In addition to maintaining the lawns, flower beds, and landscape trees of the main campus, the staff from UW Physical Plant Grounds also provides support to the Lakeshore Nature Preserve by removing hazard trees, splitting wood for fire circles, and maintaining the Lakeshore Path.
The storage area is where the soil, mulch, crushed stone, landscape waste, and other materials are consolidated and stored. These bulky, heavy materials need to be readily at hand close to campus, since the labor, transport, and energy costs associated with storing them elsewhere, far from campus, would make this challenging work even more difficult. The storage area is surrounded by an earth berm to minimize the noise and the visual impacts of equipment doing this work of landscape maintenance.
Please be cautious when visiting this area, since you may encounter service vehicles coming and going as part of their work.