Undoing streetscaping

Millions of your water bill dollars was spent on beautifying Preston street over the last few years. A lot more trees and shrubs will be installed next month to complete the project.

Vigilance is required to keep it nice. We have already seen homeowners and property owners eager to pave over landscaped boulevards to make legal or "informal" parking pads. In the case above, the gas company dug up about 6 linear feet of landscaped area along the sidewalk to install a valve. They backfilled with sand but did not replace the mulch. Nor did they bother to replant the shrub, shown lying on its side towards the left. I wonder if that was the only shrub pulled out ... or if other ones got trucked away with the waste.

I called the city. It would be nice to know if the contractors ever get their hands slapped for this carelessness.

A incident a number of years ago discourages me. Bell dug up a whole row of shrubs at the corner of Rochester and Albert, laid them out on the sidewalk, and banked up the rootballs with dirt. All very good ... except that they left them there for about a month, never watering them, until they all died. They they replanted the carcasses in a neat row and headed off into the august sunset.