The college’s Facilities Department in August mowed over a small meadow behind the Health and Life Sciences Building that housed native wildlife.
Contractors cut down the meadow, which stretched from Ring Road to the parking lot behind the building and was home to plants such as milkweed, goldenrod, black-eyed Susans, scarlet beebalm, iris, Queen Anne’s lace, yarrow, partridge peas and vetches that provide a natural habitat for animals such as skinks, mice, snakes, sparrows, chickadees, wrens and bluebirds.
“To the untrained eye, it looks like a patch of weeds, it really does,” Michael Norman, AACC’s Environmental Center laboratory manager, said. “To the person that understands ecology and ecosystems, it’s a beautiful thing.”
But Larry Gregory, AACC’s director of facilities maintenance and operations, said the college’s public safety officials requested the change because the overgrown patch blocked the view of nearby surveillance cameras that monitor the parking lot.
According to Norman, the college planted the meadow, which students volunteered to help maintain and thrive by planting additional foliage over time.
“I’m not trying to pick a fight with grounds or facilities. … I’m not at war with [them],” Norman said. “[But] if they’re going to commit themselves to trying to establish native plant communities, specifically along the whole border of [HLSB] … they can’t put them in, and later, decide that it’s too much work and mow them all down. So they need to be committed to it, and they have to manage them properly.”
Gregory said the college thins out overgrown plants two to three times a year for security reasons. He added that those who plant the gardens should choose locations that are farther away from buildings.
Alex Bradford, a third-year plant science student, said she “couldn’t believe it” when she found out the meadow was gone.
She said she saw the mowers demolishing the garden.
“I stopped in my tracks,” Bradford said, adding, “I was like, ‘Am I really seeing this right now?’ Like, they’re in the middle of destroying it right now. It was there, and now it’s gone. … These plants and these flowers are in the middle of their bloom time. It’s the worst time to get rid of them.”
Third-year environmental science student Emily Price said she remembered the meadow as “flourishing and very beautiful.”
“We actually planted a lot of those plants,” Price said. “And a lot of those plants were very important ecologically.” Price criticized the college for removing them.
“We don’t really have the power,” Price said. “They have the power, which, in my head, makes no sense, because why are there people who don’t know the significance of these plants? Why do they get permission to send people out to go destroy all these plants?”