2026 Natural Shoreline Award Winner
Wildwood Park in Mahtomedi, Washington County (Rice Creek Watershed District)
Molly Nelson, Rice Creek Watershed District, and Bob Goebel, City of Mahtomedi, played key roles in the Lost Lake restoration effort.
Sometimes good things come in small packages.
At Wildwood Park in Mahtomedi, there is a baseball field, a playground, and a fishing pier on a secluded lake, surrounded by massive oak trees. Near the water’s edge, bumblebees buzz happily among bee balm, dotted blazingstar, black-eyed susans, and great blue lobelia. The lake is dappled with lilies with giant white flowers, like a Monet painting come to life.
Only 21 acres in size, Lost Lake is little more than a dot on the map near the southern tip of White Bear Lake. It is a region with a storied past that features a legendary fight with a giant bear, steamships, gangsters, famous authors, legal battles, and even an amusement park. Most recently, the City of Mahtomedi has been working with Washington Conservation District (WCD) and the Rice Creek Watershed District (RCWD) to reduce stormwater runoff, restore native habitat along the Lost Lake shoreline, and improve the health of community woodlands.
“This was one of the easiest projects I’ve ever worked on,” says Public Works Director Bob Goebel, who has been with the City of Mahtomedi for more than 30 years. “You guys brought the plan and made it happen. The contractors were great to work with, and it was so easy from the city’s perspective.”
The vision for a revitalized Wildwood Park began to take shape in 2017, when the Conservation District completed a subwatershed study for White Bear Lake that identified priority locations for raingardens, shoreline and wetland restoration projects, and other actions to improve water quality. At the time, the shoreline near Lost Lake’s fishing pier was severely eroded with undercut banks and numerous headcuts and the lake was frequently covered in algae. Because Lost and White Bear Lakes are hydrologically connected, WCD staff recognized that projects in Wildwood Park would serve to benefit both lakes.
“30 years ago people used to fish in Lost Lake and it was kind of a community gem,” says Gail Cederberg, a local Mahtomedi resident who also serves as a Metropolitan Council member. Cederberg has been watching the Wildwood Park project unfold and is eager to see the lake restored to better health.
“Lost Lake is a good example of multiple organizations coming together to make a project happen,” says Molly Nelson, an outreach and grant technician with RCWD who worked closely with Lori Tella, a landscape designer from the WCD to develop the restoration plan and move it forward. Before reaching out to the City in 2024, Nelson says she and Tella spent a whole afternoon at the park identifying high priority locations and brainstorming possible solutions. “It was neat to have an opportunity to get creative and have the city be so open to our ideas,” she says.
Eventually, Tella put together a shoreline planting plan that included a mix of trees and shrubs (serviceberry, buttonbush, red twig dogwoods, dwarf bush honeysuckle, red-osier dogwood, maple, cottonwood, and bur oak); aquatic plants (blueflag iris, common arrowhead, marsh milkweed, monkey flower, sweet flag, soft rush, lake sedge, and water plantain); and upland native plants (butterfly weed, wild onion, narrow-leaved coneflower, dotted blazingstar, great blue lobelia, large-flowered penstemon, side-oats grama, big bluestem, and yellow coneflower), to provide high quality habitat for fish, birds, insects, pollinators and other wildlife. Phase two of the project added a 1000 square foot raingarden to filter and clean stormwater runoff before it flows to the lake.
“We work with more than 30 cities and townships in a four county area,” Nelson explains, “and this project really is a stand-out. It just felt easy and seamless, which goes to show that these kinds of projects don’t have to be hard.”
Though the RCWD and WCD spearheaded Lost Lake’s shoreline restoration, the City of Mahtomedi has also made numerous additional improvements at Wildwood Park. After removing more than 30 dead or dying ash trees, Goebel says they enlisted the help of Tree Trust to plant 53 new replacement trees. Contractors have been working to repair gullies and erosion that were forming in the oak woodlands surrounding the lake and the city also adjusted culvert levels to make sure the lake maintains good inflow and outflow. Goebel is even working with a local Eagle Scout to install interpretive signs near the raingarden.
“I’m a Scout leader and my son Jack did a project nearby at Street Car Park,” he says. “Now we’ve got Grier Haman, a sophomore, working on the signs for Wildwood Park. He’s already built and installed the posts and will be coming back soon to add the rooftop covering and frame for the sign.”
Tour the Long Lake shoreline, one year after planting.
The Lost Lake shoreline restoration received $48,000 in funding from the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources through its Watershed Based Implementation Fund (WBIF) and another $10,000 through its Habitat Enhancement Landscape Program (HELP). Rice Creek Watershed District also provided a cost-share grant. Joe Hansen at Davey Resource Group, Inc. oversaw grading and planting on the Lost Lake shoreline in 2024-25, while Kusz Kontracting out of New Richmond, Wisconsin, constructed the raingarden in 2026. The City also worked with Willow River Irrigation to install water for the new raingarden. John Sachi, Mahtomedi’s recently retired city engineer, helped the project to move forward and gain support from the city council.
“I’m on the maintenance side of things so when I look at this shoreline, I think it’s great!” says Kevin Bartholomew, who is head of maintenance in Mahtomedi’s public works department. He says they do an annual burn at Katherine Abbott Park, nearby, and may consider doing something similar at Wildwood Park in the future.
In the meantime, the tiny Wildwood Park is full of life and activity. A bat cracks and the crowd cheers as the players round the bases. A white swan floats serenely across the water, while a green heron hunts for frogs near a fallen log. A dad and his son stand at the end of the pier, patiently casting and reeling in lines. They say you can catch some big fish on this lake. Maybe today is the day it will happen.
