A pollinator prairie for bees, birds, and butterflies is starting to grow in Waukegan’s Henry Pfau Callahan Park from a one-time polluted brownfield that the city’s Park District had to cap before it could turn it into a park.
Growing from dried sludge removed from nearby Bevier Park two years ago, Charlotte Callahan Wozniak — the sister of Callahan Park’s namesake and president of the Waukegan Parks Foundation — was one of six members of the organization to put the initial plants into the ground.
“I’m thrilled anything can be done with a brownfield,” Wozniak said, referring to land that was once rendered useless because of contamination from a previous owner before the Park District acquired it, capped the brownfield, and made it a park.
Wozniak and her colleagues participated in a celebration of the pollinator prairie on Aug. 12 at Callahan Park, inserting 98 native flowering plants in the ground, which will eventually increase the area’s food supply.
Before Wozniak and the other members of the foundation arrived, she said the holes were dug, making their job easier. They placed the plants in the holes and filled them in with soil.
Ben Richards, the Park District’s grants and special projects administrator, said bees, butterflies, birds, and other pollinators ingest the pollen without harming the plant. The food from the garden enables more pollinators to be born.
More Top Picks Lint Rollers
“They cross-pollinate with other plants,” Richards said. “They increase their numbers and that increases the food supply for people.”
With the initial 98 plants funded by a $500 grant from Faith in Place, Richards said the cross-pollination can begin as soon as the flowers bloom.
The remainder of the prairie will be planted from seed in the spring. Richards said he anticipates flowers will begin blooming from the planted seeds in late spring or early summer of 2027. The seeds came in part from a $5,000 grant from Openlands funded by Commonwealth Edison.
Richards said a walking path goes through the prairie, enabling people to see it. The prairie is 1.5 acres of the 24.9-acre park.
The idea for the pollinator prairie started two years ago when divers employed by the Park District removed sediment from the pond at Bevier Park, which is less than a mile from
Callahan Park.
At the time, the pond was 38% sediment. When it was removed, it was once again 100% water. Removing the sediment enabled marine life to thrive. Richards said the pond is the headwater of the Waukegan River, which provides 90% of the fresh water flowing into Lake Michigan.
Once the divers removed the sediment using shop vac-type equipment, it was pumped 1,400 feet under McAree Road to Callahan Park, where it was put in sediment bags to dry and eventually create the prairie.
“This is a win-win for the environment,” Tim Grimscheid, the Park District’s manager of planning services, said at the time. “We’ll clean the pond and have a really cool pollinator garden people can enjoy.”
Grimscheid said at the time sediment was removed from the Bevier Pond; much of Illinois was long ago prairie. Only 1/100th of 1% of the original prairie land still exists in Illinois. As it deteriorates, it impacts the ability of nature to regenerate itself.
“The more we can restore of the original prairie, the more biodiversity we will have,” Grimscheid said. “It will go all the way up the food chain. Pollinators like bees, butterflies, moths, wasps and some birds will pollinate plants and crops.”
Shelby McDonald, the Park District’s director of marketing and community relations, said the total cost of the pollinator prairie project is $53,500, with $5,500 coming from grants. It includes removing the sediment from dewatering storage bags where it was stored and then graded.