April planting brings May flowers
Utah State University Landscape Operations and Maintenance, or LOAM, have their hands full this spring creating and maintaining the campus landscape.
Landscapers are working during this season to make the campus beautiful for graduation, with commencement only two weeks away.
Plant Specialist Gilbert Young, a masters student studying horticulture, and his crew are making graduation a priority.
“This time of year we are getting ready for commencement,” Young said. “We are getting the tree rings cut and mulched, help plant annual flowers for graduation and getting this things ready to go for commencement.”
There is a lot of landscaping to be finish up, Young said.
“It’s really about prioritizing tasks,” he said. “There is always all the finesse, all the fine details that take up the most time, so it is mostly about getting the bulk of it done and then trying to get as much of the finer details taken care of as possible.”
LOAM crews do more than work toward graduation.The landscape crews are split up by the different area coordinators in charge of a certain part of campus based on different projects that need done. There can be upwards of 75 workers on staff during the summer.
The Director of Landscape Operations and Maintenance Rob Reeder coordinates all the different area coordinators.
“We have construction projects. We have a guy who does all the annual gardens, someone who sprays and fertilizes and a mechanic,” Reeder said. “We have an arborist who focuses on the trees along with an athletic fields specialist and two irrigation specialists.”
Different gardens on campus are watered with a water conversation system. Bret Leckie installs new valves that control the sprinklers and the amount of water. There are about 3,000 valves that are controlled by 97 irrigation clocks, which are then controlled by a weather program. It tracks temperature, humidity and other weather conditions to calculate how much water to use.
“We try to conserve water. We use an irrigation program that works with the weather stations,” said Leckie, a USU graduate. “It uses regional data from three different weather stations around the valley. It’s very accurate.”
Leckie said he tries his best to make campus look the best it can.
“It’s like an art,” he said. “I take care of campus like I would my house. I do my best to make it presentable.”
Reeder stressed the importance of his job: making campus appealing for the community, students and all who visit.
He’s found that, when evaluating universities, potential students tend to choose the campus with a more manicured look.
“We incorporate different types of gardens and provide variety of species of plants on campus that you won’t find anywhere else in the area,” he said.
— deonna.edgar@aggiemail.usu.edu