The Elk Grove Park District began a multi-year native landscape restoration project within Colony Park in 2018.
You may have recently been seeing the firm managing the restoration, Integrated Lakes Management (ILM), removing brush, spreading native seed, and installing erosion control blanketing along the creek. ILM has also removed large tree stumps, created burnable piles, and conducted a controlled burn of landscape debris and brush. Park District Staff have also removed discarded scrap metal and other debris from the site.
Among the species seed recently planted in the park are Acorus calamus (Sweet Flag), Asclepias incarnata (Swamp Milkweed), Eupatorium maculatum (Spotted Joe-Pye), Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower), Lobelia siphilitica (Great Blue Lobelia), Verbena hastata (Blue Vervain), Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan), Silphium laciniatum (Compass Plant), and Silphium terebin (Prairie Dock) along with nearly 200 other sedges, grasses, and wildflower species.