Cherokee Generating Plant, Denver, Colorado (photo from bizjournal.com)
“Do you want to design a wildscape at a power plant?” asked Connie Holsinger, a board member for Audubon Colorado. “Xcel Energy asked us to add wildlife habitat to Cherokee Generating Station. It’s on the bluffs above the Platte River in industrial northwest Denver.”
It was 2005, and I had just just won an award for restoring my own industrial site, a half block of formerly blighted property where my late husband and I were building our home in the small mountain town where we lived. Our success at restoring the property’s block of channelized urban creek and the native bunchgrass wildflower grassland that would be the yard of our house had piqued my interest in the use of native high-desert plants to reclaim industrial sites.
The future wildscape site. (Plant offices at the top of the slope, photo shot from the catwalk the employees walk going to and from work in the power plant.)
“Maybe,” I said. Which is how I ended up standing on the catwalk of a coal-fired power plant on a cold fall afternoon listening to the roaring grinder that pulverized fuel before a conveyor belt carried it in to be burned in huge furnaces. I snapped a few photos of the future wildlife garden site, a steep south-facing slope gouged into the bluffs of the wide river valley between the power plant, a transmission yard, and the plant offices.
I met with the site engineer and plant manager, who seemed quite skeptical about the whole idea, and scrambled around the slope. It was dominated by invasive weeds, plus a planting of daylilies and bearded iris, and one Italian cypress, partially deformed by a spring blizzard.
I was captivated. Each plant employee coming and going from work passed by the site. What better site to show off the beauty and durability of gardening with native plants for wildlife habitat than on this gritty industrial site?
Blanketflower (Gallairdia aristata), a tough and self-seeding Great Plains native.
By the time I drove home over the mountains the next day, I had already begun to formulate a plant list in my mind, heavy on native prairie grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs that would thrive on a dry, exposed slope and would provide durable beauty, as well as healthy bird and butterfly habitat. I called Erica Holtzinger, a landscape designer who worked with native and xeriscape plants in Denver, and asked if she would partner with me . After she thought it over, she called back, “Yes, if you do the plant list.”
“Okay,” I said. “If you and your colleagues draw the design.” She agreed. I drove back to Denver and met Erica at the site, which looked even grittier than before. After getting over her initial “what did I get myself into?” response, she caught my excitement.
By the following spring, we had formulated a plant list, drawn a beautifully illustrated plan, and we were presenting our ideas to power-plant management.
To our surprise, they liked the wildscape plan. By the end of the meeting, the site engineer, who we later learned was a passionate gardener, was talking enthusiastically about what heavy equipment he’d need to carve the paths in the slope, where to get boulders, and when we should plan to plant. He even suggested providing drinking water for wildlife.
Erica looked at me. “Would Richard carve drinking basins in some of the boulders?” (My husband was a sculptor who worked with native boulders, considering them “ambassadors of the Earth.”)
Sculptor Richard Cabe carving drinking basins in boulders set in the slope of the wildscape-in-progress. (Power plant and cooling towers in the background.)
Indeed he would. After the switchbacking paths had been carved into the slope, Richard visited with the site engineer, selected boulders to be placed in a way that mimicked strata lines in the natural bluffs, and carved the drinking basins in situ.
A funny thing happened as he worked, balanced on a boulder using his diamond-tipped grinder and other carving tools, a protective mask on his face, and fans to blow away the rock dust. The plant employees, who had bitterly opposed spending money on the garden, stopped on the catwalk on their way to and from their shifts, watching him. Pretty soon they were calling down questions: What was he doing? What kind of blades did he use? Why carve those basins? How deep were they? What kind of wildlife did he think would use them?
That summer, Xcel organized volunteer planting days. Dozens of employees turned out, including some who had opposed the wildscape.
Lewis flax, blanketflower and native grasses and shrubs begin to take hold on the industrial slope.
By the next spring, the slope was transformed, dotted with drifts of wildflowers like Lewis flax (Linum lewisii), blanketflower, wine cups (Callirhoe involucrata) and peach-colored desert mallow (Sphaeralcia munroana). Bluebird houses made by a plant worker rose on posts in sight of the catwalk, and employees began reporting seeing butterflies and songbirds.
Restored wildlife habitat in the shadow of a coal-fired power plant.
The Cherokee Wildscape received a national award, was featured in an article in the Rocky Mountain News, and Xcel employees showed it off to groups that toured the power plant, from school kids to civic leaders. (Because of post-9/11 security concerns, the Wildscape is not open to the public except for organized tours.)
And it taught me a priceless lesson: native plants restore relationships–including our own connection to and delight in nature and all the beauty it offers.
© 2012, Susan J. Tweit. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
About Susan J. Tweit
Susan, what a great story of hope. I love the idea of the drinking basins in the boulders. Congratulations!
Ginny Stibolt recently posted..Attracting Damsels & Dragons
Ginny, Thanks. The boulder drinking basins came from researching an article I wrote about the movie actress Rene Russo’s restoration of her piece of the Santa Monica Mountains in California. After Russo and her crew had cleared out the non-native trees from her native California oak woodland, her landscape designer, Stephanie Wilson Blanc, wanted to add ways for wildlife to drink, so they had shallow basins carved in boulders, watered by the drip irrigation system. I visited Russo in writing the article, saw the drinking basins, and so when Erica Holtzinger and I looked at the slope at Cherokee with the plant engineer and he suggested drinking water for wildlife, those basins came to mind. Since my Richard was a sculptor of native rocks, it all came together beautifully. (BTW, the article about Russo’s restoration of her native southern Cal landscape is here: http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/audubonathome/audubonathome0507.html)
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Adventures in Caregiving: Dad’s off
oh how wonderful to see that bleak and daunting site, become so enticing. You really do live, be the change you want to see!
