Despite budget cutbacks and a reduced staff size, Miami University's landscaping has made a mark across campus by planting flowers grown directly from seed and using only organic pesticides.
According to horticulturist Bill Zehler, Miami has been able to fill most flowerbeds with the crop of flowers grown directly from seed in the greenhouse near the Formal Gardens, however, the exact plans change every year.
"We probably produce about 50,000 flowers in our greenhouse from seed but the greenhouse that we use is kind of antiquated (and there's) a lot of humidity in there. Depending on the year we might have better crops of certain types (of flowers) than others," Zehler said. "It also depends on the amount of flowers that we are able to produce. There's a lot of delicate balances in what we do, so it's tough to say we're going to plant a certain flower in a certain bed in a certain year because we might not have had a lot of that flower because it was damp in the greenhouse that year."
Along with growing all of the flowers directly from seed, Zehler said Miami stays environmentally conscious by using only organic pesticides.
"We use Deer-Off which is a repellant, but I don't use any kind of pesticide on the flowers, at least nothing that isn't organic," Zehler said. "I use some organic stuff for the caterpillars, but absolutely nothing that's not organic."
According to Zehler, Miami's landscaping efforts have remained successful despite a significant cut in funding.
"In normal economic times we don't just plant one season, we plant two or three seasons. There's stuff for spring like bulbs, daffodils, tulips, which have been cut back drastically because of the budget, and we plant those in the fall to winter," Zehler said. "I would say we've probably cut back 75 percent of the bulbs that we're going to plant, flowerbeds I'd say we've probably cut 25 percent and some of those will be permanent cuts. Some things like the Formal Gardens and Lewis Place won't be cut back because they're funded by endowments and donations, but across campus we've definitely scaled back."
Along with the cuts for actual flower planting, there have also been staff cutbacks, including the dismemberment of the horticulture crew that was employed in past years.
"For flowerbeds there are only two hourly employees, myself and Barb Tonner," Zehler said. "There's another horticulturist named Dan Garber who does a lot of the perennials, and a lot of the shrubs and some of the trees. We used to have what we called a horticulture crew, and because of the cutbacks and everything that crew has been disseminated. They've been put into different areas and depending on what area they're in it depends on how many people there are."
According to Jeff Prater, senior manager of grounds and horticulture, the horticulture crew was an opportunity for maintenance employees to work specifically on plants and flowers rather than day-to-day maintenance jobs.
"The horticulture crew was a way for guys to keep working on new plant materials, but the horticulture work is now a team effort because we've had to cut the numbers," Prater said. "Eventually we hope to get the crew back together, but right now we're in survival type mode trying to make it happen with the guys we've got left. We have a good enough group of people to keep up with the status that we're at, we just have to be a little more creative."
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Despite the cuts, Zehler and Tonner's efforts on flowerbeds across campus have not gone unnoticed by The Des Fleurs Garden Club of Oxford, which recently recognized the two for their work both at the Formal Gardens and Lewis Place.
"There's a garden club in Oxford and they go around to different private homes and public buildings and give awards," Zehler said. "They like the Formal Gardens a lot and so they gave an award to Barb Tonner and I for that, and the other award was for Lewis Place because in the last couple years we've done a lot of different flowers there."
The landscaping efforts have also stood out to students across campus, including sophomore Tyler Conway.
"It's amazing to me that most of the flowers across campus are pretty much the work of two people," Conway said. "It seems like they have teams of people working on them because everything looks so good all the time."
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