Southwest Park Ponding Basin
At a neighborhood park in Hastings, FMR is working with the city to turn a former landfill into a thriving prairie.
Where is Southwest Park Ponding Basin?
This 17-acre City of Hastings park is nestled in a neighborhood north of the Vermillion River and just east of the Hastings Golf Course. The park is bordered by Louis Lane and 19th Street W.
Restoration work at the Southwest Park Ponding Basin adds another site to the number of restored areas within City of Hastings Parks. Other restoration sites include Hastings River Flats, Old Mill Park, Vermillion Falls Park and Vermillion River Linear Park. These restored areas combine to provide a critical habitat node for pollinators, birds and wildlife near the junction of the Mississippi and Vermillion Rivers.
The public is welcome to visit Southwest Park Ponding Basin. (See the City of Hastings website for more info.)
Our work here takes place on Dakota homelands.
What's special about Southwest Park Ponding Basin?
The land use history of this park, and the dramatic changes it has experienced in the last several decades, makes restoration at this park special. From the 1930s to 1964, the southern half of this site was a landfill. Located outside of town back then, the Pine Street Dump was the spot to dispose of solid waste, automobile parts and other waste generated by the growing city. After its closure, the dump was capped to confine the waste. In the 1980s, groundwater pollution from the dump was detected, and the site was listed as a Superfund site in 1991.
Since that time, regular groundwater monitoring has occurred. As residential neighborhoods developed around the site, actions were taken to minimize home contamination risk. A ponding basin was added to the site to treat stormwater runoff from the surrounding development
Turfgrass surrounded much of the ponding basin before FMR and partners began the conversion to prairie.
A paved trail with three community entrances encircles the pond, allowing community members to use the park for walking, biking and exercise, and as a respite to enjoy watching waterfowl and other park wildlife. The Hastings Environmental Protectors group installed and maintained a native plant garden near the 19th St. W entrance to help increase visibility of native plantings and improve biodiversity at the site. And the city maintained the park's turfgrass with semi-regular mowing.
After some environmentally aware neighbors began protecting patches of common milkweed from being mowed, the idea of habitat restoration at the site was born. Creating prairie habitat was an obvious choice. After establishment, it's easy to maintain, provides pollinator benefits, filters stormwater and has the potential to turn a little-used space into a beautiful community asset. In partnership with the City of Hastings, and with funding from a Conservation Partners Legacy grant, FMR embarked on restoration of the site in 2022.
Our work at Southwest Park Ponding Basin
Just a few years in to the project, native prairie plants like black-eyed Susans and Canada milkvetch had already taken hold.
We began to convert turfgrass to prairie in the spring of 2022. The first few years of this process can be counterintuitive. Invasive species carpeted the site — crown vetch, spotted knapweed, birdsfoot trefoil, leafy spurge, Kentucky bluegrass and sweet clover. Before we could seed the prairie, we conducted several rounds of vegetation removal across the entire site: an initial round of treatment to kill existing vegetation, and subsequent rounds to remove weed seeds that germinated from the seed bank. Generally, the early years of prairie restoration are not pretty, and the site can look somewhat barren.
After the initial preparation steps, we drill seeded several different native seed mixes in 2023. We used one mix for the dry areas along the slopes and a second mix for the wetter areas around the pond's perimeter. We seeded a third fescue turf mix along the edges of the bike path for easy mowing and to reduce potential Kentucky bluegrass spread into the prairie.
The spring of 2024 was particularly wet, which provided a good start for the germinating prairie seeds. Mowing the site a few times reduced weed seed production and increased light availability to the soil, allowing the tiny native seedlings to get a good start.
The restoration really took off in 2025. The carpet of invasive herbaceous species had been replaced by large-flowered penstemon and black-eyed Susan. Both of these plants are signs that the native seed mixes established well and are beacons of what is to come as the restoration matures. There are still areas with high invasive species pressure, but most of the park has a solid foundation of native species cover, which will only increase over time.
If you visit, you'll find three additional pollinator gardens at the trail intersection. These gardens provide more biodiversity and further decrease the amount of turf within the park. We hope to host volunteer events to tend the prairie and gardens, giving the public opportunities to engage in the stewardship of this site into the future.
Garden beds at the site showcase pollinator plant favorites like this spotted bee balm.
Find out more and get involved
- Volunteer with us to restore places like this.
- Contact FMR project lead Leah Weston.
Partners and funders for our work at Southwest Park Ponding Basin
This work was made possible by the Conservation Legacy Partners grant program, the City of Hastings, Hastings Environmental Protectors and by our generous volunteers and donors like you!
Where we work
FMR maintains over three dozen habitat restoration and land protection sites in the metro area.