Notes from a plant nerd: Invasive Plants

I’ve been writing this column for over a year and a half and every plant that I have highlighted and celebrated evolved and co-evolved in the bioregion of Southern Appalachia.

Downtown Waynesville Association sets ambitious plan

The organization charged with maintaining and revitalizing Waynesville’s downtown core is setting an ambitious plan of work for 2019, to an extent not seen since the major streetscaping projects of the late 1980s-early 1990s. 

WCU to get entrance sign

When you enter Western Carolina University from the four-lane, a green-and-white N.C. Department of Transportation sign is the only thing to say that you’ve officially arrived on the Catamount campus. 

Bryson City removes trees on Everett Street

Many Bryson City business owners were caught off guard last week when they noticed massive holes all along Everett Street where large shade trees used to be planted. 

Street trees replaced in Sylva

The streets of downtown Sylva are newly treeless after town crews excavated the red maples earlier this month, but the condition won’t last for long. A new set of trees — 15 Japanese zelkovas — has been ordered and will likely go in this week.

Franklin facelift: Changes are coming to downtown Franklin

Downtown Franklin will be undergoing plenty of changes in 2017 and for the next few years as the town works to improve sidewalks and traffic patterns and the state begins new road projects.

Island of green: Exhibit commemorates 50 years of community-driven landscape at HCC

It’s a sunny day at Haywood Community College, light sparkling from the campus’s landmark mill pond and shining through the leaves still clinging to the archway of willow oaks lining the school’s entrance drive. The campus lawn is covered with leaves fallen from the towering white oaks dominating it, academic buildings nestled naturally into the folds of the landscape. 

In many ways, it looks more like a park than a campus, and that’s by design — the design of Doan Ogden, that is. Ogden, a nationally known landscape architect, designed gardens and landscapes throughout Western North Carolina after moving to teach at Warren Wilson College, and the grounds of HCC are among his accomplishments.

Reclaiming the landscape: Greenhouse project to spur habitat restoration

out frUnder a clear sky and afternoon sun, the winding road through Cherokee and out past Birdtown is a beautiful one. It’s a trek that employees at the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Office of Environment and Natural Resources have been making a lot over the past several months. 

With the ribbon now cut on a 2,200-square-foot greenhouse and a black-clothed grow yard filled with 33,000 native plants representing 32 species, they’ve finally got something to show for it. 

Haywood commissioners on a quest for a better courthouse lawn

Nearly a year after cutting down the historic maple trees in front of the Haywood County Courthouse, the lawn still isn’t as grassy or green as county commissioners would like.

Courthouse lawn to get spruced up in time for tourists

The Haywood County historic courthouse in Waynesville will be completely re-landscaped by the end of this week, just in time for the official launch of the summer tourist season marked by Memorial Day weekend.

The county cut down all the large sugar maple trees from the courthouse lawn over the winter, and it has been barren ever since. The new landscape design calls for smaller trees and fewer of them.

The new trees will be planted in the nick of time for the first downtown street festival of the year this Saturday, although the lawn itself will take longer to restore.

Last week, county maintenance employees planted six Kousa Dogwood trees along the Depot Street side of the courthouse and a sugar maple on the right side of the historic courthouse, between it and the new justice center. 

The remaining plantings — two Yoshino Cherries, a Serbian spruce and a few shrubs —should be delivered by Wednesday (May 22 and promptly put in the ground.

“We will be ready to go,” said Dale Burris, county facilities and maintenance director. “It’s a simple fact of digging a hole and putting it in correctly.”

— By Caitlin Bowling

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