New flowers at the prairie

The lovely Clematis virginiana is finally blooming at the prairie. This is the first time it has bloomed since we planted it three years ago. Good things come to those who wait!

Read all about this diminutive plant here.

native garden in Shaw

Volunteers from the neighborhood are busy this morning planting a couple hundred native flowers, grasses and trees on the highway right-of-way at DeTonty and 39th. this makes one more addition to our big plan for transforming the highway turfgrass into a variety of native gardens along the northern perimeter of the neighborhood. among the plants being installed is blue aster, Squaw flower, palm sedge and sassafras tree.

Howell Prairie

Yesterday I visited the cold and frozen Howell Prairie in Weldon Springs. I first heard of this prairie last week at the holiday party of the North American Butterfly Association. Apparently, the site was the location of a massive Superfund clean-up a few years ago. Now a 150-acre prairie has been planted as part of the ongoing management plan.

When I arrived I was immediately struck by two things. First, the site is dominated by an enormous white hill. This thing is huge. It is visible in nearly every photo I took. Second, the prairie is part of a federal installation and is owned and administered by the Department of Energy.  There are lots of signs around telling you what can and can’t be done. See their website here.

Check out St. Louis in this map!

There is a large, impressive interpretive center on site with displays about the history and current management of the land. Here is what I learned.

The prairie is new. It was created in the winter of 2003 and 2004. The site was seeded by DJM Ecological Services with about 80 species of grasses and forbs. Jon Wingo, the owner of DJM, is also the President of the Missouri Prairie Foundation. You can see a blurb about the Howell Prairie on the DJM website. Ongoing management includes both mowing and burning. According to a person I spoke with at the site, the public is not allowed to observe the annual burns.

One corner of the disposal cell

The prairie surrounds the site’s central feature, the huge white hill. This hill is actually an enormous tomb filled with toxic waste generated at the site in years past. The “disposal cell”, as they call it, was engineered to safely sequester the waste for 1,000 years.

The disposal cell is 75 feet tall and covers 45 acres. It contains 1.5 million cubic yards of demolished buildings, equipment, containers, contaminated soil, and radioactive waste including uranium, radium and thorium.

The disposal cell is covered with rip rap.

Three small towns were located here in the early 1900’s but during the early years of WWII everyone was moved out to make way for a huge TNT production complex. The site later became a center for uranium ore processing. In the early 1960’s plans were developed to produce Agent Orange at the site, but this never came to fruition and the facility was closed in 1969.

1.5 million yards of contaminated fill below me

From 1941-1968 the site generated a variety of toxic chemicals and radioactive waste. Much of this was discarded into unlined ponds, abandoned in barrels and buildings and dumped into a nearby limestone quarry. The quarry is located less than a mile from a well field that supplied drinking water for St. Charles County. Nuclear waste was brought from other places and discarded here as well. Obviously, the area was heavily contaminated and very dangerous. The Department of Energy invested nearly a billion dollars in the clean-up. The interpretive center presents all this information and is definitely worth a visit.

Francis Howell High just to the northeast

I was there to see the prairie though so after hiking up to the top of the disposal cell (and seeing Francis Howell High School a bit less than ½ mile to the northeast) I descended and explored the prairie. I saw little wildlife - a few blackbirds and finches - but there were numerous deer tracks and the occasional raccoon scat.

The prairie is short - about waist to chest high - unlike the Heartland Prairie in Alton where grasses and forbs grow six to eight feet high. The plants are still getting established after a decade of growth.

The disposal cell is impossible to ignore.

I wonder if the slow growth rate has anything to do with the soil at the site. The underlying soil profile has been heavily altered. Although the entire area was prairie during the Nineteenth Century, up to several feet of contaminated soil was scraped away during remediation. Clean soil was brought in and spread across the surface. Soil fertility was amended but perhaps the new soil was not of the highest quality.

Hairy mountain mint

The topographic contours of the site were constructed so water drains away from the disposal cell. Clearly, very little remains of the original in situ environmental variables that contributed to the health of the presettlement prairie. I suppose it is a miracle that plants are growing at all! It would be interesting to talk to Jon Wingo and hear his thoughts and observations about the development of the prairie at this location.

