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Ypsilanti residents have been coming together to beautify Prospect Park.
Last weekend residents from several surrounding neighborhood associations helped work on the park’s Luna Lake Native Plants Restoration Project.
Tomorrow residents will be spreading 400 yards of mulch around the park’s playground.
City Councilmember Peter Murdock, D-Ward 3, was at Prospect Park during the community project Saturday, called the Luna Lake Hoedown. He attributed the cooperation to help the park to a meeting held this spring, called the Prospect Park Summit.
Murdock said the meeting set up a framework for the surrounding neighborhoods to share in regular park litter pick-up and cleaning, new signage for the park as well as these work projects. He said several dead trees were removed from the park as well.
The Miles, Prospect Park, East Prospect Park and Historic East Side neighborhood associations have been splitting weekends to regularly pick up trash and perform small maintenance to the park, Murdock said. He said the work is being done under the city’s new adopt-a-park program.
There were more than 20 residents out Saturday, planting native plants and spreading mulch in what was once a high-maintenance, man-made pond on the southern edge of the park. Area resident and landscape architect Rachel Blistein is spearheading the Luna Lake project.
“She’s been doing a great job,” Murdock said.
Blistein said the pond was created several decades ago, and contained a pump and fountain. She said the city wasn’t able to maintain the pond and it eventually became neglecting, nonfunctioning and overgrown.
“People were using it as a big giant trash can,” she said.
In its place, there is now a quazi-rain garden lined with mulch and compost, and filled with native plants able to withstand the flooding that comes from the pond’s clay bottom.
“It fills up with water, but it’s normally dry by mid June,” Blistein said.
She said the area’s neighborhoods had been collecting money for several years to rehab the pond. By the time she became involved two years ago, the group had collected $2,000. Last year the group cleared all the leaves and weeds from the pond, spread 50 yards of compost and mulch and planted several plants.
Last weekend the group spread more compost, replaced some plants and added new vegetation.
“It really is a multi-neighborhood collaboration,” Blistein said.
She said people brought their own tools to help and were treated to lunch from Sidetrack and live entertainment from local musicians. Murdock said he hopes for a good turnout tomorrow, and tools will be needed, especially a “Bob Cat.”
“We’re hoping (maintaining the park) gets more contagious,” Murdock said. “Already, the city can tell a difference.”