The Friends of Grant Park will be offering plants for a small donation at the South Milwaukee Downtown market on Thursday, May 29th from 3pm – 7pm. Plants have been repotted and donated by our members. Take some home for your garden while helping our group raise funds for our mission to preserve Grant Park.
Selections will vary based on donations. Some indoor houseplants will be available as well. Hope to see you there!
The Seven Bridges ravine trail is a historic and unique feature of Grant Park in South Milwaukee, winding down to the lakefront alongside Ebbs Creek. As visitors can observe, it has been such a popular destination that the trail, creek, walls, steps and slopes have deteriorated to a great degree. With the generous support of foundations and donations by our membership, funds were raised to hire landscape architects to prepare a preliminary concept plan to address those issues. We have collaborated with Indigo Ecological Design, Geosyntec Consultants and Milwaukee County Parks to develop a conceptual master plan to prioritize restoration efforts and prepare grant applications. The assessment will address several areas of concern including creek conditions and water quality, egress, vegetation, and structural management for trails and walls.
The Friends invite the public’s support in achieving our restoration goals.
Below is the Restoration Concept Plan from Indigo Ecological Design and Geosyntec Consultants. It is a 17 page document. If you click on the document, you will be able to scroll through the entire report.
Since 2016, we’ve hosted Trek ’n Treat, a family-friendly nature hike sending kids through the Seven Bridges Ravine trail. We had 244 kids participate this year. They stopped at a dozen nature stations along the way and learned something about things like the habitat of animals, the wild flowers that grow there, and the birds, butterflies and critters that make Grant Park their home. To top that, they collected treats at each station as they went along!
Thank you all for making Trek ’n Treat a success. Each year, we ask for help and many local area businesses responded. A huge thank you to the following for their generous donations!
Here are some photo highlights of the day that treated us with fantastic weather. Hope to see you all next October! Thanks to Violette Wood for snapping these photos.
Once again, various organizations in the South Milwaukee community will welcome the public to tour their buildings, facilities, and grounds. From 10am to 3 pm on Saturday, Sept. 13th, many locations will open their doors for you! The Friends of Grant Park will open Wulff Lodge for visitors to explore, along with information about the history of the lodge and its early residents, the family of Frederick C. Wulff: the German arborist and first horticulturalist hired by Milwaukee County. You can tour the gardens behind the lodge, and learn about the nursery and greenhouse he created that generated stock for all the county parks, as well as Grant Park.
Prior to the event, the complete list of locations will be available on the City of South Milwaukee’s website.
Our third Friends of Grant Park Art Fair is starting to take shape. Mark your calendar for Sunday, July 20th, 2025. We have extended the fair hours a bit from 10am to 3pm.
Held in Area 5A Picnic Shelter, the Friends of Grant Park offer food, refreshment, a raffle and hopefully, music! Artists will display their work at over 30 booths or pop-up tents and most will accept cash or credit purchases. Sorry, for Friends of Grant Park merchandise and food purchases, we only accept CASH.
The Art Raffle offered one piece of art from each of our artists. Tickets are $1 each; or 6 for $5. Winners will be announced at 3 pm.
We hope to be treated again to Celtic tunes played by FOGP member Deb Wilhelm on violin and Jerry Connor on guitar.
What are the chances that Friends of Grant Park Art Fair will have great weather for three years in a row?
Explore South Milwaukee’s Grant Park by air, including Grant Park beach, Grant Park golf course. Filmed in spring 2019, videography by F & J Productions.
The film is about 16 minutes long.
After years of hosting beach cleanups in the park, we’ve noticed a serious problem. One of the most common items of trash in the park and on the beach is empty plastic water bottles. The plastic is labeled as recyclable, which is good if it actually gets recycled. But littering the beach, or tossed in the woods, the plastic will not break down… true, it will eventually be crushed, flattened, and break into smaller and smaller pieces. The smallest bits will become so small they are referred to as micro-plastic. Guess what? Invisible micro-plastics are entering your drinking water because they are not removed by our public water utilities. Scientists have yet to determine the health consequences of consuming micro-plastics. Don’t forget the BPA chemicals in the plastic bottles…
So, why are we spotlighting plastic water bottles, when there is a lot of other trash on the beach/in the woods? Reducing or eliminating bottled water is one of the easiest ways to reduce a significant amount of trash each year in the environment. Consider using other water carriers: reusable stainless steel, aluminum, and thermos bottles. Plastic bottled water is necessary for communities lacking access to safe drinking water, but for many of us, it’s a convenience and could be used sparingly, when other methods cannot be adopted.
Plan ahead when you are spending time in Grant Park. If you bring water bottles in, then pack them out when you leave, because the park does not have a recycling program in place.
