The Botany of Desire
TOML throws down to get some “color” on parkways
Mammoth’s Town Council authorized up to $50,000 from the Town’s General Fund to be spent on efforts to improve the landscaping on Main Street at its meeting on on June 7, most of which will go towards temporary beautification efforts.
The immediate goal, said Public Works Director Grady Dutton on Wednesday, June 21, is to add color to Main Street and Old Mammoth Road before the Fourth of July holiday.
Dutton said that the $50,000 slated for Main Street improvements will probably not be spent on drought-tolerant and native landscaping. “I prefer native [plants], but there’s a lot of other things that Oaktree says will survive that will provide color. Tulips are an example, they’re very hearty, and they come back year after year.”
Andrea Walker, owner of Stellar Brew on the north side of Main Street, disagreed about the hardiness of tulips. “Tulips will totally be trampled [during the Fourth of July parade],” she said. “[It’s a] waste of money…there needs to be a plan to rip up all the soil, re-soil, and plant native seeds that will live through a future drought.”
One reason that a massive re-assessment of the plant life on Main Street isn’t taking place, said Dutton, is the fact that the proposed Lower Main Street Sidewalk Project “could be under construction next summer…We don’t want to install a lot of stuff that will then be torn out.”
At Town Council’s meeting on June 7, Matthew Lehman said that “We really just want to see a lot of these areas brought up to a standard we expect.”
