I was a huge fan of the College View streetscape renovations when they were first completed. The new street, sidewalks, lights, and so forth looked fantastic! But one thing baffled me: what was with the ditches on the side of the road? No matter, I was sure they had a cool plan.
Well it's springtime, and the plan for the ditches appears to be to let weeds take over and for water to pool up both in the ditches and on the street. That's not quite what I expected.
It's possible, I suppose, that the plan is to plant native grasses and such to populate the ditches. Maybe we'll even see cattails. The effect could be pretty cool, in theory. Water running off the roads would be filtered by the plants rather than piped into the storm sewer system. I can dig that. If that's where they're headed, they've got a ways to go.
Speaking of College View, have you noticed the newly-woodchipped patches on various corners? What's the deal there? They're already covered in weeds! Today they look bad; without some sort of major intervention they're going to look downright godawful within a couple weeks. As with the ditches, I hope there's some sort of marvelous plan that just isn't visible yet. If not ... yeesh.
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I never noticed either until today. How odd. I don’t get the ditches at all. I’m not a fan of native grasses. They look too much like weeds. But the ditches just don’t make any sense.
They’re supposed to be bioswales (linear rain gardens). I haven’t been down that way to look at them this spring yet - they didn’t look to bad when they initially finished…. Maybe I’ll swing by tonight.
I’m all for projects of this nature, but they definitely need to be done right and maintained properly - especially since they are “new” to the City and I’m sure some are wary.
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