Diana of Elephant’s Eye recently posted..Your point of view
Diana, That is the best compliment you could give me–thank you! I aim to live my beliefs; like everyone, I don’t always succeed, but I do try. I think that being the change we want to see in our everyday lives is our most enduring power for good in this world….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Adventures in Caregiving: Dad’s off
Susan, it’s so uplifting to hear these success stories. The site was literally transformed from blight to bloom, and is now bringing beauty and respite to people and creatures. Fantastic!
Sue Dingwell recently posted..Bear-y Delight
Sue, It IS uplifting, isn’t it? Whenever I wonder why I do this work, I think of places like the Cherokee Generating Station, and it makes me smile when I remember, “Oh yeah, that’s it.” It’s seeing people fall in love with nature in a place where they never expected to have a connection.
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Looking Back, Feeling My Way Forward
So awesome! What a victory! Just inspires to roto till my lawn away this week (hint hint, even though my wife is against it–but I’m just putting in buffalo grass in spring).
Benjamin Vogt recently posted..Hear Me at Vegfest or the Radio
Benjamin, I hope that the lawn re-do is successful, and wins over your wife. I think of my home ground as the place I try out the ideas for my designs and what I write. So maybe you can convince her that your yard is your laboratory….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Looking Back, Feeling My Way Forward
I’m trying to point out that buffalo grass is short, and that, if we ever have a prairie to restore (which we both want) I need to learn something about the process of reclamation. Though 1,000 square feet of suburban monoculture is not a great lesson, it’s a start!
Benjamin Vogt recently posted..Hear Me at Vegfest or the Radio
It’s true that replacing a lawn with buffalograss isn’t the same as restoring a whole prairie, it will give you some sense of reclamation (or restoration, as I prefer to call it), because you’ll have to deal with all of the weeds that will want to colonize your newly exposed soil just as you would with a prairie restoration. What you won’t get is the joy of watching plants return on their own timescale, sometimes long after you’ve given up on them, and the surprise of species whose seeds were in the soil just waiting for the signals from their community to germinate. (Of course, you could do a small prairie patch on one edge or in one corner, just to play….)
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Looking Back, Feeling My Way Forward
If I read the story correctly, planting happened in 2006. It’s been 6 years now. The photos look like they were made in the first couple of years after planting.
How’s it holding up? Are the natives keeping the non-natives at bay? Any woody shrubs and/or trees providing structure and nesting sites?
Mark Turner recently posted..Observe and Control the Light
Mark, Planting did happen in 2006, and I’m sorry I don’t have any newer photos. The slope has filled in, and the shrubs we planted, including plains yucca (Yucca glauca) and skunkbrush sumac (Rhus trilobata), have grow enough to provide good nesting habitat. It’s not a tree site (it’s a steep south-facing slope in what would be native mixed-grass prairie), but the larger species of bunchgrass (little bluestem and switchgrass) are also providing good cover. It requires weeding because as with any industrial area, there’s a continuing source of annual weeds (particularly kochia and tumbleweed), but it’s generally been very successful. The plant workers continue to turn out for weeding and planting weekends as needed, and to show it off on tours.
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Looking Back, Feeling My Way Forward
Susan this restores my soul and gives me great hope as we can reclaim the land one garden at a time.
Donna@Gardens Eye View recently posted..Gardens Eye Journal-October 2012
Donna, I think we can reclaim the land, and it’s got to be one garden at a time, because that’s how we learn, slowly, and with our hands in the soil and the plants….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Kindness as a creative act
Great article! I, too, would like to see more recent pictures. I hope that you can include some eventually. Follow up is so important! It proves the value of restoration.
Beatriz Moisset recently posted..Pollinator Conservation Short Course
Beatriz, I agree about follow-up, and I hope to return to Cherokee to shoot more photos. It’s not easy as I live three hours from the plant site. But one of these days I’ll be over that way….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Kindness as a creative act
Susan, what a wonderful tale of how waste space can become something so benecial in so many ways! Congratulations to you and Erica for your vision and implementation. And the fact that many of the plant workers turn out for weeding exercises is another bit of evidence that gardens (especially ones that attract wildlife) can help restore a feeling of connection to one’s community…something that’s increasingly lost as society has become mostly urbanized in the last half century. You even employed an artist – this is the type of local economy we should all encourage!
Ellen Sousa recently posted..Vegetable Gardening the Natural Way
Ellen, Thank you. It was a fascinating and difficult and beautiful project, full of twists and turns and complications that this short blog post couldn’t really capture. But what I took away from it is just what you focused on, the restoration of a connection with the land for the plant workers, in a way they never imagined they needed or wanted. As for the artist, well, he was my late and much missed love, the Richard whose heart and art warmed my life for the better part of three decades. So employing him was kind of natural.
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..News: Love Every Moment & Young Arts