Warm Up This Saturday With These Projects

Yup, it’s cold outside, but we are due for a warming trend this weekend and we have two projects for you consider:

1) Pease Park / Shoal Creek Greenbelt – Taking it the Street (as in Lamar Blvd.)

9:30 am to 5 pm, help is needed for as much time as you can give – anywhere from an hour to all day.  Pizza will be available at 1 pm for all volunteers.  We’ll meet just north of the volleyball courts on the west side of Lamar Blvd on Shoal Creek Greenbelt/Pease Park.  We have a mountain of mulch and dillo dirt to shovel, haul and spread and lots of wildflower seeds to sprinkle into the ground.

Map:

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2) Tree Planting at Houston Elementary School

The City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department’s Urban Forestry Program is in need of some helping hands this Saturday, Feb 5. The Forestry Program has 125 trees that need to be planted at Houston Elementary School Park and volunteers are in short supply. No experience necessary. Just bring some gloves if you have them and some clothes you don’t mind getting dirty — as well as a good attitude — and we will take it from there. The planting will begin at 9:00 AM and continue until all the trees are planted, probably around noon. The park address is 5409 Ponciana Dr, off of Stassney Ln. Help us green up your park and make Austin a little bit shadier!

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Sunday: 6-9 pm – Mid-Summer Night’s Clean

Join REI, the Austin Ridge Riders and the Austin Parks Foundation for a Mid-Summer Night’s Clean on Shoal Creek Greenbelt on Sunday, 7/25 from 6 pm to 9 pm.  We’ll meet at the GSD&M parking on West 6th St just west of Shoal Creek for clean-up and trimming projects and refreshments afterward – Sign up on the REI website.

A Few Park Updates for Friday

A few updates to share from Parks around Austin:

First, we were out at Pease Park / Shoal Creek the other day with several folks from Parks and Watershed looking at some of the previous experiments that we did with demo plots, rock work, tree planting, etc. in anticipation of the big restoration project coming to that area.

Look at all of the new growth in the center of the tree!

We began at the Parking lot on parkway, just south of 24th St where earlier this year, PARD Operations (thank you Danny!) pulled back a portion of the parking around a certainly over 300 year old massive Oak tree, PARD Operations and Forestry performed a root zone invigoration with an airspade, applied dillo dirt and mulch and re-used the stone bollards we had left over from Republic Square phase 1a to surround the site. (Thanks Walter and Danny)   Further, They Might Be Monkeys, local arborists, did some pro-bono pruning and painting of the tree (thanks Walter)

Picture of Tree in Late Feb 2010 showing just completed root work and bollards installed

Pretty Amazing!

Massive Oak that recently received Root Zone Invigoration at Brush Square

Second, Work continues over at Brush Square with the Art In Public Places Courtyward with big stone pieces being moved into position.  Slow and careful work for sure, but progress is being made.

Courtyard Project continues....

Finally, while not directly park related, another portion of the Lance Armstrong Bikeway has been completed with the installation of a bridge over Waller Creek as well as additional dedicated bikeway from Red River to the frontage of IH-35.  Here’s a photo…   About 8 people on bikes passed me while taking these pictures around 11 am on a Friday…

New Trailhead at Pease Park

New ramp and trail connection at Pease Park / Shoal Creek

The Austin Parks and Recreation Dept’s Construction Crew is working on a new trail head and access point for the Shoal Creek Trail at Pease Park on Kingsbury St..  On Friday they constructed a ramp to provide easy accessible access to the trail from Kingsbury St. and also allow deliveries of mulch, trees and dillo dirt that the Trees for Pease folks ask for all of the time.  This replaces the old “route” which went up the middle of the park and is now populated with newly planted trees and in ground irrigation.

new trail looking south to new ramp at Kingsbury

Our thanks to James Young and his construction crew as well as Tony Arnold and Marty Stump of the Parks Department’s planning, construction and design team.  The crew has another day or so of work, packing down the granite gravel, refinishing the edge of the ramp and along the trail and installing another small section of trail deeper in the park to allow vehicles to turn around.

Thank you Spring – Donation for Shoal Creek Trail Announced

On March 3^rd the developers of Spring Condos, a new downtown residential tower, announced a $50,000 contribution to the Austin Parks Foundation. The contribution is based on a formula of $500 for each new Spring resident, and will target needed public improvements to the lower Shoal Creek Trail, which have been called for since the 1990s. When all the units at Spring are sold, the total contribution will top $100,000.

