Building community
and supporting the beauty of the Coal Creek corridor.
Coal Creek supports an abundance of wildlife and biodiversity in Colorado.
Our mission is to preserve and enhance the natural beauty and function of the Coal Creek corridor by stewarding native plants and restoring habitat.
Image: Jeff Goldberg
Let’s make this last.
Your year-end support ensures that our progress to enhance and connect habitat endures into the future. Make your donation today.
*All donations are tax-deductible.
Our Vision
The Coal Creek Pollinator District
Where is your house? Each blue circle represents a certified pollinator-friendly garden. We are adding quality pollinator habitat along the creek’s entire 35-mile run, from Golden down to Erie. Friends of Coal Creek is co-leading a citywide effort in Lafayette to achieve certification as a Pollinator City with the Butterfly Pavilion. There are many ways to get involved, from empty lots and marginal land, to open space and parklands, to your office park and your very own yard. Together, we can overlay quality polliantor habitat onto the urban and suburban environments. Add your home garden to our map.
Our Projects
Pollinator Gardens
We plant native prairie species to encourage bees, butterflies and other insects to return and reboot the riparian or shortgrass prairie ecosystem. We target underused land to enhance viewsheds and property value.
Prairie Restoration/Water Detention Basins
Working with private landowners, we undertake scaled projects to reseed larger tracts of strategically important land. Our goal is to create larger tracts of quality habitat to serve as anchor pieces of the Coal Creek Pollinator District.
Home Habitat Gardening
Planting native species at home is an easy and rewarding way to support pollinators, enhance the beauty of your yard and create low maintenance, low water, fire-wise landscapes. Learn more
Trash & Weed Clean Ups
Invasive weeds and grasses spread rapidly on disturbed lands, outcompeting native plants that are not adapted to disturbance. We uproot those plants to give native plants a chance to restablish.
2024 Pollinator Habitat Survey
To know the change we create, we need to know where we started. In the spring of 2024, we are counting up all the quality habitat already in existence in Lafayette, Louisville, Erie and Superior — and we’re starting with residential habitat. Do you know of a good piece of habitat? Let us know!
Corporate Impact Projects
We work with local businesses, school districts and other groups to create rewarding volunteer experiences. Contact us for more information or to set up a project.
From the Blog
Join us to share and support the beauty of Coal Creek in Colorado.
Be the first to know about our events, meet-ups and issues that impact the present and future of our local urban creek by signing up for our newsletter.
Exploring Coal Creek's wild side — and wildlife — where it exits the canyon above Superior.