The city is in the midst of a $100,000 project to restore and expand a well-established wildflower meadow in Eliza Howell Park less than a year after Detroit construction crews ripped it up.
The “meadow disaster,” as neighbors and environmental advocates have termed it, stemmed from a lack of awareness about the site’s natural significance and reinforces the importance of the city’s upcoming work to address weaknesses in its land use planning strategy.
The city is in the beginning stages of working with community partners to craft a master plan for each of Detroit’s 23 destination parks. First up is Eliza Howell, with sessions set to start in late summer, according to Megan Woods, communications manager for the city’s General Services Department.
Leonard Weber, a naturalist with deep connections to the northwest Detroit park, said the August 2023 road project devastated Eliza Howell’s 0.3 acre meadow because the crews doing the work “didn’t know.”
Prior to breaking ground to repave the deteriorated road running through the park, the city held community engagement sessions to solicit input and present the proposal to residents.
Absent from the plans, Weber said, was the precise placement and installation timeframe for bioswales–shallow, vegetated ditches dug out to collect and filter stormwater. One of those bioswales was added in the heart of the meadow which had been established by a 1999 EPA grant and maintained ever since.
“We didn’t know (the meadow would be removed as part of the project), so we couldn’t present it to them (the city),” said Weber, noting community members were consulted on other aspects of the construction plan.
“It is very difficult to comprehend why we were not consulted on the location of the bioswale, the most important use,” he said.
Juliana Fulton, Detroit’s deputy chief parks planner, acknowledged that it will take some years for the new planting to reach the wildlife value of an established meadow. However, she pointed to the overall improvement in the park.
“There was universal eagerness and support for repairing the road, which was in terrible disrepair. We didn’t anticipate the full extent of the bioswale, but it was necessary for the road construction. It will take thousands of gallons of stormwater out of the system and was planted with a meadow mix. These changes will be a huge positive asset in the long run,” Fulton said.
The city has also seeded two additional acres of wildflower meadows in Eliza Howell Park.
Weber said that his years of experience with park maintenance crews in Detroit have generally been positive and characterized by cooperation regarding appropriate times to mow. However, the scenario is evidence of the consequences of operating without a written plan for land use.
Jeff Klein, Detroit’s deputy chief of landscape architecture, stated in a Jan. 7 visioning meeting for Eliza Howell that his aim is to have plans clearly outlining the functions of various park areas and the upkeep that goes along with them.
“Just as a swingset is an asset and needs regular maintenance, natural spaces need the same,” Klein said.
Natural spaces management competes with other priorities in Detroit’s 2022-2032 Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan. The plan lists 48 strategies, broken into three phases, with highest priority generally given to increasing accessibility for all residents, particularly those who live more than a half mile walk from any park.
However, University of Michigan student Emily Brent believes that up-front investment in an inventory and maintenance strategy for natural spaces could ultimately save the city money.
“The city faces a huge mowing burden. It needs to figure out how to make a park which is being mowed regularly look good without all the mowing.”
Brent is part of a team of U-M students working at the request of Sidewalk Detroit, a place-based arts and culture nonprofit that has been working in Eliza Howell since 2015, to create a land inventory at Eliza Howell Park as their capstone project in landscape architecture.
“Once we map all the uses, we will go into hotspots of biodiversity, such as forest and prairies, for natural communities inventories of plants and animals. We will also outline maintenance plans that go along with different areas so they have a better grasp of how to care for the park.”
Nicky Marcot, park strategist for Sidewalk Detroit, said the meadow at the south end of Eliza Howell was a unique Detroit space that held potential for wildlife to thrive and for residents to interact with that wildlife.
“That meadow attracted hundreds of visitors every year because of all the gorgeous butterflies you could view and the diverse amount of Michigan wildflowers,” Marcot said. “But without increased resources, natural area management will continue to be a challenge for the city.”
Klein noted in an email that he is currently working with community partners to undertake a $1.5 million habitat restoration project at Palmer Park and hopes to apply lessons learned from that collaboration to scale in the city.
“The current work that Sidewalk Detroit is doing with U-M is a great example of how our efforts at Palmer Park are starting to pay off as GSD is better equipped to work alongside these partners and share resources,” Klein said.
Brent said she anticipates that her land use map will be incorporated into the process. She hopes it can help streamline creation of a template which can be used in other areas.
“We want to show how to do this work so that the city can see how to carry it out,” she said.
Fulton agrees: “We are aiming to create a comprehensive, robust plan for each park, geospatially located, and agreed upon with the community,” she said.