Neighbors Naturescaping Grant Awarded to Thurman Gateway Park Project

This past week we learned that our application for Operation Brightside's Neighbors Naturescaping Grant was successful. This non-cash grant adds $1500 worth of tools and plants to our project.

The list of plants available to grant winners is heavy on flowering prairie forbs rather than grasses so I sketched a planting diagram that places these plants along the edges of the park where they will be most visible to pedestrians and bicyclists. The plants are also grouped by bloom season so that each portion of the border will have the maximum number of blooms during the spring, summer and fall.

I'm finding that lots of people think of prairie as a big collection of weeds, a neglected landscape, wilderness even. According to this point of view, a carefully tended ornamental flower garden is orderly, cultured and more desirable in an urban setting. Prairie has a bit of an image problem, not because it is weedy and messy, but because its beauty is subtle and complex. It can be difficult for a casual observer to see the order, especially when they don't know the individual plants and animals.

Every prairie is different but each is a year-round circus, filled with an intricate and interdependent web of life. Every month of the growing season has its own explosion of flowers. New types of birds and bees and butterflies make their appearance throughout the year. In spring and summer the colors are bold and the animal life obvious. During the winter brilliant flowers give way to the reds and browns of grasses and seed pods. Color is replaced with structure. The prairie's various forms and shapes emerge. New life, in the form of seeds and pollinator eggs, waits silently in the soil for spring. Once you know this you cannot think of prairie as a weed patch.

By increasing the density of flowering species in the edges of the park I'm hoping to grab the attention of park visitors. If visitors stop to admire the flowers perhaps they will read the sign and scan the QR code. At the website they will learn about the carefully managed nature of the prairie and its interdependent plant and animal relationships that go unnoticed to the casual passerby. They will find information about which plants they can grow at home to attract butterflies and song birds to their own gardens. They will learn why doing so matters.

This project is about more than installing a few plants. A growing number of St. Louis residents practice sustainable gardening in one way or another. Many grow plants that feed and house our native birds, bees and butterflies. Unfortunately, these efforts support only a tiny fraction of the fantastic life diversity that once existed here. If environmental sustainability is to really take hold in the community we need highly visible projects that people can see, learn from, and replicate in their own spaces. We are a part of nature and we should play a more beneficial role in our own local environments. That is what this project is about.

Planting sketch from Operation Brightside's Neighbors Naturescaping Grant application.