Compass plant

Nonetheless, the Howell Prairie is a beautiful place and I recommend that anyone interested visit it. The plant growth is healthy. Even in the dead of winter there is a lot of green foliage at ground level and the dormant plant stalk are incredibly beautiful – full of intricate shapes, details, swaying and rustling in the wind.

The site is so large that a number of landscapes are present. Tall grass prairie dominates and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) seems to be the most common grass across the prairie.

Cattails

There are a couple of swampy areas where scrubby trees, cattails and Carex spp. are scattered among the prairie plants. Slopes seem to have a different species composition than hill tops. In several places one forb dominates with other species mixed in. These concentrations include asters, beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), bee balm (Monarda sp.), rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), and stiff goldenrod (Solidage rigida).

Grey coneflower stalks

Other species noted include compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), false indigo (Baptisia sp.), mountain mint (Pycnanthemum sp.), bush clover (Lespedeza capitata) and prairie clover (Dalea purpurea). There are many species of grass as well. I noticed a small stand of Iva annua in a less well drained area behind the disposal cell. I doubt this was sown intentionally. It likely represents a natural recolonization of this species from the Missouri River valley just a couple of miles away as the crow flies. You can access a partial list of species installed at Howell Prairie here.

Monitoring well #2038

If you visit don’t expect wilderness. The sound of traffic on Highway 40 (maybe a mile and a half to the north) was an omnipresent low hum. The Department of Energy continues an intensive groundwater monitoring program in the area. You are never out of sight of several of these clusters of bright yellow posts. As I mentioned earlier, the disposal cell is such an enormous feature that, as long as you are vertical, you never lose sight of it.

More monitoring wells at the tree line

My visit left me with a profound sadness over our seeming propensity to screw up everything we touch. At the same time I realize that our knowledge increases and we try to do better all the time. The people who built this place probably didn’t realize they were destroying the environment. They likely thought that dumping TNT residues into a huge unlined pit full of water was the best way to dispose of it.

One of the most shocking things I saw were pictures of soil cores taken from the disposal pits. Seeing those rainbow-hued soil cores really brings home what was going on here. I think the take home for me is that we should keep an open mind to the potential harmful effects of our actions. ‘Walk softly on the earth’ is a good position to start from. Think about how our purchases, our choices, our daily activities might be helping create some future environmental disaster. We might not prevent it. But we might.

As I was driving home the huge moon rose above O'Fallon. I looked at that gorgeous moon shining down on all that clutter - the stores with their garish lighted signs, Highway 40 full of automobiles belching carbon, and row upon row of hideous cheap suburban housing. I despaired again and felt ashamed that this is what we do - here on such a wonderful planet, under the gaze of this beautiful and mysterious moon.

Mayor's Sustainability Summitt speech

Well, now that the prairie is installed and winter is on us we are in waiting mode until spring when the temperatures rise and the plants emerge. Can't wait to see what comes up and how it looks. The prairie plants we planted should grow quickly and flower in 2014. Some of the seeds we planted will come up and a few of those may bloom as well. Other seeds will sprout over the next 2-5 years. Some of the plants we put in will eventually die or be out-competed by more vigorous species. The prairie is going to be an evolving landscape as new species emerge and others disappear.

The final action we took was to attend the Mayor's Sustainability Summit on November 9th and present our project to the mayor and to the city. The following is the text of my presentation. Once again, thanks so much to everyone who came out and lent a hand. This experience has been fantastic!

Speech at Mayor’s Sustainability Showcase
Good Morning! In the next five minutes I will give you some background on the Thurman Gateway Prairie Restoration Project, tell you why we chose the site, explain what we did and what we learned, and end with a brief view to the future.

Hwy 44 creates a physical barrier between the Shaw and Botanical Heights neighborhoods. Walking or biking between the neighborhoods is difficult and involves jockeying with cars on Grand Avenue, Tower Grove or Spring Avenue. Thurman Avenue is the other connecting street but it has been closed to automobiles for thirty years. This would be an ideal route for pedestrians and bicyclists but, until this summer, the street entrances were a tangled mass of trees, brush, vines and debris. The area looked dangerous and was avoided by many neighbors. The appearance of this area created a social barrier between the neighborhoods.

