Friday, June 16, 2006
Keeping the roads green
Libba Wolfe
Libba Wolfe's column appears twice monthly in Extra.
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After a week in North Carolina, my trip home was filled with thoughts of my garden. If it hadn't rained, did my husband remember to water? If it had rained, were my beds filled with weeds? Had the plants I put in just before I left survived without my obsessive cheerleading and pampering?
This has been a grand spring for gardening. Hours of hard work between my pre-breakfast and post-dinner strolls around the yard have given me an intimacy with each plant. I've enjoyed watching seeds germinate and shrubs and perennials settle in and thrive.
My small yard has absorbed most of my time and more cash than I like to think about. As I sped across Virginia, I noticed the huge beds of day lilies in the median and the neatly trimmed shrubs bordering the exit ramps. It made me dizzy to think of gardening on that scale. Who was obsessing about those plants?
I called Fred Altizer, assistant to the chief engineer of the Virginia Department of Transportation's Salem District.
A side note on Fred -- we used to live across the street from him. While his lovely yard is always perfect, it was his garage that wowed the Wolfes. Every time he opened the garage doors, my husband and I would stand transfixed at our front window, peeping through the blinds. The tools and supplies were in apple-pie order. It was clean and bright and there was even room for the cars. Because our garage was such a tangled heap of junk, we never opened the doors before dark. Fred was my go-to guy with yard questions.
Fred put me in touch with Jim Helvey, the head of VDOT's Roadside Management Department for our 12-county district. He has 17 employees (including administrative and supervisory) and seven contract workers.
He's responsible for design, planting and seeding, mulching, mowing and maintenance, and tree and shrub trimming. It's a year-round process, but he works with the same natural timetable we all do. Once early spring arrives, it's nonstop work.
You and I can plant finicky specimens by the kitchen door so we can water every morning. We can creep through borders to better appreciate delicate blooms or interesting foliage.
Helvey doesn't have those luxuries. His design decisions and plant choices are based on what you can see in about two seconds at high speed. He gardens in big blocks of color. Stella de Oro day lilies and Tahiti daffodils -- 15,000 of each in a bed -- are two of his favorites.
Helvey must also consider a plant's reliability and will to live. Those gorgeous wildflower beds are treated for weeds, tilled and then sprayed with a mixture of seeds, water, shredded newspaper and fertilizer. Then they're on their own. The soil is rarely the best, and there's not enough time or manpower to water and feed.
Except for the extreme drought years, Helvey can count on corn poppies, coreopsis, oxeye daisies, cosmos and dame's rocket for a roadside show.
I wondered if planting to feed birds was a goal. Well, that gets dangerous. A few years ago in eastern Virginia, a median planting of Elaeagnus angustifolia was heavy with berries. Cedar waxwings gorged on the fermented fruit and drunkenly flew into passing cars. Because you can't charge a bird with a DUI, the bushes were removed. Sunflowers are easy to grow, but you won't see them because they attract too many birds to a dangerous situation.
Last year the VDOT crews put in 231 trees on Interstate 581. It made my back ache to think of 231 holes to dig. They use a Bobcat when they have room, shovels when they don't. Winter road salt complicates growing conditions. You'll see Kousa dogwood, Eastern and Forest Pansy redbud, willow oak, Leland cypress, Greenspire linden and Japanese zelkova.
I'm getting my yard work in perspective. I'm going to choose some plants and trees from Helvey's "can't miss" list and stop obsessing. I don't have to worry about drunken birds or planting 25,000 bulbs at a pop. I don't have 22+ acres of beds spread over 12 counties to mulch and weed.
About that weeding ... I weed every day and I never catch up. Helvey's crews are smaller this year because of the budget problems (and I thought that was all about new highways or potholes). He said they're doing their dead-level best. And if all you see is weeds when you whiz past a glorious plot of flowers, "you're looking at the wrong thing."
HOT TIP
Slow down when you pass the VDOT crews. They're doing hot, hard, dangerous work.
