Brian Dold works for the Olmsted Conservancy, he says Olmsted designed wide boulevards to be tree and plant friendly. (Photo courtesy of Joyce Kryszak)
Most modern city streets were designed only with traffic in mind. There was little or no attention given to green space. Over time, some cities revamped their streets adding landscaped medians to make them more attractive. But not all cities thought ahead to what it would take to keep those green areas growing. Joyce Kryszak reports, in one city the volunteers who maintain the plants in the medians – are pretty stressed out.
Transcript
Most modern city streets were designed only with traffic in mind. There was little or no attention given to green space. Over time, some cities revamped their streets adding landscaped medians to make them more attractive. But not all cities thought ahead to what it would take to keep those green areas growing. Joyce Kryszak reports, in one city the volunteers who maintain the plants in the medians – are pretty stressed out.
It’s about eight o’clock on a chilly morning. Linda Garwol is dodging two lanes of traffic to take care of the shrubs and trees planted in the City of Buffalo’s Main street medians. At least, what’s left of the greenery.
“Uh, two trees are left. Things have been replanted in some of them,” said Garwol. “It’s a nice project, but it wasn’t well-thought out, obviously.”
Gawrol says just a couple of years after the medians were planted more than 70 of the trees and shrubs have died.
The federal plan that called for the green medians in the street didn’t include money for maintenance or irrigation. The City of Buffalo says it doesn’t have the money to maintain the green strips. Garwol says that’s when she and other volunteers stepped in. But she says there simply aren’t enough of them to get the job done.
“It is tough work. It’s bending, it’s picking up garbage, it’s weeding. So, it’s not easy to get volunteers, especially at this time of the morning. This is the big problem. To avoid the traffic you have to be up early,” said Garwol.
But it turned out that weeding was the least of their problems. Late last summer, it stopped raining. And, the strips are too narrow, the dirt too poor to retain enough water. And… there’s no irrigation system. Unless you count Sister Jeremy Midura. The Catholic nun started braving the traffic to save the wilting landscape in front of her church. Every week day morning at dawn, she tugs five gallon buckets of water between the racing cars.
“They recognize me as the crazy median woman,” said Midura.
“How many of buckets of water do you have to take out there?” reporter. “Well, we use about 12-14 buckets on the larger median across from Catalician Center and our church. Then about ten buckets over by our school area,” said Midura.
But the traffic-dodging nun couldn’t carry enough water for all the two-mile stretch of thirsty plants. By fall, the city finally sent some tanker trucks to water the medians twice a week.
And still trees and shrubs died.
This appears to be a case of bad planning. Experts say anything planted in small medians need to be drought and salt resistant. They have to be planted in the right kind of soil. And irrigation systems should be part of the plan. Otherwise, experts say cities are just throwing away their investment. We wanted to ask the City of Buffalo about that, but the city did not return our calls.
“Right now, we’re walking along what was a Olmstedian bridle-path…”
Frederick Law Olmsted was a 19th century landscape architect. Brian Dold works for the Olmsted Conservancy. Dold says Olmsted designed the boulevard to be tree and plant friendly. It’s thirty feet wide. Two rows of elms arch over the broad, grassy lawn.
Dold says there’s more than enough soil for roots to spread wide and deep and survive droughts. He says, unfortunately, that’s not the case in many urban landscapes today.
“And that really creates an environment where you’re asking too much of a common plant to survive and do well in,” said Dold.
But cities such as Buffalo are learning from their mistakes. The medians now being added down the rest of Main Street will have irrigation systems. A special adaptive soil is being used. And… there’s a good chance the new plantings will survive in the green strip between the lanes of traffic.
For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.