Spring Partner Perry Lorenz Presents APF ED Charlie McCabe with the check

The developers gathered today at the Shoal Creek pedestrian bridge @ noon to make the announcement with Mayor Lee Leffingwell, City Councilmember Chris Riley and numerous parks and downtown advocates.

The developers of Spring –Diana Zuniga, Perry Lorenz, Larry Warshaw, and the late Hon. Robert Barnstone–set a standard for providing community benefits for downtown development during their zoning case several years ago. This led to a string of other developers offering similar benefits, leading to millions of dollars in pledges and contributions for parks and trails, new sidewalks, and affordable housing.

2009 – Over 220 new trees at Pease Park

Thanks to Richard Craig and Trees for Pease, as well as help from Walter Passmore and PARD Forestry Staff, plus our helpful consultants Jill Nokes and Will Pickens, we have over 200 new trees planted at Pease Park with irrigation to each.  40 more went in this week thanks to PARD Forestry staff.  We still a number left, but a great job by all, we’ve collectively learned a lot.  Here’s a few pictures from earlier today.

Trees & Sprayground at Pease

Here’s a picture of the new sprayground under construction at Pease, replacing a old fill/draw wading pool.

While I was there, I checked out the 100 trees planted back in February.  Thanks to our great Trees for Pease group, the trees are all doing well in 100 degree heat with the irrigation system that Trees for Pease raised all of the funds to install.

Flood Stage on Shoal Creek

We were headed south on Lamar Blvd toward downtown on Sat night when we noticed a huge wave of water and debris coursing down Shoal Creek at 29th St.  As we drove south we soon saw that we outpaced the leading edge of the wave.  So, we stopped at 9th St in Duncan Park and waited for the wave to arrive.  About 10 minutes later, at 6:35 pm, it arrived, quickly rising to eight feet (according to the USGS Flood Gauge at 12th St.) Wow – all of the debris: logs, wood, and sadly lots of trash.  This all came from upstream, as we only got a small amount of rain Saturday in Central Austin.  Here’s a picture from the 9th St bridge (sorry for the quality.)  The trail is under water at this point, at least for a few hours.

Remember, even if its not raining on you, its raining somewhere else.  Be very careful – this time of year especially – along our creeks and trails.  Here’s a picture from Duncan Park as the wave rolled through.

Tall Flowering Plants @ Shoal Creek Demo Plot

In October 2007, we installed 9 demonstration restoration plots to see if we could plant with native flowers and grasses areas that had been heavily used by folks enjoying the park.  We tilled soil, added compost and other treatments and spread seed.  By then, the drought, which continues to this day, hit Central Texas.  Results have been somewhat promising in the spring months, but then beaten down by hot summers and dry falls and winters.

Well, sometimes even a little rain can help.  Our recent rains have allowed a number of plants to sprout, including these, seen in the demo plot along Lamar Blvd just south of 24th St.  We’ll take this as a good sign.

100 Trees for Pease!

On Saturday, Feb 21, several hundred volunteers converged on Pease Park to plant the first 100 trees for Pease.  It took a village to get them purchased, placed, planted and irrigated!  We’d like to thank the following for all of their hard work:

• Richard Craig, who formed Trees for Pease, raised the bulk of the funds (nearly $20,000 to date) for irrigation, the landscape plan and some of the trees.  Our thanks to the Old Enfield Neighborhood Association, who donated $1500 for some of the trees planted Saturday.  Richard also supplied coffee, breakfast tacos and snacks for the volunteers who arrived early.

• Jill Nokes for assistance with selection, placement, planting and much more.

• Our thanks to Geo Growers who donated planting mix, to PSP Landscape, who carefully hauled and installed three big tooth maples and to the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Dept, especially, the Forestry group, who brought truckloads of dillo dirt, mulch, purchased the trees, hauled and place them.  Thanks to Brack Green who coordinated hauling and placement efforts and Emily King who ordered the trees.

• Our great irrigators at Avery’s Landscape – especially Richard, who got the bubbler irrigation working on Sat afternoon in record time, despite a break or two.

• TreeFolks, who’s board members (Marcus, Colleen, Carlene) did demo tree plantings and assisted folks in planting their trees.

• Council members Leffingwell and Martinez as well as Council Candidate Riley who planted a tree.

• Members of the Friends of the Forest (Eyeore’s B-day) who came in the afternoon and continued the work started on Feb 14, installing more check logs, spreading dillo and mulch on the hillside.

We appreciate all of your hard work.