Volume 51, Issue No. 5
June 2012
A Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. Publication
The Park Hill Garden Walk is June 16 Bring this map along for an extra bit of fun
By Angelia McLean Garden Walk Chair The Park Hill Garden Walk, which takes place this month on Saturday, June 16th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., will have a new, fun feature this year: a Garden Scavenger Hunt. No need to bring heavy sleuthing equipment; this is a leisure hunt. Many of the 12 gardens reflect the personalities of their creators. Finding these unique characteristics while strolling along the Garden Walk path adds a fun twist to the experience. No competition, no screaming coach on the sidelines, no times to beat! Just you, a gardening friend and a map. See if you can find all 24 by marking the number of the garden from your map next to the feature.
Scavenger Hunt Garden Walk 2012
1. A turtle
4. Water Friendly Landscape
2. Toy truck
5. A F
3. A frog on a Mailbox
ounta
11. Potting shed
7. All Landscaped Hell Strip
in
12. Colorado Flag
10. Former Driveway now Garden
8. Bees
te
9. A coyo
airy F A 17. rden Ga
X
e 6. Win g Tastin
13. Garden Wall
4. A swing
1
15. Purple Clematis 16. Green Fountain
19.
Cac
18. A Summer House
tus
24. A Star
23. A Geode
irty 22. Th Plants to Toma
w 20. Yello Climbing Rose
21. Grapes
For ticket information, see pg. 13.
Bluff Lake Nature Center’s Caretaker: Park Hill’s own Chris Story By Erin Vanderberg Editor Chris Story became Bluff Lake Nature Center’s site manager in 2007. A Colorado native, he grew up in Capitol Hill and went to East High School. When he returned home after graduate school from Olympia, Wash., he settled on Clermont Street in Northeast Park Hill and started working at the Denver Botanic Gardens as horticulturist. During his tenure at the DBG, Chris began making weekly trips to Bluff Lake to assist volunteer invasive species managers who were trained by DBG to create a plan for Bluff Lake’s Russian Olive and tamarisk problem. When Bluff Lake’s site manager position became available, Chris made the natural segue. “Bluff Lake is a real amenity for Park Hill that a lot of people don’t know about,” he said. The 123-acre wildlife refuge and education center that is now the Bluff Lake Nature Center once provided a buffer between the runways and the community during the Stapleton Airport-era. As a result, the land was fenced off and virtually untouched for decades, leaving deer, fox, coyotes, birds and other animals to thrive in the habitat. After the airport closed, the Sierra Club sued the city for fish kills and other contam-
ination stemming from inadequate retention ponds for the chemical deicers used on the runways. That settlement led to the preservation of the Bluff Lake area and $3 million toward enhancing habitat, restoring Sand Creek and constructing a 1.5 mile interpretative trail with shelters. Today, Bluff Lake is run by four full-time staffers, but relies on volunteers to assist with the 5,000 students that visit the site each year. As Denver’s largest landowning nonprofit, Bluff Contributed Photo/Bluff Lake Nature Center Over 5,000 students take a field trip to Bluff Lake Nature Center each year. Lake also relies on donations, membership and Chris recommends a bike ride from Park Hill to grants to maintain the site. It’s open every day yearround to the public, from sunup to sundown, at no Bluff Lake, down either 29th Street or MLK Boulevard See Bluff Lake on Pg. 10 cost.