Laurel Green Park and playground reopens after year-long stream restoration

In 2019, the Town of Laurel Park commissioned Robinson Design Engineers to create a watershed masterplan for the community. The Town’s gateway is Laurel Green, a creekside park with a popular playground and walking trails and connectivity to the Ecusta Trail.

In 2020, the Town was awarded a grant by the North Carolina Land and Water Fund to naturalize the creek flowing through Laurel Green and expand its floodplain. This tributary, which flows for approximately 780 linear feet through the park, joins Wash Creek near the downstream end of the park and eventually flows into Mud Creek in downtown Hendersonville. Long ago, the creek was channelized, forcing the natural stream into a straight channel and mowed banks. In recent years the creek banks actively eroded and the stream bed shifted and migrated, contributing to sedimentation in Wash Creek and Mud Creek and threatening infrastructure along the creek corridor.

Community members traverse the floodplain activation wetlands through the new trail and boardwalk system.

For the last few years we’ve worked closely with the Town, Watermark Landscape Architecture, community members, and funding partners to design, permit, and build the creek restoration and floodplain activation project. And in May of this year, after nearly a year of construction, the park has reopened. We were excited to share the project with local, regional, and state partners—and with our friends and families.

A new boardwalk overlooks the stream corridor while allowing floodwaters to pass beneath the trail and into lateral floodplain wetlands.

Read more about the project in this article by the Times-News.