Piece by Piece Approach Has Created A Thriving Pollinator Garden in Pierce Park

It has been about seven years since a group of volunteers began converting a section of land in Pierce Park into a pollinator garden, but the space is thriving in part thanks to what existed on the property in the past.

“This area we’re working in was a lawn bowling facility,” said Rebecca Pettengill, a College Cultural Neighborhood resident who leads weekly volunteer sessions in the garden.

Pierce Park had been operated as a city-owned golf course from 1964 until it was closed in 2011. The approximately 67-acre property was not maintained, became overgrown, and attracted vandalism, fires, illegal dumping, and other criminal activity in addition to creating a neighborhood eyesore. Around 2018, the city wasn’t sure what it would do with the property, but a group of residents led by Desiree Duell was allowed to create a garden in that lawn bowling section. The wood edging that used to surround portions of the courts is still visible, but that footprint also left behind something immensely more valuable for the new project’s purposes.

“It has super great dirt,” Pettengill said. “That was sort of a little unintended bonus, it had beautiful dirt to work with.”

Pettengill describes the evolution of the garden as a “learning process” for the volunteers who have worked on it over the years, and credits Duell’s initial vision as inspiration for what the garden and eventually the entire park and nature preserve are becoming today. 

“Her idea was that this would become a nature space out here, and during and after the water crisis, it would be a place for healing and restoration,” Pettengill said. “So she had a big idea to kind of do what the neighborhood is doing now.”

That larger project began in earnest around 2021, with the formation of the Pierce Park Nature Preserve nonprofit organization. The city retains ownership of the property while the Pierce Park organization coordinates work for the wetland, pollinator meadows, and wildlife habitat development.

Organizations like the Community Foundation of Greater Flint and Genesee County Habitat for Humanity provided grants and support for the transformation and maintenance of the site and in 2023, a major three-year grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, through Michigan State University, supported the development of 12 acres of wet meadow and oxbow wetlands, seven culvert improvements, the addition of six acres of reforestation buffer, and nine acres of soil and prairie restoration along Gilkey Creek. A pavilion, which has hosted a concert series the past four summers, was also added through grand funding the group has raised. Jazz on Wheels has also hosted weekly performances there over the summer.

The pollinator garden has become an eye-catching centerpiece of the space, as it is located in a high-traffic area at the end of the parking lot and near the pavilion and walking trails. Plans for it have evolved over time as the small group of volunteers who have tended it have gained more expertise.

“It’s been a little bit of trial and error,” Pettengill said. “Originally, for the pathway, we put down a weed barrier and wood chips we got for free from the city. And then the weeds just came up through it. So we’ve been pulling that up and found ways to do it that work better.”

Around 2022, Pettengill connected with two Master Gardeners – Kimber Porter and Randee Pieper – who both have provided expertise on what to plant in the space and where. 

“I’ve really been learning so much over the last couple of years about the relationship between the plants and pollinators and what role each thing plays here, besides just being pretty to look at,” Pettengill said. 

The plants growing in the garden come from a range of sources and supporters of the project. Kiwanis provided a small grant to purchase some plants, and a private donor also paid for some native plants that were put in earlier this year. They grew zinnias that are thriving from seeds. There’s a crab apple tree that was purchased by a group of donors who wanted to honor a friend who had died. There are also coneflowers, blackeyed susans, ironwood, elderberrys, poppies, New Jersey sweet tea, spice bushes, asters, yarrow, liatris, different species of milkweed, gaura, and bee balm, among other plants, growing in the space. 

Many of those plants have been sourced from a variety of places – some were donated out of private gardens including from College Cultural Neighborhood Association president Mike Keeler, some were sourced from a landscaper who had dug them out of a yard they were working on and put them to the curb, and some came from other donors — basically, wherever Pettengill and other volunteers have been able to find them. Collectively it has created a space with a mix of colors and plant species, an appealing environment for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other wildlife.

“We’ve really just been piecing it together,” Pettengill said.

The garden has become so successful in growing different types of native perennial plants that now many can be transplanted into other areas of the nature preserve project.

“About a year ago, one of the things we realized about this garden was that it could become a sort of starter space to feed plants out into this prairie area to take over from all of the invasives there,” Pettengill said. “Last year, Mike (Keeler) came and dug a bunch of these up. I think he counted 74 plants that he took and planted around Gilkey Creek.”

They’ve also added signage that describes different plants and species in the garden to help visitors identify them and learn about the purpose of each within the ecosystem.

As the success of the garden has grown, so has the work. Volunteers continuously work on digging out and removing invasive species. They also have worked hard to fight aphids, small sap-sucking insects, who are common garden nuisances. Regular weeding and transplanting becomes more necessary as the plants mature and spread – the blackeyed susans, Pettengill pointed out, have thrived and regularly have to be dug out of pathways that they spread into and moved to new locations.

Pettengill is always looking for more volunteers who want to help with weeding and other tasks – they’ll even teach people who aren’t familiar with gardening but want to learn. Volunteers meet on Thursdays at 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and will continue throughout the fall as long as the weather stays nice. In 2024, just over 20 volunteers provided more than 250 hours of time helping with the garden. Pettengill said interested people can contact her through Facebook Messenger. 

“Last year, we worked into November,” Pettengill said. “And then in the spring, it depends on when it warms up and we start seeing weeds, but we usually start by April at the latest if it’s not too wet. If we don’t get started in March, really the weeds beat us to the punch.”

Pettengill has been close to the project for seven years, but doesn’t have a favorite aspect of it other than learning firsthand how everything in nature relies on everything else.

“I don’t know that I have a favorite thing, other than it’s just such an interesting experience to figure out how related everything is,” she said. “Our decisions about what to plant here impact which insects and butterflies live here, and then the birds too. There’s a tree back there (near the garden) with a whole bunch of finches in it, and I have to believe they’re up there because they have access to all of these seeds. And that’s why a lot of stuff spreads too, the birds and the squirrels. It’s just such an interesting process and kind of fun. And the toads don’t freak me out so much anymore.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that the city of Flint had transferred ownership of Pierce Park to the Pierce Park Nature Preserve nonprofit organization. That is incorrect, and has been clarified in the story above.