If you would like to dive deeper into plastic’s effect on the environment, our health, and social justice, author Daniel Jaffee, associate professor of Sociology at Portland State University has written a book: Unbottled: the fight against Plastic Water and Water Justice. You can hear Jaffee on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time program… https://www.wpr.org/shows/central-time/american-girl-dolls-bottled-water.
The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Eddee Daniel entitled “Milwaukee County Strengthens Protections for Natural Areas” from the website awealthofnature.org, posted on July 29, 2022.
Here, in abbreviated form, are the new provisions:
(A) No person shall harvest, collect, deface, or disturb, in any manner, any portion of a native plant or native fungi within the Park System.
(B) Invasive species can be removed within the Park System only by Dept. of Parks, Recreation and Culture (DPRC) staff or those authorized through written permission from the DPRC. Planting of any vegetative material within the Park System without the written permission of the DPRC is prohibited.
(C) The harassment, capture, injury, or killing of native wildlife within the Park System is prohibited. Introduction or release of any animal, wild or domestic, within the Park System without the written permission of the DPRC is prohibited.
(D) Natural areas designated by the Southeastern WI Regional Planning Commission as “Natural Areas of Local, Regional, or State-wide Significance” or designated as “Critical Species Habitat Areas,” will receive a heightened level of protection. Only hiking, biking, running, bird watching and similar passive recreation activities are allowed and only on designated trails.
According to Natural Areas Supervisor Brian Russart “the County Board did want Parks to be lenient on individuals walking along designated trails in the park system eating the occasional handful of wild raspberries as they are walking, because the impact would be minor and the plants are typically found along trails.” This does not allow people to bring a basket along to pick and remove more berries from the park for later use.
Russart would like you to know this: “Citizens that observe illegal foraging in the park system are encouraged to call the Parks Ranger Hot-line (414-257-7777) as they are observing these activities. This way Parks can respond immediately, and appropriately address the situation.
The Friends of Grant Park undertook planning and fundraising several years ago to improve egress in a ravine area near the Wil-o-way complex on the north end. Following two consecutive 100+ year storms in 2010-11 that had destroyed most of the bridges in the park’s historic ravine trail system, a 2012 FEMA-funded footbridge was erected to restore the connection between the north and southern portions of the park all while protecting water quality. Subsequent trail use commenced, with the result that an increasingly denuded trail on one side of the bridge eroded, causing potentially damaging siltation and mud distribution to the bridge deck and beyond to the creek below. With preserving water quality, bridge infrastructure and safe egress as our goals, we proceeded with planning.
History: Following a survey of the site by RA Smith Engineers, and combining design proposals and details by former Parks Landscape architect, Jim Ciha and local landscape designers, Betsy Abert and Patrick Devereux, we submitted architectural drawings for the proposed steps to Parks’ Planning Dept. during the height of COVID. Parks had just undertaken a splendid larger restoration in the northern sector of the park with improved parking, paving, and water quality goals; thus, we were delayed in pursuing our own project. Grants acquired from the Bucyrus Foundation, Eaton Corporation, and many many FoGP donors allowed this project to move forward with the requisite funds as required by Milwaukee County Parks. Upon request, our park supervisor Sean Kelly delivered fencing material from the main yard to the job site. Cost increases, supply chain and transportation issues combined with employee shortage related to Covid certainly played a part in delays. Contracting with an experienced nearby landscape firm, Stone Oak Landscapes, the steps and rail are now being installed with great precision. We plan to restore/revegetate any areas disturbed during construction with native plant species. It is our hope that restoration efforts in the central/main ravine will be supported. With a start-up grant from Eaton Corporation, steps and walls there, installed in the 1930’s, need to be replaced and the slopes protected and revegetated.
Many thanks to our own Betsy Abert for her expertise and perseverance in pursuing this goal. Photos courtesy of Betsy Abert.
A proposal to amend Milwaukee County Ordinance 47.08 to allow foraging of fruit, nuts and certain varieties of fungi was defeated by Milwaukee County supervisors after receiving strong opposition from FOGP and others. We opposed the ordinance due to the probability of increased foot traffic on sensitive off-trail areas of the park by those in search of certain plant materials. Other parks have reported extirpation of numerous species due to foraging practices. The ordinance would have applied to ALL county parks. Similarly sized metropolitan parks in other cities have all banned the practice.
Nature has provided a variety of plant materials to support the various animals and birds that inhabit the park as they seek food to sustain themselves. Similar sources of food are available for human consumption at farmer’s markets and grocery stores. When humans gather plant materials from the parks, they deprive the resident animals and birds thereby increasing the likelihood that their numbers will decline. Is that what we wish for?