Groundskeepers Add Beauty to Campus with Wildflowers

Groundskeepers Add Beauty to Campus with Wildflowers

BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY
Rice News Staff
April 29, 1999

A Sunday drive to see the spring bluebonnets is a traditional Texas family
activity, but for people who can’t make the drive to Brenham, there is a field
of bluebonnets just west of the M.D. Anderson Biological Laboratories on the
Rice campus.

Okay–it’s a small field of bluebonnets.

Well–actually, it looks more like a tiny plot of weeds, but a closer look
reveals baby blue eyes and many wild cousins blooming in red, pink, white, purple
and yellow.

The state flower of Texas is just one of many varieties of wildflowers nurtured
by the groundskeepers of Facilities and Engineering at different sites around
campus.

For Nancy Rowe, a grounds specialist, and Ron Smith, the grounds superintendent,
it is gardening with a whole lot of love and respect for nature.

"In an urban setting, it’s nice to have a little bit of the country, a
little bit of Lady Bird Johnson. There is something with flowers that makes
you happy," said Rowe as she peers into a red poppy.

The groundskeepers use a commercial mix of native wildflower seeds, which they
sow in October and November on special plots on campus.

Rowe does most of the site preparation and watches over the flowers like a
mother caring for a brood of beautiful children. Her choices of flower beds
are limited, but she makes the best use of space available. In addition to the
athletic field plot across the road from the biology labs, she oversees a little
wildflower meadow next to the Cohen House along the drive linking the Faculty
Club with Allen Center. That little plot measuring 12-feet wide by 120-feet
long is shaded by more than 30 crepe myrtles.

The Cohen House flower garden is going through some hard times. Last year,
an enthusiastic groundskeeper sowed rye grass in the plot. Now the Indian blankets,
scarlet flax, red salvia, blue bachelor buttons and red poppies are growing
through a dense mat of grass.

Errant grass seed is the least of Rowe’s wildflower woes. Mowers and weed whippers
are problems too. When asked how she prevents the lawnmower crews from decimating
a wildflower patch, she said with a firm voice, "We educate them."

The mowing crews probably receive a pretty good education from Rowe. She is
not likely to allow harm to come to the flowers if she can help protect them.
When stepping into a wildflower patch, Rowe moves slowly, gingerly lowering
her feet to avoid crushing some of the scarlet sage and toad flax.

Even though the gardener moves slowly as though she’s stretching with Tai Chi,
don’t get the idea that the wildflowers are coddled at Rice. The flowers are
not an end into themselves. They are part of a little ecosystem. They also provide
nourishment for nectar-sipping hummingbirds and butterflies, as well as munchies
for hungry caterpillars.

The wildflower gardens are designed to attract hummingbirds and butterflies,
Rowe said. The butterflies feed on the flower nectar and later lay eggs on the
leaves of the plants. Those eggs hatch into caterpillars, which then eat the
plants. The cycle is all part of butterfly gardens. Of course, not all passers-by
understand that the wildflowers are for the caterpillars as well as the butterflies.
Misguided onlookers have been known to pinch the life out of plump caterpillars
feeding on wildflowers.

Unlike other plants around campus, the wildflowers are left to fend for themselves.

"Either they make it or they don’t," Smith said.

Smith, who loves the wildflowers, is not heartless. He is expressing the underlying
thought that wildflowers should be kept wild. That means no assistance from
gardeners other than providing a plot of ground and sowing the seeds.

While wildflowers are not sprayed with pesticides or fertilizers, many plants
on campus are. Unavoidably, some of the substances drift into the flower gardens.

Rowe uses natural sprays such as garlic, soybeans and molasses whereever possible.
She mixes up a gallon of commercial, all-natural crushed garlic, stirs it into
100 gallons of water and sprays the Italian cypress, azaleas and other plants.
The cypress on the Academic Quad require about 200 gallons of the garlic spray,
which leads one to believe the plant must have a genetic love for the pungent
bulb. Sometimes the smell is so strong near the playing fields that athletes
complain that the air smells like pizza.

Groundskeepers also use soybean oil to kill scale and other insects. The oily-biodegradable
spray simply smothers the bugs. Campus gardeners also use a molasses spray,
which offers some benefits to plants and may harm insect pests.

While the wildflowers may not get a boost from tasteful sprays, they do get
some personal attention.

Rowe, dressed in her drab brown groundskeepers uniform, kneels in a patch of
red corn poppies, purple bachelor buttons, bluebonnets and red snap dragons.
She fingers a small plant with fuzzy green leaves. She beams.

Says Rowe, "How can you not be in awe of the majesty that comes through?"

For more information about native wildflowers contact the Lady Bird Johnson
Wildflower Center at 4801 Lacrosse Ave. in Austin, Tx. 78739. The center can
also be reached by phone at (512) 292-4100 or by e-mail at nwrc@onr.com. Visit
the center’s Web site at www.wildflower.org.