The city is continuing to explore ways to naturalize areas where it makes sense to do so and is ensuring the eventual transition will go smoothly by testing small sections before making larger commitments.
Mihali Schindle, the city’s Urban Forestry and Naturalization Coordinator, says four pilot projects this summer will inform future decisions on naturalizing boulevards, medians, and park spaces.
“Pilot projects help the city figure out what plants and cultivation methods work best in specific locations,” Schindle said.
“Three of the projects will be cultivated in a row in Selkirk Park in the field across from the dog park and an additional plot will be added to the existing wildflower project on Main Street.”
5,000 square feet of underutilize space in Selkirk Park converted
In Selkirk Park about 5,000 square feet will be used for wildflower meadow, tall grass prairie and organic sports turf test plots.
The wildflower meadow will consist of two plots and will be used to determine the viability of converting underutilized turf spaces into wildflower meadows that contain a mix of short prairie grasses and wildflowers that won’t exceed three feet in height.
““These might be more desirable in park areas where we want to maintain a more clear line of sight, where we don’t want plants that are six-feet tall, so along roadways in parks,” Schindle said.
Two plots will be used for tall grass prairie to test the use of converting underutilized turfgrass into a tall grass and wildflower mix as well, but these will be taller and grow to about six feet in height.
Change will result in less watering and time spent mowing
Both the wildflower and tall grass require far less maintenance and reduce the amount of mowing and watering the city would have to do while dramatically increasing biodiversity and habitats for wildlife and pollinators.
The final park pilot project will be one plot that will utilize a mix of existing turfgrass, drought tolerant fescue grasses and micro clover for improving turf in outfields and also park areas where short turfgrass is required.
“The turfgrass project is to understand the viability for this type of plant community for improving outfields, and sports fields as well as park areas where we still want to maintain somewhat of a short turf grass aesthetic where people can walk on it and run around without damaging it,” Schindle said.
The turf plot will also allow the city to learn about using the mix on sports fields for a more environmentally friendly surface that reduces the need for irrigation and fertilizer.
“Sports turf does require cutting but the idea is to see if we can improve the quality of sports fields and turf areas where we still require foot traffic, without using fertilizers and pesticides to constantly maintain it and without having to remove everything that’s there and start from scratch,” Schindle said.
“We’re looking at basically improving the turf grass that’s already there with these other species as well as top dressing with soil. You could consider that organic, we’re not using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers for that project.
“It’s an overlap with sports field maintenance and naturalization. It’s not pure naturalization but it still kind of overlaps on initiatives to cut back on using pesticides and fertilizer.”
Wildflower test pilots continue on Main Street
Finally, the city will add another wildflower test plot south of the existing one on north Main Street and will remove the existing turf grass and plant a mix of wildflowers, clover and salt-tolerant grasses from seed. The original wildflower plot was planted in the fall of 2020 and the second wildflower and clover plots were added last July.
“What we’ve noticed in the first plot as well as the clover plot is that some of those plants are really struggling with salt damage from the winter plowing. We want to try another plot and incorporate predominantly salt-tolerant grasses with a mix of the wildflowers to see how that will fair over winter and if it will be a bit more resilient than the first two projects,” Schindle said.
“They’ve had their success but that is the one issue that we’ve noticed, some of the plants are dying off in the spring and we want to see if we can eliminate that.”
Planting for the projects will take place throughout the spring, summer and fall.
