By Jacquelyn Burmeister

On Monday, June 8^th, students from the Conway School of Landscape Design joined members of the Grafton community for the Town Planning Meeting at Town Hall.  Here, they presented their new design ideas for the Fisherville Mill Site as part of the “Creating a Teaching Landscape” project that was funded by the Blackstone River National Heritage Corridor last December.

Town Planner Joe Laydon began the meeting by introducing the project, briefly describing the long history that the Fisherville Mill site has had within the Town, and its recent funding from The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor for projects to make the site a replicable model for cross-disciplinary education and remediation throughout the region.  One aspect of the project included the collaboration with students from the Conway School of Landscape Design to create a site vision that would highlight the dynamic landscape of the parcel.  The students that developed the vision as their final consulting project, and had spent the majority of their final trimester at the Conway School working up to the town meeting.

Jillian Ferguson, Jeff Frisch and Hillary Collins of the Conway School present the culmination of their final semester’s work on the Fisherville Mill Site “Creating a Teaching Landscape” project.

From here, students Jillian Ferguson, Jeff Frisch and Hillary Collins walked the community through various visions of the site, highlighting and building upon the current nature, community and industry attractions of the land.  Some potential future enhancements included creating a “ghost” of the old mill building, using old granite slabs at the site to draw an open-air outline of the building footprint, including remnants of the old factory gears and other large machinery.  Also proposed was an amphitheater overseeing a new boat launch and dock on the Fisherville Pond, an upgrade to the current Eco-Machine, boardwalks and footpaths along the waterfront, and observation deck, shading for the Mill Villages Park, and a new design for the future mixed use development that the site hopes to ultimately construct.  The idea is that each entity can stand as a discrete project that can be funded when the opportunity arises, so that the town can advance to the final vision at its own pace.

Site owner, Gene Bernat, talks about the positive impact that the remediated Fisherville Mill Site has already had on the community.

After describing the proposed enhancements, the students presented how these projects would appear within the bounds of the natural landscape of the site with two potential sketches. They invited community participation in the design of the final plan, using color-coded stickers to indicate how feasible each design aspect was.  While Planning Board and community members filed up to get a closer look at the plans, Gene Bernat, the owner of the site, gave a few words about the larger vision of the Fisherville Mill project.  “We want to create a place that people want to be; that highlights the natural and social history of the site, as well as the past and future science”, he said.  The site has already received a lot of attention both inside the Grafton Community and internationally, for its community designed Mill Villages Park and the innovative way in which the Eco-Machine remediates the contaminated water of the Blackstone River. “The park vastly improved South Grafton”, continued Gene, “and now we have the potential to do so much more”.

One potential plan for the site, blue and green dots represent entities that were received well by the community.

The project was received with enthusiasm, and the plans displayed during the meeting were covered in dots representing positive remarks about the fixtures.  With this feedback, the students at Conway will create their final proposal for the site.

If you would like to get a better look at the project plans, they will be on display at the Grafton Town Hall.  More pictures will be available on the Living Systems Lab at the Fisherville Mill Facebook page, and space is provided for public comment.

Stay tuned for more information about this project!

On December 4^th The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor awarded The Town of Grafton $10,000 in funds to develop the Fisherville Mill Redevelopment Site’s project “Creating a Teaching Landscape”.  The project aims at developing a suite of educational materials to engage citizens and visitors in the diverse offerings of the site.

The Town envisions the Fisherville Mill Site as a durable regional asset for tourism, education and research focused on the ecology and industrial history of the greater Blackstone River Valley.   In the current project, educators, students and community members will contribute to creating new and compelling systems to engage and interact with the past, present and future of The Blackstone River.

 The Fisherville Mill Redevelopment Site: From blight to public asset

 The Fisherville Mill Redevelopment Site is one the most complex and challenging brownfields in the region. The site has been the focus of an innovative collaborative approach to remediation and redevelopment.  The Southern region of the site has been partially remediated and contains the new Mill Villages Park and Pavilion, The Living Systems Laboratory and an informal boat launch access to the Blackstone River.   Central to the site and within the park, the Living Systems Laboratory (LSL) is an engineered ecosystem that employs innovative bioremediation practices and applied ecology using diverse living systems to remove the historical contaminants from the Blackstone Canal.  The LSL provides is compelling platform for translational research, science education and public outreach, and has attracted researchers and students from all over the country to learn about systems ecology and ecological design.

Over the years, the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor has been integral in garnering public support and helping in the planning of the development of the Fisherville Mill Site, as well as other mill sites in the area, with the co-writing of the South Grafton Villages Master Plan.  The National Heritage Corridor also routinely sends its rangers to the Fisherville Mill site to receive and give regional historical and environmental training.  For example, this past June these rangers held a summer public “Walkabout” through the site in which the rangers taught participants about the history of the Fisherville Mill Site and how the Eco Machine is helping to protect and preserve the Blackstone Watershed.

“Creating a Teaching Landscape”

 The funds from the current grant will be allocated between three sub-projects that will culminate in a package of educational materials that will be accessible to visitors, educators and researchers, and create a replicable model for cross-disciplinary education and remediation throughout the region.  A large portion will be used to fund a group of Master’s students from the Conway School of Design to design footpaths, signage and educational material for the site.  Funding will also be provided to creating a wildlife catalogue for the plant and animal species of the area.

Another portion of the project examines how the Eco-Machine can create value for the Town of Grafton through the cleaning of water contaminated by industrial pollutants.  Some of the funding will be reserved for the design of a nursery inside of the Living System’s Lab, utilizing the cleaned water to propagate flowers to sell.

After these studies are complete, educators and students from a local school will be working on the integration of the results into a comprehensive curriculum that will allow visitors of all ages to interact with the history and ecology of the site.

The funding from the National Heritage Corridor will enable the creation of an innovative “Teaching Landscape” that will meaningfully highlight the unique industrial and ecological history of the Blackstone River, and engage communities and researchers in a replicable interactive learning environment where the past, present and future meet.  The funds will be matched by in-kind contributions from the Town, Conway and other participants.  Presently, the project is projected to begin in the summer of 2015.

Last week, the LSL together with JTED hosted the Conway School of Design’s Ecological Design master’s class in an afternoon workshop at the Eco Machine site.

Gene Bernat, site owner, and JTED went over the working concepts and science behind the Eco Machine and canal restorers, and students went on to design and construct their own canal restorers from oil absorbent booms, flowering bulbs, iris rhizomes, seed heads and other plants from the site.

“The design and materials are totally unique to my knowledge and represent an adaptive use and innovative evolution of the canal restorer concept,” states Bernat.

The advantage to the design produced by Conway is the ubiquity of the materials, and therefore the ability to replicate the product.  Oil booms, which have been observed to trap oil while serving as a plant substrate, are available everywhere.  The plants that are added to the booms are local, according to the rules of biomimicry.

The bulbs were added as an experiment to evaluate the ability of the Eco Machine to produce flowers that are commercially viable.

A big thanks to Conway for coming out and contributing to the development of the project and the clean-up of the Blackstone Canal.

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For more information on The Conway School of Design, see the website