Jack and Lily and a few hundred friends are having quite a party in my adjacent wetland. Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) and his myriad kin dominate the wet woodland floor. Their leaves, composed of three leaflets, serve as umbrellas for the flower -- Jack -- a clublike organ sheltered by a curved hood.

The green and purplish mottling of the Jack-in-the-pulpits contrasts strikingly with the delicate pinkish white flowers of Atamasco lilies (Zephyranthes atamasco), insinuating themselves among the Jacks. Tall cinnamon ferns (Osmunda cinnamomea) serve as architectural backdrops.

Overhead, the leaves of sweet bay magnolias (Magnolia virginiana), natives to our wetlands, flash their silver undersides when breezes tickle them. Poking up between the Jacks and lilies are the triangular leaves of Lizard's Tail (Saururus cernuus), named for their flowers -- long white plumes -- due to bloom in a few weeks.

This exquisite native wetland environment has been showing off every year of the 19 I've lived here. And I didn't plant a bit of it. The patch of damp Piedmont next to my creek looks the way most of our wetlands once did: beautiful, richly diverse and robust.

But like so many wetlands before it, this may be its last year.

My neighbors are excavating a massive pond just above Jack's kingdom. I expect sediment from mountainous dirt piles, plus nutrient pollution from the overflow pipe soon to be dumping into the wetland will quickly destroy this perfect native garden.