Behind the scenes: Planting on the Blacksburg campus

Planting on campus is way more complicated than anyone really probably understands unless you're in the industry. We had a lot of designers who come in from out of state capital project, and they say, Well, you're in the Appalachian Mountains and they go look at native Appalachian plants, and we start seeing these plants show up on campus. Well, this is an urban environment. I mean, the soils are nothing like you will see up on Brush Mountain. The pH most places is too high too high for anything to really be absorbed by the plants. You want pH levels somewhere down around like 6.5 to seven, and I think most places on campus that we had tested were way higher than that. The leaf matter and those type of things that we're hauling out to the landfill. Each year they come in and they chew all that stuff up, they chew up all the sticks that are out there. So we're reusing when we build new beds, we will actually start with that compost. We will come in churn up all that compost into the ground that's there, and it has just given everything a good kick start from the word go. So most of the stuff that we're picking are like petunias and those type of things that are going to hang on without water for extended periods of time. It's, you know, 2,500 to 3,500 flowers somewhere in that range. When you get that many individuals working together, man, you can throw some mulch at those things and have them done so a bed that takes, you know, 250, 300 flowers, you can realistically have it planted and mulched in in a couple of hours. We have to find plants that have a certain longevity to them. We can't put a plant in that we know in eight to ten years is going to start declining and you're going to need to be replaced. If you're talking in terms of sustainability, if you have a native plant that's native to a deep, you know, moist high organic matter soil, and for me to plant that, I'm going to have to come and water it and do fertilizer applications. Is that more sustainable than a non native plant that's far more adapted and doesn't require that extra care. If we have a site that will accommodate a native plant, most times that's the plant we will use. It's a lot of balancing going on here. It's a lot to do? It's really fun though. It's a lot of fun.