June 2018: The iconic and historic Washburn Water Tower received some much needed landscaping. The Tangletown Neighborhood Association, in partnership with Minneapolis Water Works, installed a variety of plants at the base of the tower.
May 2022: A new historical sign was installed at the Washburn Water Tower to tell its history to all who visit, thanks to a generous legacy grant from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, local historian Tom Balcom, designer Dirk Nicholson, and dedicated Tangletown volunteers.
Volunteer at the Water Tower!
Please sign up for a shift to help water and weed at the water tower here. Volunteering at the Water Tower is a family friendly activity and requires no gardening experience. You can volunteer once or many times, you pick! There is also flexibility around the specific date/time you do the work, it simply needs to be within a day or two of your scheduled date.
For each shift, we hope to have two volunteers. The work will include watering and weeding and typically takes under 2 hours. If there has been at least one inch of rain that week, the watering will not be needed. We will assist volunteers in communication to either schedule a time together or communicate what work will be done by whom. This is a great opportunity to get to know a new neighbor! We will provide volunteers with detailed instructions.
Washburn Water Tower Landscape Project Overview:
Although no longer used for drinking water, the tower is an important monument in our neighborhood. While the fence installed around the base of the tower reduced the number of graffiti incidents, it created a challenge with respect to landscape maintenance. Minneapolis Water Works, who owns and maintains the tower and its grounds, commissioned a low-maintenance landscape design plan from Tangletown Gardens. The conceptual design can be viewed Washburn-Tangletown-Planting Pallette. Minneapolis Water Works has cleared the area and plans to purchase the plant materials. The Tangletown Neighborhood Association, with neighborhood support, has agreed to provide volunteers for the initial planting. Additionally, the neighborhood will maintain the gardens by watering and weeding for the first two-three years while the plants are established.
Annika Bankston, Superintendent -Water Plant Operations & Maintenance attended the Tangletown Neighborhood Association board meeting on January 15th, 2018 to tell us more about the plans. The board approved a partnership with Minneapolis Water Works on February 19th, 2018. Please contact info@tangletown.org with any questions.
Washburn Water Historical Sign Project Overview:
In May 2022, Tangletown’s Building, Land Use, and Housing Committee completed a multi-year project to research, create, and install a historical sign at the Washburn Water Tower. Thanks to a generous legacy grant from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, local historian Tom Balcom, designer Dirk Nicholson, and dedicated Tangletown volunteers, this sign now sits near the base of the water tower and tells its history to all who visit the site.
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