Each year a number of Winona State students contribute to Garvin Heights' restoration activities and the caretaking of the grounds on the Winona State campus. 

Restoration is the process of bringing diversity back to an area that is environmentally degraded. It usually involves invasive plant removal, controlled burning and the re-introduction of plants or seeds native to that site or area. Ecologists have identified many diverse native plant communities with large differences in genotypes from one region to another.

The WSU Biology department has worked for a number of years to restore the prairie at Garvin Heights, on the bluffs overlooking Winona. At Garvin Heights, thin prairie gives way to oak savannah, then woodland. It's a rare landscape: arid prairie and savannah side by side with deciduous forest.

Read more about WSU's Prairie Restoration work in the XXX issue of Currents. (See page 26 in this issue)

WSU's Biology Department's information about Garvin Heights Restoration

The Trees of Winona State University

In the mid-eighties, a WSU senior grounds keeper "came to realize that the campus grounds had a limited number of tree species and became concerned about potential harm to the campus environment that could be caused by this lack of diversification combined with onset of disease, insect infestation or severe weather." He realized his goal of planting a diversity of trees on the main campus. Almost fifty species considered native to Minnesota are represented on the Winona State campus in Winona, MN. WSU Publications documented this work in a book called The Trees of Winona State University. It can be used as a walking guide.