Transforming Millers Meadow

Volunteers planting at Millers Meadow, May 2025  Photo credit: Athena Lee Bradley

The City of Greenfield maintains its own information about this project in the Planning and Development portion of the City website.  See also the final report for the Municipal Vulnerability Project (MVP) Grant for 2026, which includes a list of other community partners and volunteers.  For further details photos about the Millers Meadow project see also the Building a Pollinator Corridor in Greenfield.

With additional funding and continuing support from Greening Greenfield, we invite the community to continue to work with us, the City of Greenfield, and Youth Climate Action Franklin County (YCAFC).  Click here for an overview of our plan to plant additional groves of trees and shrubs in the floodplain (200 more trees and shrubs in 2026), establish a picnic area, create paths through the pollinator meadow with benches and bird houses, and improve the view of the river.  We will also work to get rid of crown vetch, an invasive plant that overwhelming some of the baby trees.  For a history of Millers Meadow and project history, see Building Resilience Through Habitat Restoration.

From May to December, 2025, the Millers Meadow Project Team joined with members of Youth Climate Action of Franklin County (YCAFC) and 140 additional community volunteers to plant three quarters of an acre with trees and shrubs, both on the hillside next to Colrain Street, and in the floodplain where the access road enters the property.  This work was made possible by support from a Municipal Vulnerability Project (MVP) grant, which also enabled us to prepare the soil where we will plant a 1.5-acre pollinator meadow.  All of this will transform the property by building native habitat, sequestering carbon, and reducing erosion and flooding in this floodplain property.

On November 8, 2025, volunteers planted the 650th tree in the Millers Meadow project!

In 2021 Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) worked with Greenfield and other towns to develop a Regional Pollinator Plan.  FRCOG also developed a specific plan for Greenfield to develop Pollinator Corridors.  Greening Greenfield has a further explanation here.  Many maps were drawn, best practices listed, and each town selected a project. In Greenfield, the group chose Millers Meadow.

In 2023 Greening Greenfield called the group together to explore how to move the Millers Meadow project forward.  It was agreed that Greening Greenfield would develop a plan based on the conceptual design the group had drawn, starting with planting trees on the hillside next to Colrain Street, with volunteers.  Greening Greenfield supplied Peter Wackernagel with a stipend to draw up the plans and seek funding for the trees.

The City became interested in the project, expanded the idea, and applied for and received a Municipal Vulnerability Project (MVP) grant, which aimed to reduce climate risks.  For more about the MVP grant and this project see City of Greenfield Planning and Development Department.

While preparing to apply for the MVP grant, several of us met with Nicholas Miller of Field Geology Services, who said, “Millers Meadow has great potential.  We can reduce flooding hazards and build climate resilience while improving recreation, river access, native habitat for pollinators, and water quality for aquatic species.”  To explore these ideas, Nic offered to take us on two field trips.

GO HERE to learn about those field trips and the visions they inspired.

Explore the history of Millers Meadow from geologic times to the present and a vision of this project in a story map by Peter Wackernagel, founder of Youth Climate Action Franklin County.  Building Resilience Through Habitat Restoration