Greenways are infrastructure. Like roads and bridges, they connect places and move people. But a well-designed trail also does something no highway can: it gives people a reason to slow down, look around, and feel the landscape they’re passing through.

DG2 Design has been designing trails and greenways across the St. Louis region for more than a decade — from intimate neighborhood loops to multi-phase, multi-municipality corridors that took years to build and will serve communities for generations.

The Gravois Greenway expansion is the clearest illustration of what this work demands and what it can achieve. DG2 Design led landscape architecture and planning for the expansion of Grant’s Trail from its former southern endpoint to the River des Peres Greenway — a project spanning six municipalities and portions of unincorporated St. Louis County, from Kirkwood to the city limits near River City Casino.

The completed ten-mile Gravois Greenway joins with the eleven-mile River des Peres Greenway to create a continuous 21-mile paved corridor for walking, running, cycling, and wheelchair use. The project involved two bridges, a boardwalk through wetlands, a tunnel, and more than 45,000 square feet of retaining walls — all requiring geotechnical analysis, water quality planning, and extensive coordination with MoDOT on utility relocations and right-of-way approvals. Construction phasing spanned several years, beginning with planning in 2012 and culminating in the completion of Phases 2 and 3 in 2020. The project earned the 2022 ASCE Engineering Excellence Award.

Not every greenway project is a 21-mile corridor. Some of the most impactful work happens at the neighborhood scale: a loop trail around a community lake, a connection between two parks that previously required driving, a safe off-road path linking a school to a residential neighborhood.

BaratHaven Park in Dardenne Prairie, the inaugural project of the Dardenne Greenway in St. Charles County, is exactly that kind of project: an 80-acre community park centered on a 15-acre lake, with a three-mile greenway loop winding through residential areas and connecting to Bluebird Meadow Park and, eventually, Busch Wildlife. Native Missouri plantings throughout the corridor provide habitat, manage stormwater, and give the trail a sense of place rooted in the local landscape.

The Centennial Greenway at 39 North, in collaboration with Great Rivers Greenway and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, is extending active transportation infrastructure through the 39 North Agtech Innovation District in Olivette and Creve Coeur — improving safety for walkers, runners, and cyclists while connecting one of the region’s most dynamic economic hubs to the broader greenway network.

Great trail design is inseparable from ecological stewardship. We integrate native plantings throughout our greenway corridors, selecting species suited to local soils, hydrology, and sun exposure — plants that stabilize creek banks, filter stormwater, support pollinators, and require far less long-term maintenance than conventional landscaping.

Where trails pass through sensitive areas — wetlands, riparian corridors, areas with cultural or archaeological significance — we bring the analysis and coordination expertise to navigate those constraints without compromising the ecological or historic value of the site.

DG2 Design has a deep working relationship with Great Rivers Greenway and has collaborated with municipalities, counties, MoDOT, and federal agencies on trail and greenway projects across the region. We understand the funding landscape, the right-of-way process, and the stakeholder dynamics that make complex trail projects succeed — or stall.