Firefly Grove Park opens with a bang! And a troll.
June 3, 2025 | Topics: Events, Places
By Eddee Daniel
The main attraction is the 24-foot tall, lamppost-crunching troll, the first of its kind in Wisconsin. But brand-new Firefly Grove Park has a lot more going for it than being a selfie spot with a sculptural troll. Hundreds of people, it seemed to me, came out on May 28 for the official grand opening of the park, people of all ages. Many if not most likely came out of curiosity, to see the troll, which had gotten a lot of attention in the news. But they didn’t just walk in for a selfie and leave again. The whole park was bursting with activity, as you can clearly see in the photos.
The troll has a name: Mama Rosa (rhymes with Wauwatosa). She is the latest addition to the oeuvre of Danish artist Thomas Dambo. He has built well over a hundred larger-than-life trolls throughout the world. Each has its own personality. In this case, Mama Rosa has a liking for lampposts. Her quirk, being 24 feet tall (and a troll), is to pluck them like flowers. She holds a “bouquet” of them in one hand and lifts one with the other as if to smell it.
Two things make this theme especially compelling for me. First, you can walk around finding the broken-off stubs of the lampposts that she has already plucked. I observed many people, including delighted children, discovering this on their own in various spots around the park. Even more compelling is the back story.
Dambo found the lampposts in the Wauwatosa dump (which, not so coincidentally, sits adjacent to the new park). It seems that the city had decided to replace the old, traditional-looking posts in the Village section of Wauwatosa with new ones. Dambo is a champion of reclamation and recycling. In fact, Mama Rosa, like all of his trolls, is made entirely of local and recycled materials. As a Wauwatosa taxpayer myself, it seems to me the City could learn a little from his example. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that new lighting fixtures would have cost $300,000, whereas the cost of refurbishing and reinstalling the old ones came to $60,000. The fact that, according to the City of Wauwatosa website, no taxpayer funds were used in constructing the park misses the point.
In fact, sustainability is among the features touted in Firefly Grove Park. The repurposed lamps have been upgraded with energy-efficient LED bulbs and are illuminated using solar power from an on-site array. The pathways in the park use permeable pavement that allows rain water to seep through, which is just part of a stormwater management system that is said to have a capacity of 600,000 gallons per storm event. Engineered wetlands, another part of this system, are being planted with native species. There is even a small remnant natural wetland to help with biodiversity, along with serving as a visual barrier between the park and the City’s service yard next door.
I’m all for sustainability and biodiversity. In fact, these things need to be considered normal and expected when anything is designed these days, in my opinion. But especially when we’re talking about a park. However, the real reason all these people came to Firefly Grove is because it’s fun!
I came back the following day with my two grandchildren. After the obligatory photo op session with Mama Rosa, they both got busy having fun too.
Scenes from the Grand Opening of Firefly Grove Park
For more information about Firefly Grove Park go to the City of Wauwatosa website or the Discover Wauwatosa website.
Firefly Grove Park and Mama Rosa in the news:
Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks, an independent nonprofit advocate for parks and open spaces in SE Wisconsin.