After reading Nicole’s post on Lafayette landscaping, I became curious about landscaping on other college campuses. I began to wonder if any college campuses just let their landscaping go and grow naturally as they would in the wild. I found this interesting link with a list of sustainable landscaping initiatives on college campuses across the country:
http://www.aashe.org/resources/sustainable-landscaping-campus
In particular one of these projects stood out to me, at SUNY Cortland, they are focusing on creating “no mow” zones to promote sustainability. While their current 1 acre “no-mow” plot is by their athletic fields rather than in the center of campus, I thought it was cool that a campus was promoting natural growth like this. They are hoping to establish about 2 to 3 acres of “no-mow” zones. In addition this site mentions the abundant wildlife that has been seen in this “no-mow” area: turkeys, fox, deer, woodchucks, raccoons.
http://www2.cortland.edu/news/detail.dot?id=e610077e-3931-4945-8cba-68c058e96add
Ginny, I think it’s awesome that my observation and post led you to this interesting information! I enjoyed reading this post because I had not even considered the landscaping practices of other campuses when I considered those at Lafayette. It is cool to hear that SUNY Cortland is focusing on these “no mow” zones, especially because you would think that natural growth like that would be opposite of the ideal “beautiful” campus. I hope that students there appreciate this move, and I especially hope that they notice it, too.