Memorial Gardens in recovery mode thanks to volunteers
Water inundation damaged many plants in the Memorial Gardens.
Damage to one of the garden's trees caused by an invasive beaver.
Donna Teynor stands in the Memorial Gardens. On Friday, July 26, she and other volunteers came down to the island to restore the gardens after the flood waters receded. (Steve Van Kooten/Courier Press)
By Steve Van Kooten
On Friday, July 26, as the heat peaked during the middle of the day, volunteers descended on the island to start the restoration of the Memorial Gardens. Flood waters reached over 21 feet earlier in July, which inundated most of the gardens and stripped away grass and plants from the ground.
“It was covered. The whole thing was covered. It took out a lot of the plants and left the trees,” Cindy Halvorson said. “There were logs everywhere.”
Halfway up one of the tree trunks, a piece of tape marked the water level at 20.55 feet. With the water at that height, the majority of the gardens were submerged. Under her feet, the grass was tough and brown, and many of the bushes had turned gray. Flowers, vegetables, herbs and other plants were decimated when the waters came in.
“It drowned a lot of them out,” she said.
Halvorson said the city’s street department had to remove one log from the entrance to the gardens because it was too large for the volunteers to move or dispose of.
Trees were also removed because of an invasive beaver that came in with the flood waters.
“We had beaver damage,” Donna Teynor said. “Several trees in the garden and several more on the island.”
“The beaver did its job, for sure,” Halvorson said.
After cleaning out the debris, volunteers sanitized the benches, chairs and other equipment, including the children’s musical instruments, in the gardens.
“It doesn’t smell as bad as it did a week ago,” said Teynor. “It was pretty nasty; it smelled like the bottom of a cesspool with fish in it. As it dries off and we mow and it rains a little bit, the grass will get washed off pretty quickly.”
Halvorson and Teynor were optimistic that the gardens will recover soon and people will start coming back to see one of Prairie du Chien’s most vibrant attractions.
“We’re trying to get everything put back, cleaned up, so that people can feel like they can start coming back in,” Teynor said.
“It’s going to come back,” Halvorson said. “We usually don’t have high water this late in the season. Usually, we get it in the spring.”
Adopt a garden
Many volunteers tend to the Memorial Gardens’ plots. There are still garden plots available for adoption. If you are interested in gardening on St. Feriole Island, contact Donna Teynor or Cindy Halvorson through the Master Gardeners. You can reach out through their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crawfordcountywimastergardeners/
