A Community Solar Project
For the past two years, 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.
Project Timeline:
- Fundraising campaign: March 2023
- Planting: June 2023
- Installation of Solar Array: Summer 2023
- Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: July 2024
Support the Garden
To make this ambitious project feasible, we need help from supporters like you. Funds donated will support the conceptual and architectural designs, native plants, and earth moving at the garden. Your donation will not only help create bird habitat for years to come, it will also help us explore a new model for solar farms across the Front Range. We look forward to celebrating the garden and its financial supporters at a public ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2023, and thank you in advance for your support in helping us plant a better world for birds and people!
Audubon Rockies is grateful to Cloudbreak Energy Partners, High Country Gardens, Elevations Credit Union, and Xcel Energy Foundation for sponsoring the solar garden in Johnstown.
American Goldfinch and annual sunflowers. Photo: Evan Barrientos/Audubon Rockies
Support the Garden at Griffiths 1 Solar Project
Help us plant thousands of native plants around a community solar project in Johnstown, Colorado.
Learn about birds and get involved.
