Habitat Hero at Griffiths 1 Solar Project
Expanding the potential for bird-friendly gardens and solar energy in Johnstown, Colorado.
Words by Evan Barrientos
Communications Manager, Community Building
Photography by
Evan Barrientos
Communications Manager, Community Building
Published July 01, 2023
This article is from Audubon Rockies
, Audubon's regional office for Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Find your nearest Audubon office here.
A Community Solar Project
Cloudbreak Energy Partners, a Colorado-based solar developer, has been working with farmers along the Front Range who are ready to introduce a new crop into their mix—sunshine. Due to Audubon Rockies’ work at Jack’s Solar Garden, Cloudbreak decided to reach out to us to plant another large-scale Habitat Hero garden around the perimeter of their upcoming solar array in Johnstown, Colorado, called Griffiths 1 Solar Project.
The goal of this project is to plant several thousand bird-friendly native plants around the perimeter of the solar farm. By planting bird-friendly gardens, we can help reverse the biggest threats birds face: habitat loss from development and impacts from climate change. These mega-planting projects have exciting, long-lasting effects on the health of local ecosystems. We are excited to be pioneering a way to balance renewable energy with wildlife habitat on a large scale.
A Bird-friendly Perimeter Garden
To design the garden, Audubon Rockies has partnered with Chickadee Pine Designs LLC, an ecological landscape design company specializing in pollinator- and bird-friendly landscape habitats. Chickadee Pine designs gardens to be wild in nature, thus maintaining ecological functionality and requiring less maintenance. It also means their gardens are inherently drought-tolerant and locally appropriate to their surroundings.
The design for the new solar garden consists of thousands of native and regionally appropriate plants that work in conjunction with solar panel installation and can be maintained and installed by volunteers.
The pollinator habitat at the new solar garden will have several major benefits, including a positive impact on wildlife and birds, a chance to connect the community to nature, a reduction in carbon footprint, and the opportunity to be a model for other green industry leaders.