Nature Center Landscape Design Plan

The Nature Center Landscape Design Plan describes a trail system (The Nature Center Trail) to be built behind the Lake Roland Nature Center. The trail will present to Lake Roland visitors all the stages of a floodplain forest, from meadow to mature deciduous trees. Graphic signage will describe the plant communities and animal life associated with the various successional stages.

The idea is to create a trail system through the wooded landscape behind the Nature Center that will take a visitor through unique environment of a floodplain forest. This journey will bring the visitor from a new land deposit with full sun gap species and fast growing, short lived trees through the transitional forest and finally to the mature floodplain forest with its large trees and understory grasses. Throughout the Nature Center Trail, there will be a small stopping points, where signage will be created to educate visitors, or just serve as a place to pause and take in the landscape.

Lake Roland Nature Council engaged the landscape design firm Larry Weaner and Associates (LWLA) to help plan The Nature Center Trail. LWLA has provided first draft drawings of the trail system as well as an invasive plant management plan for the floodplain area. Hunt Valley-based Century Engineering donated surveyor time to lay out the trail network. The next step is for Lake Roland Nature Council to gather volunteers and begin to implement the trail. Both the process of building the trail and the final product will create educational opportunities for the Lake Roland community.