CAPE ELIZABETH – In celebration of its 50th birthday, Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth is scheduled to get a $150,000 facelift this summer that will clear invasive plants to create a new picnic area and walking path while improving views of historic Portland Head Light.

The project, to break ground as part of 50th anniversary celebrations in April, was made possible by an anonymous $75,000 donation, matched by the Head Light museum’s board of directors (otherwise known as the Cape Elizabeth Town Council) using museum and gift shop proceeds.

The project is being overseen as part of the ongoing arboretum project by the charitable Fort Williams Foundation and was designed by Regina Leonard, a Topsham landscape architect responsible for the 2012 rebuild of Mill Creek Park in South Portland.

According to Bob Ayotte, president of the Fort Williams Foundation, the “critical date” for the project will come on Feb. 24, when he presents the project to the Town Council.

“The good news is that we have all of the funding in place,” Ayotte told the Fort Williams Advisory Commission last week. “That is not our normal model. Usually, we put in a plan, get the approvals, and then start the hard work of fundraising.”

A prime example of that is the children’s garden, designed by Mitchell & Associates Landscape Architects of Portland and expected to cost $530,000. Scheduled to be built behind the tennis courts on Farnsworth Road in 2015, using private donations, its features are slated to include a pond and stream, a stone seating circle for presentations, a meadow maze, a birch tree fort and a fairy house building. Foundation calculations show the garden will require almost $20,000 in annual maintenance costs. The plan was accepted last month by the Town Council, which, according to Chairwoman Jessica Sullivan, will review the plan in a workshop session next month.

According to foundation board member Lynn Shaffer, chairwoman of the Arboretum Master Plan Committee, the new lighthouse view project will include areas of landscaping and areas of reclamation.

“We’re trying to take a much gentler approach to the project than with Cliffside, where we basically excavated, filled and replanted,” said Shaffer. “We’ll do a little bit of that with this site, but otherwise we have several objectives.”

Those objectives, Shaffer said, include improving views of the lighthouse from an overlook that already exists and is used by visitors on an informal basis, when they chose to brave the tangled growth, from which to get prime photo ops.

“The plan is to create an attractive area of native plants that invites people to come and sit to look over the site and enjoy the natural beauty of the area,” said Shaffer.

The Fort Williams Foundation is an independent nonprofit formed in 2000 and chartered by the Town Council the following year, initially in hopes of establishing an endowment for park maintenance but now rededicated to the preservation and beautification of Cape Elizabeth’s signature site. The foundation has been on a bit of a roll of late, as the 50th anniversary of the park approaches. Two years ago, said Ayotte, it raised $25,000, most of which went to cover its operations. In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2013, fundraising netted $47,000. Last week, the foundation topped $100,000 for its campaign, which includes 337 individual donors. Of that, about half is dedicated to the arboretum project, including $30,000 earmarked for a children’s garden.

From 1872 to 1962, Fort Williams was a military installation, with the first gun battlements built for harbor defense constructed in 1898. Located on the site, Portland Head Light, Maine’s oldest lighthouse, was famously commissioned by George Washington and completed in 1791.

During World War I, the site was fully manned with artillery, and anti-aircraft guns were added. In World War II, it was the headquarters for the defense of Portland against Germany.

The military decommissioned the fort in 1962 and, two years later, the town bought the 90-acre property for $20,000. However, more than a decade passed before the site began to resemble the park people recognize today. In fact, the site was not officially designated as a park until July 1979, following rejection of ideas for uses that included low-income housing and a “coastal science” center.

In 1975, a major sewer project in town generated a huge amount of fill that had to be put somewhere. So, into the park it went, burying most of the old batteries.

Two of the batteries were covered completely, while Battery Blair’s north gun emplacement was left exposed. To mark the fort’s centennial in 1999, money was raised to turn the exposed platform, located just behind Portland Head Light, into an “interpretive center,” making it by the foundation’s estimate “one of the most visited areas in the park.”

In 2009, the Fort Williams Commission founded a Battery Blair Committee to unearth the battery in order to better illustrate the history of the park. However, a $35,000 study commissioned last year by the foundation determined it would be too costly, at about $1 million, to try and reconfigure drainage at the park in order to excavate the batteries.

Meanwhile, work began three years ago on the $3.5 million Arboretum at Fort Williams, a foundation project to beautify the park by creating 15 landscaped areas. Those spots, yet to be fully designed, include a nut grove, a fruits region in addition to the children’s garden, now ready for construction, and the largely completed Cliffside Walk area, where volunteers tore out invasive plants – including sumac, bittersweet, black swallowwort and Japanese knotwood – and installed a grass amphitheater.

That clearing and sculpting alone cost about $100,000, according to Shaffer. Full rehabilitation, including installation of stone retaining walls, steps and pavers, as well as replanting of native species ran closer to $440,000 – all raised through private donations and largely completed with volunteer labor.

The foundation also was awarded last week a $32,759 Project Canopy grant from the USDA Forest Service. That money will be used to clear invasive species and plants from some 240 native trees and shrubs at the entrance to the Cliff Walk this spring.

A satellite photo of the area at Fort Williams Park to be renovated this year, with Portland Head Light located at the lower right and broad areas to be rehabilitated.