By Garrett Hopkins
Local parks are foundational places for the cities and towns they belong to. They’re places for first steps, family picnics, community gatherings, and much more. Local parks are also crucial ecological resources. They provide habitats for wildlife and native plants, they improve local air quality, and – as is the case with Watertown’s Riverside Park – they can impact surrounding aquatic ecosystems.
Riverside Park is a particularly important park in the Rock River Basin since it sits directly next to the Rock River. In recent years, a group of environmental experts from the City of Watertown, Dodge County Conservation Department, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and Rock River Coalition partnered for the environmental improvement of this special place.
Riverside Park was established more than a century ago, when a bathing beach was opened in 1910. In the ensuing century, it has been outfitted with walking bridges, trails, playgrounds, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a covered picnic area, and is home to Watertown’s annual Riverfest, and the Watertown Farmers Market.
In addition to its proximity to the Rock River, Riverside Park is home to Riverside Park Creek, a waterway that runs through the northwest side and feeds into the river. The creek adds scenic charm to the park but also brings management challenges. In particular, it has had a history of flooding during heavy rain events.
“It’s very flashy,” says Maureen McBroom, the Stormwater Project Manager at the City of Watertown. “There are a lot of hard surfaces like parking lots upstream that drain into it, so it doesn’t take much for Riverside Park Creek to come out of its banks.”
In addition to impacting public use of the park, flooding erodes the shoreline, washes away native habitats, and increases runoff pollution in surrounding waterbodies. In 2022, the park’s restoration committee formed to begin mitigating these issues.
“Dodge County Conservation Department put together a plan for the city to restore and improve the creek,” says McBroom. The plan involved stream bank stabilization efforts, such as installing riprap along the shore (heavy, angular stones that fortify the bank), installing native plantings along the bank and removing yellow flag iris. “We realized there was a lot of this invasive plant growing abundantly in the creek,” explains McBroom. “It was growing so densely in some areas that it was pushing flow around the invasive plants and eroding the banks.”
Both procedures involve planning, heavy machinery and labor, but both have spurred exciting results. In 2024, the creek banks were reengineered and the invasive plant, yellow flag iris removed. During the removal of the yellow flag iris (by way of dredging and cutting), some of the creek’s original retaining walls were uncovered. These walls, which were built in the 1930s, were then fortified by the riprap.
“The creek was very unstable and was creeping outwards,” says McBroom. “It was more evident in some areas because there is a series of small bridges. You could really see how the creek was moving from side to side. The riprap locks together and is specifically designed to stay in place, and the banks have now been reestablished.”
The riprap installation is now complete, and the yellow flag iris removal has progressed to a maintenance stage, but these accomplishments did not mark the end of the restoration effort. In 2023, Rock River Coalition installed the first section of the native streamside planting.
Led by Rock River Coalition and executed by volunteers, the 800 square foot demonstration garden was strategically placed near Larabee Street where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic. By planting native plants with deeper roots, pollutants carried by runoff are filtered before they reach the creek, which ultimately improves water quality in the Rock River. Native plants also have dense root systems that help to stabilize the creek bank. The garden, which was installed in one day by a group of volunteers, features more than 450 native grasses and flowers.
“I heard some residents say that they were a little leery of what the garden would look like,” says McBroom, “but they were very pleasantly surprised when they saw how nice it looked. We actually got a thank-you card from some nearby residents because they were just very happy with how the whole project turned out.”
In the wake of the project’s success and positive reception, the committee decided to expand the garden. On Saturday, September 13, the second phase of the Creekside Restoration Planting in Riverside Park will take place. Volunteers led by Rock River Coalition will once again get to work, this time installing over 2000 native plants.
In a way, this event will be a snapshot of both the larger creekside restoration effort and the communal magnetism a local park creates. When people come together in the name of community, good things tend to happen. Through the years, Riverside Park has hosted countless gatherings and events, and now thanks to the restoration committee, it is home to a successful conservation project.
“The biggest thing about this project was the partnership,” says McBroom. “Being able to implement this project with experienced and knowledgeable staff helped make it manageable. It was a combination of folks coming together, and it worked really well.”
Interested in volunteering for Phase II of the Creekside Restoration Planting in Riverside Park? Learn more and register here: Creekside Restoration Planting in Riverside Park – Phase II | Rock River Coalition