As Calvert Hall’s 100th anniversary approaches, university landscape workers will begin updating the lawn and plants near the dorm this spring.
The Calvert Hall area project is one part of the department’s annual efforts to revitalize the campus after winter. Other major parts of the project include adding more space for plants in the public health garden and updating the small garden surrounding the business school’s clock tower.
The Calvert Hall project is in its early planning phase, and workers aim to finish remodeling the landscape this spring in time for a September celebration of the building. Workers plan to add more native plants, trees and flowers, such as black-eyed Susans, the state flower.
“Many of the plants near Calvert have been there for several decades,” said Karen Petroff, assistant director for arboretum and horticultural services. “The design dates back to the ’60s or ’70s and in general is very monochromatic.”
The new plants, which will cost less than $10,000, could help deter crime, Petroff said, because they’ll be placed closer to the dorm to make it harder for people to break in through first-floor windows and vandalize the building.
On North Campus, workers will add more space to the public health school’s garden. The Public Health Garden Club and other student volunteers will build a terrace bed, a series of leveled areas that will hold plants on the hill.
“When you try to grow plants on a steep slope, then water from rain and irrigation runs down the hill, and it’s difficult to healthfully maintain them,” said Carin Celebuski, the university’s arboretum volunteer coordinator.
The terrace bed will also take advantage of an irrigation system being built this spring, Celebuski said. The device will collect rain and use solar energy to pump the water through pipes to feed plants across the terrace.
The Public Health Garden Club will then allow students to own plots in the terrace bed to grow vegetables and edible plants, such as lettuce, tomatoes, beets or garlic, for their own use, she said.
“We’re excited to have something so green in a nice, centralized area where people will be able to see it and experience the garden,” she said.
Landscape services also plans to add a fruit tree near the grassy area in front of Eppley Recreation Center. In March, officials will choose the type of tree they will plant and from which students will be able to pluck fruit, Celebuski said.
The small garden surrounding the clock tower near Van Munching Hall and Mayer Mall will also receive aesthetic updates, including the removal of two trees and the addition of new plants. When certain trees are near plants, Bahr said, they hog all the resources, such as sunlight, water and fertilizer. Without the trees, the other plants will grow larger and fuller.
Horticulturist Sam Bahr said the updates will make the garden look similar to what university alumnus and business school donor Robert H. Smith originally wanted the garden to look like. Smith, whom the business school is named after, was a major supporter of the garden’s growth. To Bahr, the changes are a way of honoring Smith.
“Mr. Smith was very involved with the growth of this garden,” Bahr said. “He would come in at 4 a.m. and make sure everything was going as planned. He would always talk with his landscape architect about the garden, too.”
Landscape services is also considering whether to replant or remove flowers or bushes from outside the Chesapeake and Lee buildings.
