The Process of Planting at Marist
Students on the Marist campus green enjoying the weather. Photo by Elizabeth Baumgardner '25.
As the brightly-colored summer flowers slowly wither, they will be replaced by the fall chrysanthemums covering the shelves behind the Grounds Depot at Marist College. These flowers, along with the on-campus shrubs, trees and stripes in the lawns, are an ever-changing part of the Marist campus.
The spherical flowerpots, placed specifically at high-traffic intersections, are organized by a “mantra”: fill, trill, spill.
“You fill it because, if you don’t fill it, it looks spacey. You want something that catches your eyes, something that’s thrilling, [like] a color or color contrast. And then, you want it to spill over a little bit because that softens the hard pot to the transition to the actual plant itself,” Grounds Supervisor Brian Coons said.
A few of the flowers, such as the yellow Hot Spot Bronze Chrysanthemums, have started to come into bloom, while the rest of the flowers are still buds, though they are expected to bloom in the next week.
Spring, summer and fall each have their own flowers that rotate each year. Marist consistently obtains red flowers to match the school colors, though the exact variety of red flowers changes. Coons currently has Red Ryder Hearty Chrysanthemums, which will be planted primarily around the stadium, main gate and McCann.
In addition to the flowers, new trees and shrubbery are planted each year in the spring. This past spring, approximately 40 or 50 new trees and shrubs were planted.
“They’re alive, so they don’t last forever,” said Kim Bodendorf, associate director of Physical Plant. “We have an issue where they’re dying out, so we have to keep replacing them. We replaced a lot of evergreens, pines, holly and hemlocks.”
Due to the construction timelines, the Dyson Center is currently barren, though there are plans on what plants hope to go around Dyson when the planting season comes in the spring.
“Come spring, [Coons] is going to outfit it with a whole bunch of plants and trees, and there’s a landscape plan that’s actually being enhanced right now,” said Bodendorf.
The grass on the lawns also requires maintenance, with bags of Valley Green Gold — a blend of bluegrass, rye and fescue — piled onto one of the shelves in the Grounds Depot.
“Rye comes up fast. The Kentucky bluegrass comes up longer, it’s more of a dormant grow, so it takes longer, but it has a better root system, and the fescue is the little clumps that you see,” said Bodendorf. “It’s all about binding the roots, so it’s nice and durable, but it’s also about keeping it green, and fast.”
The grass for the athletic fields uses a different blend of grasses that can survive the wear-and-tear of athletic uses. A blend of the rye and the bluegrass is used for these fields.
The stripes that cover the lawns, seen on the campus green and the lawn around St. Peter’s, are created by lawnmowers. Several gas-powered vehicles mow the lawn simultaneously, including a 27-year-old TERO and several 13 to 18-year-old Ventracs. Only one mower in the fleet is electric, a two-year-old Gravely EV, with four rectangular batteries each a little larger than a cell phone.
“It’s a directional change, the height doesn’t get changed. The mowers behind the deck, there’s a roller, so if you’re going this way, the rollers push the grass that way a little bit. That’s where you get the contrast,” Coons said.
In addition to consistent mowing, fertilizer is used twice in the spring to encourage grass growth. The fertilizer contains a mix of nitrogen and potash, but phosphate, a common nutrient in fertilizer, is absent from the blend.
“We don’t use phosphate because we’re close to the river, and we have people playing or laying in the lawn, and we want them to be safe,” said CoonsThe fertilizer is also mixed with a pre-emergent to prevent weed growth before they come out and grub control to prevent the insects from making little mounds on the grass. It also prevents skunks from coming in and eating the insects.
A large cage in the Grounds Department is lined with leaf blowers; most are gas-powered. In addition to the upfront cost, electric leaf blowers are also twice as heavy as gas-powered leaf blowers.
“I have 15 guys out there who might have to wear them for hours in the sun with twice as heavy the pack,” Coons said. “The hope is that the technology will improve, and the weight will decrease.”
All of the environments and plants at Marist interact with each other, and they are an important part of the ecosystem that makes the college beautiful.
“They’re all friends,” said Bodendorf.