Big Rocks Mean Weeds, Trash and NO MOUNTAIN

Lee Byrd, the Treasurer of nearby Newman Park Neighborhood Association and co-owner of Cinco Puntos Press, sent the following email to El Paso Parks and Recreation Department Assistant Director, Joel McKnight:

These little pocket parks are a very sweet idea, but they don’t really seem to have been thought through.

Yesterday, my friend and I went to sit in the little park between Elm and Louisiana on Memphis and underneath the bench was covered with ants from an ant hill close by so we had to get up quickly. The big rocks (so many of them!) had caught lots of
garbage. The little pebbles had slid out of place and covered the sidewalk.

This morning another friend and I went with a broom and garbage sacks to sweep and pick up garbage, but the gravel was too heavy to sweep, plus the weeds between the rocks were hard to get it. Some were so big we couldn’t pull them out.

If the intention of these little parks was to be a pleasant place to sit and an easy place to maintain, that isn’t happening. The Neighborhood Association is concerned about these parks and glad to help to make them work. They do need maintenance. And they surely don’t need all those big rocks.

We appreciate all you can let us know about these parks and the detention ponds.

Mrs. Byrd is referring to the "pocket" park created by open space enhancement funds which also paid for the improvements and environmental art at the Van Buren Dam site. The little park is located in the 2700 block of Memphis Avenue.

Indeed there has been little thinking about landscaping around the City of El Paso.

All those big rocks at the little pocket park make it hard to manage weeds and debris. All those big rocks will eventually choke off the growth of the native plants put in the park.

ALL THOSE BIG ROCKS mean our mountainside is being removed and not one damn thing is being done to stop it. In fact, the City of El Paso enables this environmental destruction and policy of unsustainability!

Unsustainable Landscaping; Sustainable Children

This entry was meant to be a "second" in a series on bad landscaping. Xeriscaping is one thing. What we too often see around El Paso is ZERO-scaping.

I learned from my friend, Virginia Morris - a Master Master Gardener and immediate past President of the El Paso County Master Gardeners Association - about the Lee and Beulah Moor Children's Home. She is organizing a landscaping project there to do some xeriscaping, a cactus garden and offer greenhouse support. As you can see, a rather ugly ZERO-scaping job was done at some time in the past at the Home:

It's just strips of 1-1/4" rock. To add insult to injury, the "landscaper" put down landscape plastic which, according to Morris, is "impervious to water and oxygen." What she uses is landscape fabric. "The fabric impedes weeds, but lets water and nutrients penetrate through to the soil below," she told me.

Like all ZERO-scaping, these strips contain just rock - no native, desert-adapted plants. Nothing of beauty. Nothing inspiring. No place for children to meditate and find a quiet space where they can reach deep inside themselves and dream.

Virginia's pursuit of a xeriscaping project follows her conversation with Jim Thomas, the Senior Administrator of Development and Activities for the Home. Jim teaches the children about the use of native foods, stresses the need for each child to develop life-sustaining skills and attitudes, and offers them challenges so that they can gain the confidence that they can accomplish what they want to in life. He is currently adding a greenhouse to the school with the help of some local businesses. Children will be able to grow vegetables and then use those plants when they help with the cooking.

I will be writing much more about Jim and the Children's Home especially as we undertake the landscaping and assist in anyway that we can with the greenhouse. (I too am a Master Gardener, a member of the El Paso Cactus and Rock Club, and the El Paso Chapter of the Native Plant Society.) Since one objective of this blog is to write about local food, urban farming and ethnobotany, I'll be following this project.

However, there is far more to the story and today's entry is just a beginning.

Typically children come to the home for a variety of reasons: inability of a parent to provide adequate supervision or care for the child, family economic problems or unemployment, school problems, family violence or discord, difficulty with the child’s acceptance of parental divorce or re-marriage, safety or protection problems for the child in his/her living environment, minor behavioral problems, parental health problems, and so forth.

The Children's Home depends on local support in order to provide a range of services to 65 children currently in residence and their families. Of course, given the current economic conditions, all non-profits require continuing support. Board members of the children's home want El Pasoans to know that "although the economy has made it more difficult to provide basic needs for these children, no child has been sent home, and their needs are being met, largely through the support of people like you."

Your donations are certainly needed and can be done online. They will also take donations of food and you can contact Jim for a list of food that will feed the children. I'll also be publishing those lists online as well.

This story isn't going away. Today is just a start.

Unsustainable Landscaping

Recently a beautification project was completed at the detention ponds between Mobile and Memphis avenues in El Paso. This project is part of two such projects - the other is currently being completed at the detention pond at Harrison and Alabama.

Here is a picture of the job just underway when some plants were added along Louisiana:

Here is a picture of the same place after completion:

Notice the addition of all of the rock.

Now here is a shot of a "park" added just below the place where water during a storm runs off from the detention pond onto Memphis and then down Elm Street:

Here is a closer view of the "park" showing landscaping with screenings:

First, there is just too much rock piled in one area. Why is this unsustainable? Take a look at that huge portion of the Franklin Mountains which Cemex is quickly taking down:

The mountain is not going to grow back!

The problem with the screenings is that they cannot be sustained in this area. Once flood water starts running through this "park", the screenings will wash down Elm Street. The screenings will have to be replaced unless a more sustainable solution can be found once and for all.

Today's post is just a first in a series of the differences between real xeriscaping and El Paso's penchant to "zero"scape and bring the mountain down in the process.