is to build relationships and make connections with them.

“Not only have we been successful in bringing back native species to this area of campus (in fact, we just found an American holly!), but we have also been able to forge some great connections and expand Trailblazers’ membership thanks to the friends we’ve made,” they said.

In addition to weekly sessions, Ivy League hosted a site cleanup and native species planting day during Tech Beautification Day last year. Relationships have continued to foster the program’s growth. In recent years, applied physiology professors have begun offering extra credit for students who join the ivy pull, highlighting the wellness benefits of the activity.   

As the Ivy League looks to the future, there might not be much to see- but not in the way you’d think: as invasive species get removed and natives are planted, the end goal is for the area to seem like just another forest in north Georgia: full of American hollys, native azalea, oak and paw-paw trees, mountain laurel shrub, and others.

“I would love us to clear out the entire forest, making it nice and brown every winter like it’s supposed to be,” Harris said.

Ivy League hopes to inspire others and spread its message, integrating these ideas into the Georgia Tech Community. “I hope that our efforts and example could serve as inspiration for Georgia Tech Landscaping in general to end the use of invasive plants in campus landscaping,” Vacovsky said. 

For more information on upcoming events or to get involved with the Ivy League, join the Invasive Species Removal GroupMe.