Last year a group of neighbors began a discussion about beautifying the area. Plans to repave the street, install new lighting and paint a bike lane on the pavement were discussed and approved. The underpass will be transformed into a pedestrian and bike friendly pocket park but no attention was given to the natural habitat potential of the site’s four sloping grassy sections of highway right-of-way.

This is not surprising. We often think of cities as human and domestic places, areas given to industrial activities, lost to nature. We think of countryside as the proper place for nature, wildlife, and wilderness. One result of this viewpoint is that we live with mile after mile of urban highway right-of-way cordoned off, planted with non-native grasses, and mowed intensively as if it were an enormous lawn. Native birds, butterflies and pollinators have no home in this landscape and neither do we!

Those of us who garden know this old viewpoint is nonsense! We know that cities are managed landscapes but nature is here! As cities grow larger and larger, where else will nature survive? We have to make room for wilderness all around us, not just in our nature reserve and parks, but also in our front yards, back yards, empty lots, parking lots, and highway right-of-ways.

So, knowing our neighborhood history, we already knew that Shaw was once a prairie called the Prairie des Noyers. Local conditions favor the prairie ecosystem and this is the kind of native landscape that makes sense in Shaw. We decided to landscape the new pocket park at the Thurman underpass with a beautiful prairie restoration project.

Thanks to 208 neighbors and friends who volunteered at least 624 hours of their time we cleared the site of debris, removed non-native vegetation, planted ¼ acre of prairie and mulched the entire area.

Thanks to funding from the Mayor’s Office and Brightside St. Louis we purchased and planted 1,150 live prairie grasses and flowering perennials. Just to make sure, we also broadcasted nine pounds of prairie and cover crop seeds. Our restoration project returns 78 species of native prairie plants to Shaw. These plants will in turn attract and feed native bees, butterflies and song birds.

We were assisted by the City Streets Department, the City Forestry Department, the Water Department, and the Missouri Department of Transportation. Volunteers came from the Shaw and Botanical Heights neighborhoods, The Word at Shaw, Faith in Action, the Lutheran Elders of the St. Louis district, Epworth Children and Family Services and from St. Louis University.

Along the way we decided to make the project relevant to every participating group. We developed a short introductory presentation that I delivered at every work day. This presentation included the passing of visual aids (pass these around now) demonstrating the flowers, the birds, the bees and butterflies that would be brought back through our volunteers’ hard work. The volunteers told us this approach got them excited to be a part of the project and made the work worthwhile. They could see the future outcome of their work and felt like they were a part of something important!

We also discovered that many neighbors do not understand the importance of prairie. Many have never seen a prairie. Others think prairies are ugly and weedy. In response, we decided to create a new non-profit organization, Sustainable in St. Louis (SiSL), to take the project to the next level: from a landscaping project to an educational project.

Through SiSL we have begun to gather a network of ecology professionals and skilled volunteers from across the Midwest to help us maintain and expand the prairie.

We have partnered with the North American Butterfly Association and the Audubon Society to track the return of pollinators and song birds to the site. We are developing educational opportunities for the neighborhood and the city including signs that identify native species, web pages to present the primary habitat data we collect and additional web pages to make available practical information about how you can create native habitat in your own space. Finally, we are partnering with local schools to develop curriculum and internship opportunities that will bring university, high school and elementary school students into the prairie.

Now! This is not where we started! We began with a landscaping project but we are on the way to something larger and richer. Thank you to the Mayor’s Office and Brightside St. Louis for funding the project. I hope each of you has the opportunity to walk or bike through the Thurman gateway in the years ahead to see it evolve.

This is a collaborative project and it will remain so. I invite each of you to not only visit us but to contact us with your suggestions and ideas for making the project bigger, better and more useful to everyone. Thank you!

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.

Volunteers from The Word at Shaw

On Sunday morning we had a van load of volunteers from The Word at Shaw come down and work at the Thurman Gateway Park in the rain!



