If you’ve driven around Decatur the last few weeks I’m sure you’ve noticed the tall grass. This year’s wet Spring really has the grass looking tall and lush doesn’t it! However, citizens are beginning to complain quite loudly about the grass situation. The State of Illinois has really stepped back their mowing schedule this year because of rising fuel prices, and I believe that makes sense to a degree, but the state needs to get smart about what it mows and what it doesn’t. In rural areas and along Interstates, do we really need to mow all the grass? Probably not. However, in cities like Decatur, the city and state needs to get smart about what is mowed and what can be left alone. One option is the planting of wildflowers and native plants that require far less care than regular grass. One area, that stands out to me, is near the Lake Decatur dam where US 51 and Lakeshore Road crosses. There’s lots of land in that area that would be perfect for wildflowers. It doesn’t make sense to mow such a huge area that people never walk through and where homes and businesses aren’t located. I’m not sure how much of the land is city owned and how much is state owned but the city and state should consider planting wildflowers in this area. I think they would look beautiful near the lake – a perfect fit! Just drive a little further south along US 51 to the South Shores intersections and you’ll see a lot of unmowed property as well. There are signs saying that there’s supposed to be wildflowers in the medians but I don’t see any flowers – all I see is tall grass.
One area in Decatur, that you can drive by and see wildflowers “in action”, is on the north side of town. The median between Water and Main just north of Brettwood Village was planted with wildflowers a couple years ago and I think it looks great. (You can click on the thumbnails in this article for a larger view.) It looks way better than dead, brown, chopped in half grass that is the result of only mowing grass a couple times a year. This median only had to be mowed at the end of the fall season last year – saving the state “us” money and gas.
The city just needs to sit down and take a look at what areas in town they need to “attack” with their lawn mowers and what areas can be left as is – there’s areas where tall grass doesn’t matter. If you’re talking about land 50 feet from a road in an unpopulated area – why mow it? Actually, I like the look of the tall grass in certain areas – just not in residential or commercial districts or where it causes safety hazards. The medians along Pershing Road are an example of what should be mowed. This is a high traffic area and the tall grass could become an issue to motorist.
Just make sure there’s a wide path along the roads that are kept mowed, so when some knucklehead tosses their cigarette butt out their window, they don’t cause a raging prairie fire that could burn down the entire city!
I agree that is sooo beautiful. That is what we need to do.
When I was a kid the railroads were covered with “railroad lilies” or “tiger lilies” what my grandma called the tall orange lilies that grow ANYWHERE and spread spread spread. In fact they used to cover the hill on 51 south right off Greenwood cemetery and Greenwood apartments and no one had to mow it back then! I can remember walking home from Stephen Decatur downtown to South Shores and those hills were covered in orange flowers – it was gorgeous. And the leaves are attractive when the flowers aren’t blooming too. Some how they are gone now and I cannot imagine what a pain it is to mow that hill that is about an 80 degree slope!
Yeah, there are other steep hills like that throughout the city and it really doesn’t make any sense to mow them. I think they look like crud after they’ve been mowed anyway. It’s a waste of money. I can’t remember which book it was, I’ll have to go to the library someday and get the title posted here, but it was one that detailed the reaction of the first settlers to Macon County and their descriptions of the land that they sent back to their families. They wrote of the overwhelming beauty of the landscape with flowers of every hue swaying in the wind. They were truly amazed! I was kind of surprised by their descriptions because looking at the landscape today, it’s so boring and colorless! I’d love see areas, where it makes it sense to do so, be restored with native prairie plants and flowers.
I’ve been meaning to go see Anderson Prairie Park in Pana; it is a 25 acre restored prairie with several different plant species that once covered Central Illinois. I found the link last Winter, I’d recommend everyone discover what a remarkable landscape Illinois once was:
http://www.andersonprairie.org/