Fewer Flowers For Tacoma
With all the talk around the City’s budget woes, we haven’t been paying as much attention to the Metro Parks budget. Not surprisingly, there will be cuts there too.
Among other areas, the budget recommends cuts to gardens. More specifically, according to an article in last week’s Tacoma Weekly, the plans call for reductions in horticultural displays near the entrance of Point Defiance and the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory at Wright Park, replacement of gardens at Wapato Park with bark mulch, and the elimination of funding for hanging baskets along Ruston Way.
The Seymour Conservatory in Wright Park currently gets a new plant display monthly. The new proposal is to go to a new display every quarter. There’s also a proposal to go from a voluntary donation to a mandatory admission for the garden.
One option suggested for the hanging baskets is for nearby businesses to pick up the tab. For example, restaurants along Ruston Way could be contacted about paying for the hanging baskets on that road. According to the Weekly, that approach is already used to keep flower baskets on South Tacoma Way.
What would you do to save your flowers?
Filed under: City Government, Parks, Budget
6 comments
T Tom Llewellyn November 29, 2012
Instead of applying for a grant to build a new park on the Foss Waterway, how about someone applies for a grant to keep the flowers blooming?
M Mofo from the Hood November 29, 2012
What’s the cost of a packet of flower seeds? The trouble with the current “flower bed crisis” is that Metro Parks talks about arbitrary boundaries of flower beds as if they were Broadway theatre stages.
Here’s another eye-opener:
The conservatory at Wright Park is a greenhouse—a glass house to GROW plants. Amazing concept, I know, but the managers at Metro Park are more concerned about growing the myth of their directorial competence.
D Donald Arsenault November 30, 2012
A large part of the costs of maintaining the flowers is that Metro Parks sends out a two person crew to water the flowers; a driver and an assistant to actually use the water wand to water the plants. Perhaps the savings of one person doing both tasks would be enough to save the flowers.
J John November 30, 2012
Mofo, you aren’t suggesting scrapping the Conservatory’s collection and turn it into a commercial greenhouse, are you?
M Mofo from the Hood November 30, 2012
I like the conservatory and its contents just as they are—except for the overwrought flower beds. Does anyone really believe that the bureaucrats at Metro Parks can manage this place better than a teenage botany club?
M Mofo from the Hood December 5, 2012
Rumor has it that down at Pt. Defiance Park, “bored” directors have okayed a proposed exhibit of Ivan the gorilla pushing up daisies.