On Our Do-List for July 10: Begin Construction of Powhatan Park in Lochearn

The "back porch" of the community.  That's how a group of landscape architecture students referred to our Robin Hill Rd. site, now known as Powhatan Park, in 2010.  Just hours before the "snowmageddon" of that year, a group of students from Morgan made its first visit to this 1.5 acre site in Lochearn and, working with Powhatan Farms Improvement Association, ultimately created the design shown in the inset of the Powhatan Farms plat below:

The students' design drawings were instrumental in securing bond funding for the park.  In 2013, with the support of County Executive Kamenetz, NeighborSpace used the drawings to successfully pursue $150,000 in State bond funding for the park.

As we began to wade through the thicket of vines and other invasives, shown below, we realized that there were challenges that the original design had not addressed, namely stormwater drainage that made various areas of the site quite wet.

So, a new class of Morgan landscape architecture students, along with Morgan Professor and NeighborSpace Board Member Jack Leonard, descended on the parcel to tackle these challenges.

The new design gave the community the open lawn for activities and perimeter walking trail that it wanted and also addressed stormwater issues by including a wet meadow and several rain gardens as part of the design, shown below.

NeighborSpace Board members Marsha McLaughlin and James Deriu led the effort to solicit proposals based on the above design in fall 2016.  Natural Concerns, a county landscape contractor partnering with DMW, a county engineering and architecture firm, were the successful bidders.  The team reworked the students' drawings to produce the design shown below:

Construction on the project is slated to begin July 10, 2017.