The Mesquite Mile project began in 2020. It saw participation from multiple Texas Tech University departments, students, the City of Lubbock, local ranchers, homeowners, the Heart of Lubbock Neighborhood Association, and Lubbock Habitat for Humanity.
Based in the Heart of Lubbock, the Mesquite Mile was a series of short grass prairie restorations intended to help mitigate flooding in that neighborhood using local plants and human infrastructure.
The project was led by a group of four artists and architects: Travis Neel, Daniel Phillips, Kim Karlsrud, and Erin Charpentier.
At the time, Travis Neel was a professor of Art and Design at Texas Tech University. He said the Honey Mesquite tree was a core part of the project.
“We wanted to take this plant that's been culturally designated a weed and sort of try to reframe it as a cultural asset by using it to provide shade canopy and create biodiversity in people's yards,” Neel explained.
Mesquite trees are drought-tolerant and highly absorbent.
Many of the Mesquite seeds came from a rancher in Tahoka, including seeds contained in cow patties that the team collected.
The seeds were taken to a greenhouse, where the group germinated more than 100 trees, which were then given to families, businesses, and nonprofits across the city.
The project also documented the migration of a mature mesquite tree from Tahoka into Lubbock
When the project was conceived, Daniel Phillips and fellow collaborator Kim Karlsrud had just moved to Lubbock. He was an assistant professor with Texas Tech’s landscape architecture program, and he and Karlsrud were looking for a way to engage with the community and with nature.
“I had an opportunity to develop a service learning initiative or a service learning class,” Phillips said. “And the service learning class was just an opportunity for the youth, for our students, to actually get their hands dirty, working on real and community projects.”
Phillips said the team added gutters on houses that did not have any and downspouts into the yard. They also added rain barrels, the overflow from which goes to the mesquite tree and companion plants.
During the project, Phillips worked with landscaping students on site grading, design, and development, while Neel worked with art students to establish and maintain the sites.
Another major part of the process was collaborating with the City of Lubbock.
John Turpin is Lubbock’s city engineer. He said that the Mesquite Mile was an unusual project.
“We really had to look at, how is this going to affect our operations? First and foremost, because we have to serve our citizens,” Turpin said. “At the end of the day. We can't have it affect our water wastewater lines, our ability to get to and repair those lines, or our ability to service solid waste.”
Along with the local grasses and trees, the Mesquite Mile team helped homeowners coordinate with the city and acquired what Phillips believes is the first curb cut in Lubbock County. These curb cuts are notches in the concrete that divert stormwater from the street into the yards’ basins for watering plants.
“So we ask [the city] what is the process for actually getting a curb cut permission? They're like, ‘Oh, you know, we don't have – there's not even one in place. No one's ever asked us that,'” Phillips recalled. “So we created an MOU, the first MOU – as far as we know, in Lubbock County – to do our own curb cuts.”
An MOU, or memorandum of understanding, is a document between the city and the homeowner outlining the conditions for making a change, like a curb cut.
“There's a stormwater performance component to this that's really important, especially in the Heart of Lubbock, where 25% of the parcels are in the FEMA floodplain,” he said.
Senior civil engineer with the city, Steven Nelson, explained that Lubbock being so flat creates unique challenges when it comes to floodplaining. Lubbock’s roads serve as rivers, bringing rainwater into playa lakes.
“A lot of the systems that were put in, were put in over 50 years ago and weren't necessarily intended to deal with the rapid nature of storms,” Nelson said. “There’s a variety of storms and our standards, we look at kind of one version of that. And storms come in all different shapes and sizes that impact certain different areas.”
The stormwater compliance department works closely with first responders and citizens about areas that are facing severe flooding and what developments may need to be made. That includes partnerships with business owners, homeowners, and projects like Mesquite Mile.
“We're all about customer service,” Turpin said. “And I don't have the thought process of coming in with ‘no,’ I have the thought process of coming in with listening first and then seeing, what can we accommodate.”
According to Kim Karlsrud, the Mesquite Mile picked up momentum after receiving a Mid-America Arts Alliance grant in 2021. But in order to expand the project how they wanted, the team would need more funding. Along with Texas Tech, they had been applying for an NEA grant – National Endowment for the Arts – since shortly thereafter.
“The whole process took over a year,” Karlsrud explained. “Then when we finally got it, we were going through this really intensive process to even move the grant forward when we were awarded. And then to have it fall apart… it's disappointing. It was a lot of work.”
Despite tentative approval of the grant, Texas Tech University received an email from the National Endowment for the Arts in May, saying that the funding recommendation was being withdrawn.
The reason listed on the email was that the project did not align with the current administration’s priorities.
“And one of them was: they state that they want to support the military and veterans. They want to support Hispanic communities and Hispanic serving institutions,” Karlsrud said. “But that was part of the appeal is Texas Tech University absolutely is serving the Hispanic population, and the site that we are working with was for veterans housing.”
Texas Tech appealed the decision, but has not heard back from the NEA since.
The veterans housing project that the Mesquite Mile team was pursuing was a partnership with Lubbock Habitat for Humanity.
Habitat received permission and funding to transform a parking lot in the Heart of Lubbock into affordable veteran’s housing and Mesquite Mile was funded by the NEA to support landscape design and building a communal outdoor space for the facility.
Habitat for Humanity lost funding in Winter of 2024.
In an email to KTTZ, Habitat for Humanity director Christy Reeves explained that while the organization still has federal funding for another project, she does not have details on why the Veterans Village in the Heart of Lubbock was put on hold and has not received any updates.
As of now, the site is still a parking lot.
The main organizers with the Mesquite Mile project have now left Lubbock. Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud are assistant professors at the University of Oregon and collaborators at Common Studios. Travis Neel and Erin Charpentier have moved to California, where Neel is an assistant professor of art at California Polytechnic State University.
However, the legacy and the impact of the Mesquite Mile project continues in the Heart of Lubbock.
Debra Robinson was one of the homeowners whose yard was transformed. She saw the work being done in her neighborhood and asked to be included.
“Close to 36 years I was in a flood zone,” she said. “And having paid all the stuff that's gone up for us, all the insurance and all that. This gave me freedom, because the way they landscaped all this, there was a lot of work. That little gully running through there, it stopped that pool of water that was pulling up here, and the mosquitoes and stuff over there.”
In addition to curbing the flooding on her street and increasing mobility outside of her home, Robinson said the project has created a lasting sense of community between the homeowners who participated. She said they share plants, seeds, and ideas for their yards.
Robinson said her yard has been an inspiration for her grandchildren who are starting to buy homes of their own and it has also been an opportunity for her to teach her great grandchildren how to garden.
Despite the loss of funding, Robinson hopes the Mesquite Mile sparks others to get involved in their communities and take up similar projects across Lubbock.
An exhibition showing photos, videos, and writing from the Mesquite Mile – titled With Whom We Find Ourselves In Relation – opened at the LHUCA gallery on July 3. It will remain on display through August 30.
This story is part of a series examining the local impact of federal funding cuts. Read part 1 on the South Plains Community Action Association here and stay tuned later this month for part 3, where we speak to more local researchers bridging the gap between Texas homeowners and their environment.