Marion College EcoLab Wetland Installation

Many of the lakes and wetlands at the Eco Lab were originally designed by Landscape Architect Jens Jensen in 1912 for the Allison family. The Marian College Eco lab went through a historical restoration of Jensen’s original trail and road plan starting in 2002. The new trails that were installed next to the main pond were causing extensive erosion of the shoreline due to a lack of vegetation. Eco Logic LLC designed a restoration plan which included the installation of native shallow emergent, sedge meadow and wet mesic prairie species around the shoreline of main pond and throughout many of the wetlands. These plantings were installed in 2005 and have become extremely diverse and very colorful starting in mid summer through early fall. The Eco Lab has continued these efforts planting thousands of native wetland plugs over the last several years to further enhance the many wetlands on site.