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Let our medians bloom

2007 May 3
by Robert

By Ken Moore
Flora Columnist

“Grass is the most abused of all plants!” decried Steve Warner, a cherished older friend of mine, an Ohio landscape architect who many years ago retired down on a farm on the White Oak River near Swansboro. Part of his property is now a streamside nature trail of the North Carolina Coastal Federation. Steve was a lively, talkative and very opinionated individual whose life experiences gave him credibility as he worked hard to protect the wild nature of our landscapes. I remember him describing to me his response, soon after settling in coastal Carolina, to the sincere question: “Steve, when did you become an ‘environmentalist’?”
His response – “What’s an ‘environmentalist’?” – was so typical of Steve, who was simply living the life of what he expressed. And if striving to place a softer footprint on our turf is called an “environmentalist,” then so be it.
So I find myself reflecting on Steve’s wisdom daily as I move back and forth along our local community’s roadways. This past week I have been driving (I should have been cycling) back and forth, while substituting at Wood’s Charter School (a great new experience for me), to Cole Park Plaza at the Chatham County line and Carrboro. What a pleasure it has been to enjoy the exuberant hummocks of white and yellow and pink clovers filling the median from the county line until their termination at the town limits, where both Chapel Hill and Carrboro Public Works personnel are doing a superb job of responding to our citizenry’s demand for a weekly mowed short-turf effect. For years I have grieved during late April and into May, when our town’s medians were just becoming so festive with the clover flowering, to find how swiftly that six-to-ten-inch exuberance of clovers was swiftly cut short, returning us once again to the boring uniformity of tightly trimmed turf, to which Americans have been addicted since the British invaded our wild landscape centuries ago.
My mind can’t help but jump across our town’s border to that slope of frequently mowed turf in Meadowmont. I think Lawnmont is a more appropriate signature. That clipped turf is such a contrast to the beautiful natural brooms edge and wildflower meadow of pre-Meadowmont days. If the mowing of that meadow could be curtailed to only a couple of times a year, wow, just imagine the savings of money, not to mention the reduction of pollutants into our air, plus the beauty of that former meadow would slowly return.
On a more intimate scale, I was just this week admiring Bill Bracey’s curbside landscape along Arbor Realty, just over the Carrboro city limits into Chapel Hill on Rosemary Street. The white clover festooned curbside and the sweeps of clover up toward the entrance porch are so satisfying as an attractive landscape and a garden requiring nothing in the way of polluting chemicals and energy-wasting resources to maintain. If we all would only become aware of the polluting effects of our mowing machines, leaf blowers and other urban and residential landscape management equipment, we could perhaps find that mowing half as frequently (better only once a month and even less) would significantly move us toward reducing air pollution, and some of our lawn plants – like dandelions, violets, blue-eyed grass and lyre-leaf sage, to mention only a few – would be allowed to add some color to our otherwise short-cropped uniform green turf. Even the grasses, like our native brooms edge, when allowed to flower and persist through the winter, are quite ornamental.
When will we ever gain freedom from our rigid homeowners’ associations and feel secure that turf allowed to grow tall enough to flower and otherwise express itself is not a life-threatening situation?
Hurry down the highway toward Chatham County to view the clover, because the DOT mowers are not far behind our municipal crews doing their jobs so well.

Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com.

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