First Creek
Working with Urban Drainage and Icon Engineering, StudioCPG has realigned the creek as a broad, shallow channel that contains a 100-year flood.
First Creek Reconstruction is nearing completion. Working with Urban Drainage and Icon Engineering, StudioCPG has realigned the creek as a broad, shallow channel that contains a 100-year flood. First Creek had been pushed to the edge of a quarter section field to create useful agricultural land. The restoration returns the creek to its natural alignment and will reduce chronic flooding in this rapidly developing corridor.
Roughness is texture and variety, and this has been our focus as a way to build the character of the place.So now the fun begins: Reconstruction opens the door for creating a place, and the vehicle for doing this is in developing the site’s Roughness. Roughness is texture and variety, and this has been our focus as a way to build the character of the place.
The underlying structure starts the process. Drop structures with micro-pools, shallow riffle drops, and a side channel diverting flows to a broad swale all increase the roughness of what might otherwise be a smooth new project.
The soil will be sculpted to create deep furrows that catch runoff and create microclimates where different species thrive: moisture loving grasses in the bottoms, heat loving ones at the tops.
Four different seed mixes are being planted to make sure the right seeds are in the right place. Along the creek, stabilizing blankets and wetland sod are installed where channel slopes are vulnerable to erosion before the seed establishes.
The trunks of some of the trees that were removed during construction will be reinstalled. These ‘snags’ will further roughen the site and, like the other structural elements, set the stage for diverse plant ecologies to flourish by creating a wide range of microclimates.
Once the hydrology of the realigned creek stabilizes, we’ll build on this roughness with plantings. First we’ll locate where moisture-loving grass species are thriving–that’s where we’ll plant the forbs, shrubs and trees so they can grow and thrive without irrigation.
As final links are made, the trail along the creek will connect Green Valley Ranch to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Denver’s Bike network. Take a ride to see the kind of place that comes from roughness.