We accomplished a great deal. All the debris littering the street and the turf areas -- bottles, cans, papers, broken glass, etc. --- was collected and bagged. The weeds in the pavement cracks were scraped up or pulled out.



Sprouts and limbs were removed from around the concrete barriers and the Thurman Street surface was swept. Perhaps the most difficult task accomplished was scooping up all the soil that has accumulated in the gutters. Several people worked on that and now rain water can flow freely into the drains, as designed.



At the end of October the Mayor's Office will review our project. Although the street will not be repaved until later in November, today's work helps us get a handle on the general appearance of the area.

This project is bringing a new level of sustainability to the Shaw Neighborhood by resurrecting a small area of the once extensive Prairie de Noyers. Thanks to everyone from TWAS for their help today. Thanks also for inviting us to the afternoon potluck at the church. What a blast!

The Thurman Gateway Project - recipient of the Mayor's Sustainable Neighborhoods Small Grant Competition grant



Jeanette McDermott, co-creator of Sustainable in St. Louis,
with a big thumbs-up for sustainability!

The Thurman Gateway Park Project is proceeding rapidly and this page is designed to inform neighbors of our progress. Check back often for updates. 11/9/13 update  9/21/13 update   9/8/13 update

The Thurman Gateway Park Project is a prairie restoration being installed along Thurman Avenue between DeTonty and Lafayette Streets, at the highway 44 underpass. You can see my original vision for the prairie restoration articulated here.

Kudos to the St. Louis City employees. We couldn't do
this without your help.

The Thurman Gateway Park Project was made possible by a grant to the Shaw Neighborhood Improvement Association from the Mayor's Office of Sustainability, St. Louis, through the Sustainable Neighborhoods Grant Competition. See the details of our grant proposal here. Additional funding is being sought from a variety of sources, including Operations Brightside's Neighbors Naturescaping grant and our alder persons.

Progress update: Site preparation is underway. The grass has been treated and unsightly weeds, weed trees and dead shrubs have been removed by the City of St. Louis Forestry Department. The large green concrete barriers have not been removed. They will eventually be replaced with more decorative barriers but Thurman Avenue will NOT be opened to automobile traffic between DeTonty and Lafayette.

Next steps: We need volunteers for three activity dates:
October 10th - general clean-up of the Gateway area
October 19th - planting the prairie with live plants
October 26th - finish planting the prairie with live plants and a "Seed and Stomp"

Project leaders for the Thurman Gateway Park Project are:
Monte Abbott - SNIA Beautification Chair
Jeanette McDermott - SNIA 1st Vice President

The Thurman Gateway Park Project Volunteer Committee is comprised of:
Monte Abbott
Lauren Arend
Chuk Byington
Emmett Coleman
Christina Dames
Sheri Goldsmith
Elaine Kidwell
Jeanette McDermott
Brian Rain

The following organizations are assisting with the Thurman Gateway Park Project as well as the larger Thurman Underpass Project:
Mayor's Office of Sustainability
City of St. Louis Urban Forestry Department
City of St. Louis Street Department
Missouri Department of Transportation
Sustainable in St. Louis
Missouri Botanical Garden
Missouri Extension Service
Nine Network of Public Media
Botanical Heights Neighborhood Association
Shaw Neighborhood Improvement Association
SNIA Beautification Committee
Urban Improvement Corporation
dtls Studio
The Nature Institute
Wild Ones
Missouri Master Gardeners
Missouri Master Naturalists
Missouri Prairie Foundation
Faith in Action
SLU's Make a Difference Day volunteers

The Thurman Gateway Park Project is a part of a larger project that began as the Thurman Underpass Design Competition begun in 2012. See the winning design for the underpass project here.

Currently the neighborhood organizations for Shaw and Botanical Heights are working together with Alderman Steve Conway and Alderwoman Marlene Davis, the Garden District Commission, MODOT and the City of St. Louis Streets and Forestry Departments to complete the Thurman Underpass project. The finished project will create a new pocket park that connects the two neighborhoods and is accessible only to pedestrians and bicyclists.