Hi, my name is Erica Sniegowski, I’m a program and project manager with the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District. I’m going to give you an introduction to the Phase 3 habitat restoration work that is happening at our office site.

The vision for the habitat restoration on our site is to restore habitat in the face of aggressive invasive plant species like buckthorn, and to demonstrate for property owners within the district how to stabilize soils, control invasive species, and increase plant diversity in an urban setting. This work is guided by an ecological master plan that was developed by Barr Engineering, which is available on our website, and the work is occurring in a phased approach. We have completed phase one and two and are working on phase 3, which is the final phase.

The goals for the habitat restoration on our site are to increase plant and animal diversity on our site, to support pollinators, limit soil erosion, highlight native plants, and demonstrate buckthorn removal and restoration techniques for those that live, work, and play in our watershed district.

As I mentioned, the habitat restoration work on our office site has occurred in phases. Phase one began in February 2017 with buckthorn removal and was followed in May and June of 2017 with planting. Part of the site was planted in native plants, and the other part of the phase one site was planted with fescue. This was to demonstrate for those interested in buckthorn removal different planting techniques and different maintenance regimes that might need to be undertaken following buckthorn removal.

Phase two occurred in November 2017 and began with buckthorn removal and was followed by a full native planting of the site in September 2018. We’ve also done volunteer buckthorn removal events and volunteer native plug planting events in both phase one and phase two.

Phase three of the restoration will take place on two different parts of our site. We are converting part of the fescue area that was part of the phase one planting into native. We’re choosing to reduce the amount of fescue we have and increase the amount of native planting we have on this section. The other part of phase three will be buckthorn removal on this section of the property, and it will not only include buckthorn removal from the Discovery Point property but will also include buckthorn removal from City of Eden Prairie property.

Following buckthorn removal, we will plant this area with native woodland species of plants. This work will begin in the spring of 2021. The work will be done with a forestry mower, which is the machine shown in the picture. This machine knocks down and shreds up the buckthorn, and this work is anticipated to take about two days on our property. The work will be done by Minnesota Native Landscapes, which is a contractor that does buckthorn removal and native planting. The planting plan includes planting 50 shrubs and five trees and planting with a woodland seed mix in the area that’s shown in the picture right now and a savannah seed mix in the fescue replacement area.

During the approximately two days that the forestry mower is working on our site and the City of Eden Prairie’s property, there will be some trail closures on the Cardinal Creek Trail. This is for the safety of pedestrians as they’re walking along the trail, as the forestry mower can send debris flying through the air, so please watch for signs that the trail is closed and respect those trail closures.

We’re excited to embark on the last phase of our restoration and to reflect on the impacts of the restoration on our site. In that, we’ve planted over 275 shrubs and 100 trees, 2,000 native plugs, and put in over two and a half acres of native seed, and brought in over 100 new native species to our site and removed over two and a half acres of buckthorn. We’ve also logged hundreds of volunteer hours since we brought volunteers in to help remove buckthorn and plant native plugs.

If you’re interested in helping, visit our website ninemilecreek.org/discovery-point and watch for volunteer events there in the future, and we also have our planting lists available if you’re interested in the plants that we’ve installed at our site. If you’re interested in doing habitat restoration work at your site, we also have grants available. Go to ninemilecreek.org/grant and you can view the information available. Those projects must be located within the boundaries of the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District, and we have different levels of grants available for different sites.

If you live in the City of Eden Prairie, the City of Eden Prairie also has landscaping rebates available, which can include rebates for buckthorn removal, so you can check those out at edenprairie.org/water-rebates. If you have questions about phase 3 or about any of the habitat restoration work we’ve been doing at Discovery Point, please feel free to reach out. My name is Erica Sniegowski and I can be reached at esniegowski@ninemilecreek.org or you can give me a call: 952-358-2276. Thanks.