To the editor:
Morgan Park is one of Franklin’s lesser known and even-less-well-used parks.
It sits beside the Greenway Trail along Hurricane Creek north of King Street. It’s a pleasant green space, bordered by trees on both sides. It once housed youth baseball diamonds, but those were replaced years ago by better and more accessible facilities elsewhere in the park system. The remaining grassy area is open and little used, except by the parks department employees who are charged with mowing the grass.
That grassy area, green as it is, is really an ecological desert. The grass supports no significant animal life, and the shallow grass roots do little to enhance the soil. Other than offering help in mitigating overflow from the creek during heavy rain, the grassy area serves little purpose. But it need not be the case.
The area would be ideal for the planting of native grasses, wildflowers and other prairie plants. The roots of these plants go deeper than grass and would help improve the soil. The flood-control aspect of the area would be retained, and the cost of maintenance would go down significantly, as the area would need to be cut only once a year. And even that cost can be eliminated if the decision were made to allow the area to progress naturally, with trees slowly replacing the prairie. All that would be required is monitoring to eradicate invasive plant species.
Such a change to a park is not without precedent. Already, the parks department grows and maintains native plant swaths in Blue Heron Park. The natural areas offer a visually pleasing contrast to the more maintained areas of the park and offer wildlife cover and food throughout the growing season. The native plant areas would provide winter cover for year-round birds if the native plants were cut down in the early spring, rather than fall.
All of this is possible at Morgan Park. All it takes is commitment on the part of the parks department.
Richard Gotshall
Franklin
