High Plains Environmental Center grows native plants, puts them to work across Colorado
A Loveland nonprofit believes a neighborhood can be lush, colorful and wild without using much water.
High Plains Environmental Center has worked with developers for 25 years, including Centerra, and now Baseline in Broomfield, to build sustainable landscapes.
"So we've created all these ecosystems within a designed community, which puts nature in the lives of people who live here," Executive Director Jim Tolstrup said. "It's also marketable, because people want to live where there's nature and birds."
Early on, Tolstrup said, homeowners all over the region, including out of state, identified a need.
"We realized there is a big hole in the market where people might love to plant native plants, but couldn't find them," he said. "So we started growing native plants here and grow over 180 species."
This year put the center's designs to the test. One example is a bioswale, a shallow planted channel that catches runoff from a parking lot. The channel slows the water down so it soaks into the ground. It has no mulch or irrigation.
"For a long time, we've been preparing for the kind of weather that we had this summer, and that is extremely hot, very, very dry," Tolstrup said. "And where I'm standing right here is a landscape that is never watered."
"All of this lushness and tall grasses and shrubs and flowers, beautiful and colorful all summer, is never, ever watered," he said. "And it's all native plants. We've created a meadow ecosystem here."
Dr. Tobias Guzman lives in Kinston, another Loveland development whose grasses and plants the center manages. He said the neighborhood has changed how he thinks about a good landscape.
"It's not just the physical appearance of something, but actually what it can offer," Guzman said. "It can offer us less money going into watering. It can offer healing, you know, salves that come from particular plants. It can feed bees differently."
The center relies on donations, and Tolstrup said Colorado Gives Day is key to its fundraising.
"Colorado Gives Day is really one of our most important fundraising campaigns of the year," he said.
Past Colorado Gives Day donations helped pay for a new greenhouse, allowing the center to grow even more native plants for Colorado yards.
People can support High Plains Environmental Center and other nonprofits through Colorado Gives Day. Every gift made through Dec. 8 is boosted by a $1 million incentive fund.
Details for giving to High Plains are at https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/HighPlainsEnvironmentalCenter
