When I wrote about a gardening controversy in my neighborhood for my Buffalo News column, I figured many readers would be surprised that planting flowers could be controversial.
But I know Rant readers won’t be surprised at all.
If you’re not a gardener and you’re not involved in community beautification, you might assume that efforts to plant in public spaces are so benign they’d be universally supported.
Sadly, that simply isn’t the case Those who wish to see dense urban streetscapes softened by reminders of the natural world know what a slog it can be. The plants have to be chosen, purchased, planted, and regularly watered and weeded. Depredations by vandalism must be expected and remediated. The watering is not an easy lift – literally. If they’re annuals or new perennials they’ll need that water every other day, at least. Rain can’t be counted on to take care of containers or hanging baskets.
In my neighborhood, a quirky, charming community full of historic architecture, the neighborhood association chose two main commercial streets for a grant-funded planting program that would fill tree wells with perennials to help keep the soil and mulch in place. The perennial plugs were a combination of native and nonnative varieties, including Penstemon ‘Blackbeard’, Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo,’ Physostegia ‘Miss Manners’, Asclepias tuberosa, Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Little Goldstar,’ Nepeta ‘Summer Magic,’ Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’, and Echinacea ‘Cheyenne Spirit,’ among a few others. Taller varieties would fill the inner circle of the planting with lower, creeping or mat-like plants on the outside.
For watering, the plan is to construct a 100-gallon watering rig that could be wheeled or driven down the street. It’ll still be a big pain, but at least businesses won’t have to water them.
Because there’s the rub. Some local storefronts requested that the tree wells in front of their storefronts – which are in the public right-of-way and do not belong to them – not be included in the planting. A couple even put up signs: “Don’t weed.” “Don’t plant.”
Those requests were honored, but it will cause breaks in the overall design plan, which is that the repeating plants act as sort of an interrupted urban field. It will take a while for any such effect to be visually apparent, but in a few years, it might be interesting.
And the sad thing was that these refusals really didn’t have much to do with plants. They rarely do. The neighborhood association is considered by businesses to favor residents. Bars that have gotten pushback for late-night outdoor patio action have long memories. Businesses tend to blame the neighborhood association – the most immediate scapegoat – for urban problems that are far too big for any group of volunteers to fix.
My colleagues at the newspaper found the whole thing kind of amusing: “People are getting that upset over flowers?”
I just hope these businesses will like it when everything’s filling out and/or in bloom. I know some won’t say so.
When public plantings get push-back originally appeared on GardenRant on June 3, 2025.
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