This pilot project is already well on its way to completion thanks to a collaborative group of Public Garden team members including Andrew Fulks, Director of the Riparian Reserve. who is serving as project manager for this conversion effort. Dave Klippert and his Civil and Industrial Services team are now preparing the space for its sustainable, low-maintenance landscape by removing the grass and hauling the extra dirt away so that Matt Forrest’s team from Grounds and Landscape Services can retrofit the irrigation from sprinklers to drip.
The grass on the La Rue Road medians is now prepped for removal and conversion from a high-maintenance, high-water lawn, to a low-water, low-maintenance, beautiful landscape featuring plant selections from the UC Davis Arboretum All-Star program.
Another pilot conversion project is the Arboretum meadow turf conversion at Shields Oak Grove. This project continues moving forward as well. Initial herbicide treatments took place last week just before the storms moved in. The next step will be a retrofit of the irrigation system, followed by seeding around November 15 with purple needlegrass, a native California grass.
As part of the UC Davis Public Garden Initiative, the campus will undertake a master planning effort to redesign portions of the campus landscape to save money, improve campus aesthetics, and provide more opportunities for teaching, research, and community engagement.
