By Julie Koppen
When the Kansas City Water Department’s architect realized her construction project would bulldoze over the native plant rain garden she helped facilitate 12 years ago, she set out to save the plants.
Debra (Deb) Smith, the architect and project manager for the KC Water Lab construction project, initially worked with the Green Business Network of Bridging the Gap, KCMO Parks and Recreation, Missouri Department of Conservation and KC Water to plant the rain garden at the KC Water Treatment Plant in Kansas City North.
To try and save the plants, she contacted Deep Roots KC, whose mission is to increase native plant landscapes through education and conservation. However, the non-profit doesn’t own land or have the staff to dig and relocate hundreds of plants. So, they contacted me, their Missouri Master Naturalist liaison, to organize an all-volunteer Deep Roots KC outreach effort to save the natives.
And so begins the story of The Great Native Plant Heist!
We had less than a week to plan and execute the “heist” before the bulldozer arrived. The site is a gated secure facility, so we were limited on the number of volunteers and vehicles, and we all needed to enter and leave at the same time with Deb. She hadn’t been to the site in several years and wasn’t even sure if the natives were still there. The garden was in full sun in mid-June, and it was hot! Most importantly, we needed new homes for the plants and a partner who would quickly get them in the ground and care for them.
After a request for potential MMN partner gardens at our June Master Naturalist meeting, and phone calls the next day, there was not an obvious partner who could help on such short notice. But I knew someone who might.
I had recently toured the 16 public garden areas in the River Market District with Deborah Reiman, founder and president of the River Market Garden Club. She has been working tirelessly for more than two years with support from landowners and the River Market Community Improvement District (CID) to plant natives in public spaces.
The club has planted gardens around parking lots, along the KC Streetcar line and bike paths, near bridges and at the River Market entrance sign and in Garment District Park. She has a small cadre of devoted volunteers, some funding for fencing around native trees they planted, a garden cart, and a Missouri Prairie Foundation grant for plants — but she needed a lot more plants. So, she was “giddy” about the possibility of getting mature native plants for free!
Four days after the call for help, we loaded two pickup trucks with supplies and headed to a Scooters Coffee parking lot to meet Deb and our volunteers to caravan into the secured Water Treatment Plant. We were thrilled to find a 30’ x 50’ garden full of Sedges, Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrate), Rose Mallow (Hibiscus lasiocarpos), Slender Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium), Foxglove Beardtongue (Penestemon digitalis) and Southern Blue Flag Iris (Iris virginica).
Within two hours, we dug up enough plants to fill a pickup truck bed and six cars. As fast as we could dig plants and haul them to the pickup, Robert Reiman, Deborah’s husband and retired founding director of The Giving Grove community orchard project, tightly “planted” them in a bed of mulch that filled a truck bed. This allowed us to pack in more plants, and the rest were potted and put in the other pickup and volunteers’ cars. Most plants went to the River Market and Garment District Park, but volunteers were able to take some for their own gardens.
By 9:00 the next morning, Deborah was texting me: “I’m giddy – everything is in! Could we do it again?”
So, we organized more volunteers and three pickup trucks for the next day and headed back to the Scooters parking lot to meet Deb.
Excited that the second haul was much bigger, but facing 90-degree temperatures, Deborah and her River Market volunteers hustled to get all the plants in, mulched and watered by noon the next day.
Once again, here comes the text: “I’m just giddy!”
We didn’t save them all, but volunteers for The Great Native Plant Heist transplanted 225 plants for the River Market entrance sign and other areas, 120 plants for Garment District Park, 284 for the new garden at 7th and Wyandotte, 217 for the 8th and Central streets garden, and 186 for volunteers to plant in their own gardens or give away. Total plants saved: 1,032!
“We consider these niche areas throughout the River Market as our front yard,” said Deborah, who lives in a River Market condo. “So, the transformation of these four gardens is a significant step in making it more beautiful for residents and visitors, while attracting pollinators and native songbirds. We want to foster a connection between people and our environment.”
Many thanks to our MMN volunteers Pam Klasse, Kristin List, Laura Morlan, Kaitlyn Salamone (and husband Nick) and my husband, Jim Gottsch; our River Market friends Deborah and Robert Reiman, Joy Beilfuss, Allen Crawford, Mitch Dolan, Kurt Frederickson, Kyle Latinis, David Oldroyd, Emily and Jeff Robards, Bill Sheets; River Market CID support of Kevin Boessen and Damon Johnson; The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. that let us on their construction site, KC Water … and Deb Smith, who started it all.
