Just a block from downtown Holland, Michigan on the banks of the Black River is an old industrial site comprised of several acres of land which at various times in the city’s history had been the city dump, Board of Public Works water works, BPW electrical sub-station, and associated buildings and parking areas. Over time this prime real estate was redeveloped into community parks and garden space through many phases.
Wildside Associates’ Brian Creek designed and directed the construction of a 6 acre tulip display garden for Holland’s annual Tulip Festival on the site of the old BPW facilities following site restoration by the BPW. Soils on this site were very poor fill and were filled with weed seeds. (There was also a small but significant amount of methane gas leaching out of the old dump into the soil. The methane pushed out gasses that should be in the soil like oxygen and carbon dioxide, resulting in high and mysterious plant mortality until we identified the cause and developed remedial action.) The project involved replacing or amending over 5 acres of soils, frequent tillage of the area to exhaust the weed seed bank, developing a grading plan to control water and soil movement on site and to allow for public use, construction of large tulip fields, berms, retaining walls, and pedestrian circulation. The site was screened from nearby commercial uses with several large pine and white cedar trees moved to the site with tree spades.
On the capped city dump, Brian designed and developed an eleven acre prairie in three units separated by mowed walking trails to simplify management with prescribed fire. Again, soils were quite poor and required amendment and final grading for control of stormwater on site. Using data from the Michigan Natural Features Inventory Brian developed a seed mix of prairie species native to west Michigan and a cover crop of oats to hold the soil until the prairie was established. From the beginning Brian had sought and received the approval of the city to allow management that included controlled burning each spring of all or part of the prairie. As this was done right downtown, it provided a great opportunity to provide public education on fire dependent ecosystems. Brian Creek wrote the burn plan and served as burn boss with park employees conducting the burn, with the city fire department in attendance as back-up. Under Brian the burns had a perfect safety record and accomplished their objectives in all except the first year after establishment when vegetation was too sparse to carry fire.
