Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170044
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By VIRGINIA JORDAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
She was 12 then.
Now 32, she's the horticulturist for Blacksburg, responsible for the thousands of flowers that bloom along the town's streets in spring, summer and fall.
At home, Garrison is not so lucky with flowers, thanks to Simon, her 93-pound dog of uncertain ancestry. Simon thinks the yard is his. The birds don't help, either. They decapitated the beans, although a bird feeder helped slow them down.
So Garrison expresses her love of flowers - and gets paid for it, too - by planning and planting the town's flower beds.
This summer's flowers first bloomed on her office drawing board.
On a cold November day last fall, Garrison and Susie Schulze, town landscaper, moved from the drawing board to the field to mark the designs for the medians and flower plots with spray paint on the ground.
Last year, 15,000 bulbs and 8,000 pansies, which winter nicely, went into the ground.
The annuals, 35,000 of them, came later in the spring and were the next show.
Every year, Garrison tries different combinations for varied colors and textures. Some of her favorites are salvia, marigolds, dusty miller, gaillardia, cosmos, geraniums and ageratum.
Folk traveling down Prices Fork Road just west of U.S. 460 will see red balls atop tall stems. They are gomphrena Strawberry Fields, keeping company with white periwinkle.
Red, pink and white begonias beckon from behind golf carts just opposite the door of the municipal golf building.
"They are delightful," said Bob Clark, assistant manager at the course. "The ladies, especially, always notice them."
Traffic medians, of course, are just that, but one of Garrison's frustrations was finding tire tracks in a bed of just-budding daffodils.
She also cares for the town's trees - hundreds of them, including the plantings along South Main Street.
There, 700 Norway maple and London plane [similar to an American sycamore] add greenery to the newly widened stretch. The layout, designed by David Hill of Hill Studio in Roanoke, also covers the steep banks with curved rows of euonymus, juniper and cedar.
When the South Main Landscaping Project was proposed, Garrison was happy with town residents' response in raising money to pay for the trees that now line both sides of the road as it enters Blacksburg.
"There was citizen support for the entire program from the beginning," she said, "both in funding and committee participation. ... It's this involvement that makes it all work."
"Trees really make Blacksburg," Dora Furr said from behind her desk at the Blacksburg Regional Library. "From Tech library's fifth floor, you don't see roofs, you just see trees."
So far, businesses, civic groups and individuals have contributed $64,530 for the first two phases of the South Main project. In addition, the town has received grants totaling $51,360 over two years to pay for trees and shrubs from several sources: the Small Business Administration, Natural Resources Development Program, Green Virginia Foundation Inc. with the Virginia Forestry Association, and the American Forests' Global Releaf Fund.
The town will sprout even more trees in its new arboretum at Nellies Cave Park.
A grant of $1,500 from America the Beautiful, obtained this year for the Parks and Recreation Department by outdoor supervisor Dean Crane, will begin the job. Volunteers already have planted 2 acres at Nellies Cave with 35 trees, five rhododendron and 250 pine seedlings - all done in 21/2 hours in April.
"It's great," Crane said, "but it's only the beginning.''
A second grant this year from America the Beautiful, administered by the state Department of Forestry, is a form of insurance for Blacksburg's flora. Every tree in town will be numbered, mapped and inspected by Custom Cut Tree Service of Roanoke.
Garrison also takes a personal interest in the trees along South Main and will inspect them herself.
She started out studying engineering at Virginia Tech, but a landscape design course changed her course. She went on for a master's degree in horticulture. The math she studied still comes in handy, as New River Valley nurseries are asked each August for prices on the exact number of flowers, bulbs and seeds needed for the next year.
During the summer heat, particularly when rainfall is scarce, the town's 40 beds of annuals, 20 beds of perennials, and its trees and bushes need help to survive.
The water truck, an old fire truck given a new role, is their lifeline. The truck, equipped with a wand, makes a daily round when Schulze and her crew, Jennifer Lucas and Sean Distler, take turns watering the 24 hanging baskets on Main Street at 6 a.m.
"Nobody's around then," Schulze said, "except joggers."
Town employees who are so inclined can earn an extra day off through a program called "Gardener for a Day." All they have to do to get a paid day away from their regular jobs is tend the flowers.
The town's flowers end up as a communitywide project, since local groups and businesses help pay for the colorful flowers and bulbs by sponsoring median strips along Main Street or Prices Fork Road each spring.
But the eye for color and the flair for juxtaposing contrasting flower hues and shapes that make the town's flower beds so distinctive are Garrison's. Sometimes she even surprises herself. The beds she often thinks won't or don't quite work often turn out to be favorites for her staff or local flower watchers. It seems everyone can be an expert when it comes to admiring flowers.
by CNB