Fair Haven Reclaims Dover Beach

At Dover Beach, trash and ​“trees of heaven” are out. Pollinators and people are in.

That’s the latest report from the park on upper Front Street, where Kathiana Torres and fellow environmental interns from Common Ground High School, birdwatchers, and neighbors continued to make strides into turning the perennial dump site under the adjacent I‑91 overpass at Middletown Avenue into an inviting green gateway to Fair Haven.

They organized a clean-up Thursday night at the park by the Quinnipiac River at the eastern edge of the rebuilt Quinnipiac Terrace public-housing development.

They cut back the oriental bittersweet, the fast-growing tree of heaven and other invasive plants overwhelming the 495-square foot patch of park stretching from Middletown Avenue under the overpass to the the idyllic northernmost section of Dover Beach park at Bailey Street.

The work is part of an ​“urban oasis” program. Dover Beach is one of seven sites throughout the city where green restorations are taking place thanks to a partnership among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative, Audubon Connecticut and the city. They are seeking to create more bird habitat within the city that is also inviting and educational for us humans.

Dover Park is exactly that for 7‑year-old Gilbert Ortiz (pictured).

In a break from helping the bigger folks haul mulch and pull invasives, Gilbert, a student at the nearby Clinton Avenue School, looked into the spotting scope that Connecticut Audubon’s Katie Blake had set up aimed across the Q River towards the Quinnipiac Meadows nature preserve.

“The momma and the poppa bird are snuggling because they’re cold,” he declared after viewing for the first time in his life the osprey in their platforms on the far bank of the river.

Click here for a previous article explaining the partnership, whose scope includes plans to place new signage welcoming people — and birds — to Fair Haven, as well as tag-and-weather-resistant large-size photographs by local photographer Ian Chirstmann on the 20 pillars that support the overpass.

The work is already moving along apace, with a pollinator garden that the various groups put in last year at the corner of Middletown Avenue and Front Street.

Lee Cruz, one of the organizers, sat among the black-eyed susans and other native plants in the park. He said that the longer-term goal will be not only to put to up welcoming signage right at the corner, but also to add a linking the sidewalk from Middletown Avenue to where the sidewalk currently ends in Dover Beach Park.

“That’s because lots of residents walk to Walmart,” Cruz added.

After Torres and the other removers of invasive mulberry and planters of native winterberry and arrowwood viburnum finish their five weeks of labor, the state Department of Transportation plans to arrive Monday to remove what has been cut.

Crews plans as well to tear down the ancient and bent fence, replacing it with a galvanized and more attractive fence, said Angel Hertslet, URI’s supervising intern and a recent graduate of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

At the pollinator garden the fence will be set back 10 feet from the road both to make that corner more attractive and to enhance sight lines.

As to plantings closer to Dover Beach, Hertslet said, ​“Our goal is a thick set of clustered [native] plants near the fence at the park.”

The area between that cluster and the actual overpass has to be clear. That’s because DOT requires no plantings within 30 feet of an overpass on its property, she explained.

If you want to see their handiwork and the other advances at greenspaces throughout the city, catch the URI-organized greenspaces bus tour that assembles Friday, July 31, in front of City Hall at 5:30. Arrange for a reservation on the bus at URI’s Facebook page.

The tour meandering for two hours through town will culminate for a party at beautiful Dover Beach.