Village Hall Landscape Revitalization

Over the past 5 to 10 years the Village of Bannockburn, like many other municipalities in the region, has seen a decline in their canopy cover as a result of the impacts from the Emerald Ash Borer. Areas of the Village that were once heavily wooded have been denuded allowing the groundplane and vegetative middle layers to assume control over spaces. As much of this transition has occurred naturally, a series of invasive species have taken advantage of the moment to establish and overtake certain locations. In order to arrest this creep of invasives and reassert some form of control over the landscapes around the Village Hall and Park, Living Habitats has been working with the Village to identify a series of opportunities for landscape revitalization. As the Framework Planning exercise has evolved, strategies are being utilized to expand stakeholder thinking beyond a simple landscape replacement effort only at the Village Hall to a detailed evaluation of the Village’s maintenance practices and an opportunity to engage the broader community in reconsidering their own landscapes and the best ways to improve and manage them.