New Plan for Sports Park Landscape

I received a complaint about the landscape at the Sports Park so I met with the Public Works Director and the newly appointed manager of the landscape at the Sports Park, and we toured the area, looked at the situation, and examined the plans.

The fields looked good, and much of the landscape also looked good. But there were definitely areas that looked bad, and many of these are in the most heavily trafficked areas. The causes of the problematic areas were many and diverse –

• Although it looked good on paper, and worked in some other areas, a few of the selected plants have not been successful at the Sports Park. This includes a lot of the ground cover and one particular species of plant. Staff has tried to rehabilitate these areas, with little success. Hence there are some large areas that look sparse. Going forward, staff is going to call it a day, conclude that these species are not working, and come up with alternative plans. In some cases the alternative plan will be to completely remove the sparse landscape and just leave the remaining zeroscape area. In other cases alternative plantings will be done with plants that have a known history of working here.
• Some areas show the wear and tear of people. People have tramped over plants to the point where they won’t grow anymore. Re-plantings haven’t worked because people continue to walk over the plants. Instead of fighting the trends, most of these areas will be zeroscaped. Where it’s desirable to have plants in some of these areas, heartier plants with their own defense systems will be planted.

I think staff waited too long to move on this problem aggressively. I think their focus was on the sports fields and the heavy use of the facilities, which has been great. But if the Sports Center is such a gem, we need to do a better job with the landscape. All around the Sports Center, private companies are doing a better job than we are maintaining the landscape. Hopefully this new plan and some extra scrutiny will improve the situation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on Sept 9 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.