Green Spring Gardens is a great place to enjoy nature.
By Kathryn Cooper
I and many others in the community are opposed to the planned “education pavilion” at Green Spring Gardens.
The nonprofit Friends of Green Spring Gardens (FROGS) has donated $250,000 for the project.
We raised the following concerns at community meetings in February and July and on the Park Authority’s website:
Lack of transparency and outreach with the community at the beginning of the project, instead of after months of planning.
Lack of sufficient oversight of recent construction projects at Green Spring Gardens, such as the Moon Gate memorial and adjoining Serenity Garden, with devastating consequences.
Most concerning, prioritizing manmade buildings – like the proposed pavilion and Moon Gate – at the expense of conservation of natural resources.
I hope that if residents in the community share these or other concerns, they too might post them on the Park Authority’s website for public comment. The comment period closes at 5 p.m. on Aug. 30.
Manmade hardscapes disrupt the natural landscape
Everywhere we look in our area, green spaces are being sacrificed to build manmade structures. Trees and plants are being destroyed and replaced with hardscapes that increase stormwater runoff into fragile urban streams like Turkeycock Run.
For the past few years, this has also been happening at Green Spring Gardens, where some healthy specimen trees have been removed and others jeopardized by construction to build memorials and other structures.
GSG is one of the rare “wild” places left in Mason District, and as such is greatly valued by our community. Many residents visit GSG to enjoy these wild places as an escape from the urban environment that surrounds us.
Related story: Concerns raised on proposed pavilion at Green Spring Gardens
The GSG Master Plan states that conservation of natural resources is one of the park’s major missions. It acknowledges that Turkeycock Run, which is in the Cameron Run Watershed, is in poor condition.
The pavilion, with its impervious surfaces, will increase stormwater runoff, which is the number-one cause of stream degradation. This project will cause further degradation of the fragile woodland stream valley below, for which millions of dollars have already been spent or are planned for ongoing restoration projects.
Park Authority and Green Spring Gardens staff claim that they value conservation, but such construction projects undermine their claims.
Huge costs of “restoration” projects
Over the past 15+ years, there has been a series of projects referred to as the Stream Stabilization Plan for Turkeycock Run, with a cost conservatively estimated to be over $9 million! That’s before the implementation of new tariffs, which will likely increase the cost of construction materials.
(I received this estimate last February from the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services. One of the Turkeycock Run projects was completed at GSG in 2008 at a cost of $420,000.)
Such “restoration” projects are not only extremely expensive; they are misnamed, since degraded streams can’t be fully restored to their original state.
These fragile ecosystems have evolved in their unique environments over centuries, even millennia. Once they’ve been damaged, they can’t be resurrected. Surely, we can all agree that it’s much less expensive and far more effective to protect streams and watersheds in the first place than to try to restore them after the damage is done.
An alternative suggestion for the FROGS donation
Based on the number of negative public comments at the meetings and submitted online, it’s obvious that the proposed pavilion is a controversial project.
Many of us, including FROGS members, would prefer the FROGS donation be used in a way that is less polarizing for our community and, perhaps, even bring our community together.
I urge the Park Authority, GSG staff, and the FROGS Board to abandon this controversial project and to consider using the $250,000 FROGS donation to build a series of bioswales and rain gardens on the slope from the plateau to the stream.
Related story: Green Spring Gardens pavilion project will be revised
Bioswales and rain gardens with native plants have been used effectively in many applications, even on steep slopes, to reduce stormwater runoff, which is the primary cause of stream degradation.
Such a series of gardens would help control the serious erosion on the sloping path from the plateau to the Turkeycock Run stream valley 30 feet below. They would also offer a beautiful and effective demonstration garden for teaching children and other visitors how to use native plants for stormwater conservation. Maintaining it could be the focus of an ongoing camp project at Green Spring Gardens.
Fallacy of equating education with manmade structures
Those in favor of the pavilion equate the building itself with education, but education is so much more than a building.
People – and especially children – learn by doing, by actually digging in the earth, walking in the woodlands, sitting on the grass under trees, experiencing and exploring nature firsthand by touching, smelling, and feeling.
We come to GSG to enjoy the outdoors, to commune with nature. Educating the community about conservation doesn’t require a building whose construction and resulting impervious surfaces will harm natural resources. It requires thoughtful projects like bioswales and rain gardens that demonstrate how to conserve and protect our limited natural resources.
My 8-year-old granddaughter recently attended the Natural Scientist camp at GSG and was excited to be outdoors, learning about plants and animals, and being joyful and inspired by nature.
It’s not too late for the Park Authority and GSG staff to reconsider how to use the quarter of a million dollars donated by FROGS.
I hope they will consider my alternative suggestion – to create bioswales and rain gardens, a more positive project that will protect rather than harm the environment – and perhaps even bring our community closer together.
I offer this suggestion as a conservationist who loves GSG and wants to protect its natural resources and hope others might share these views.
Kathryn Cooper, a volunteer at Green Spring Gardens since 2007, is a member of FROGS, Friends of Holmes Run, and the Potowmack Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society.
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