Work underway on Edible Arboretum water management features

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A crew from Wells Hollow Landscaping in Waverly was hard at work this week, creating some of the water quality improvement features that are becoming part of the Edible Arboretum along Clark Street next to IC School.

The company was awarded the contract in a competitive bid of almost $178,500, approved by the Charles City Council last December.

The project is being used to demonstrate water quality improvement and water management practices that could be adopted by residences and businesses in the community, said Doug Johnson, the Charles City Watershed Project coordinator.

Included are a bioretention cell; interior walking paths with grassed pavers, gravel pavers and permeable pavers; and rain gardens and native plants to demonstrate infiltration-based storm water quality management practices and provide pollinator habitat.

Soil quality restoration is also being done on the site and native turf will be planted to achieve further infiltration capabilities, Johnson has said.

Matt Wells, co-owner of Wells Hollow landscaping, explained that the retention cell the crew was working on Wednesday afternoon has a nice soil base layer on top that will support plants, then there is a small layer of rocks and then a larger layer of rocks to filter the water that passes through it.

The project is a demonstration garden that shows a lot of different options, he said.

“It fit a lot of our scopes that we do on a daily basis,” Wells said. “We are very excited to be here.”

The arboretum site was originally the location of several homes destroyed in the 2008 flood where the property was purchased with federal funds and then donated to the city as a park. Later the idea of creating an “edible arboretum” was formed, with more than 30 species of trees and shrubs planted in 2021 that all bear fruits, nuts, berries or other parts that are edible.

The project will show several ways of improving the amount of rain that is absorbed by the ground or held to evaporate, instead of running off land into the storm sewer system to eventually be discharged into a body of water.

That runoff contains soil erosion, lawn fertilizers, pesticides, waste and other contaminants that are discharged without a chance for any kind of filtering or biological degradation into something less harmful, Johnson said.

The $200,000-plus project is being funded by a $100,000 Water Quality Initiative grant through the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, and sponsored project funds from the $1 million the city received for water quality projects as part of the Water Resource and Recovery Facility (WRRF) financing.

It also received donations and in-kind contributions from the Charles City Rotary Club and Lions Club, the Floyd County Izaak Walton League, Charles City Park & Recreation Department, Floyd County Soil Water Conservation District, Clark Street Garden Corridor Committee, Mason City Medical Clinic, First Citizens Bank, Charles City Community Fund, First Security Bank Charitable Fund and the Floyd County Community Foundation.

The city’s own out-of-pocket costs are expected to amount to about $20,000 to cover sidewalk replacement that needed to be done anyway.