02-21-2021, 12:00 AM
(02-20-2021, 12:51 PM)jeffster Wrote: I seem to recall that too, but I think it changed when the government made it illegal to use weed killer, so instead of grass, you have weed growing. And not the happy type of weed, obviously. Anyway, lots of complaints about this. The region also tried the same things maybe 10 or 12 years ago. And apparently the got too many complaints.
All that’s needed is a combination of not worrying about weeds with some judicious weeding as the more diverse ecosystem takes hold.
What I mean is that what grows naturally is a huge variety, some of which are unambiguously attractive, some have to be removed (noxious), and some are an acquired taste. Since some weeding is required to suppress the noxious weeds, one can also have policies about some of the in-between species. For example, there are some huge spiky things that as far as I know aren’t actually harmful (unless you get up close and personal), but which have an excessively aggressive look to them.
Eventually you start getting bushes and taller grasses growing up and weeds become less of a problem. We don’t need to weed the entire countryside (or rake our forests), after all, and the UW campus is just a portion of countryside that happens to have a bunch of academic buildings and pedestrian walkways built on it.