The Nine Mile Creek Watershed District wanted to repurpose a large home on a five-acre wooded parcel into a regional watershed education and outreach center, new district office, and native-landscape restoration demonstration site.
For the new outreach center (known as Discovery Point), Barr developed a natural-resources and landscape master plan to display landscaping and green-infrastructure practices that could be easily replicated by visitors on their own properties. The plan included site grading and drainage; a parking lot and entrance drive; electrical, water, and sanitary utilities; retaining walls; and stormwater features such as an interactive cistern, rain gardens, and permeable-pavement structures. Barr also developed a native-plant-community regeneration plan to provide education on invasive species control as well as the process and economics of native-plant-community regeneration. Native prairie and savanna have been established where invasive woody species once dominated the parcel.