You may have noticed an eye-catching transformation in 2022 on our campus along the west side of Highway 67, just south of Highway 18. What used to be farm fields were filled with little tubes and thousands of seeds.
Three Pillars worked with the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) and the Village of Dousman to turn the land into Environmental Corridor to create a beautiful hardwood forest with a floor of native grasses and wildflowers. The tubes you see are called “tree tubes,” and they’re protecting the 1,500 new baby trees from critters who would otherwise make a meal of their tender leaves.
The Environmental Corridor Swap
At Three Pillars, our mission is to meet the needs of older adults in our community through high-quality housing and services. We consistently look for ways to provide our current and future residents and staff with industry leading high-quality care, programming, and accommodations. We knew our local community needed an expanded level of assisted living to meet their needs, and we knew we had to build it.
Since the best location on our campus for Riverside Lodge (the new CBRF Assisted Living opened in summer 2022) was protected Environmental Corridor, it was time to get creative. After a great deal of planning with local governing agencies, we settled on the solution allowing us to build and meet the needs of the older adults, while still protecting and honoring our nature-rich grounds.
We swapped out 5.5 acres of our Environmental Corridor land (near Main Street) to be cleared and built on , while designating a new 9-acre plot (off Highway 67) to turn into new Environmental Corridor.
So how does one simply turn a farm field into a hardwood forest? We relied on a local Lake Country expert: Keir Peckham, Vegetation Specialist and owner of Natural Landscapes, Inc. in Hartland, WI.
We visited with Keir to take a tour of the now-robust prairie and see firsthand how the Environmental Corridor at Three Pillars is growing.
4 сен 2024
