Keeping up appearances

Every April, pink and white blossoms brighten the Quad, signaling the end of another gray Seattle winter and the arrival of spring at the UW. The flowers envelop the branches of the Yoshino cherry trees and create one of the most picturesque times on campus.

To ensure the legacy of the cherry trees continues even as the trees age, UW groundskeepers are here to help.

The original trees were planted in the Quad in 1964 after being relocated from an area near the Seattle Arboretum. Cuttings were sent to a nursery in Oregon, where they were grafted onto rootstock, and are now growing in a Mount Vernon, Wash. nursery. If a tree were to die, an identical tree with the same growth habit and blooming cycle could easily replace it.

"Untold generations will be able to enjoy cherry trees in the Quad, which are almost a trademark of the University of Washington," said Clarence Geyen, supervisor of grounds maintenance.

The survival of the Yoshino cherry trees is only a fraction of what the UW groundskeepers do to keep campus clean and beautiful.

Groundskeepers work eight to nine hour days, usually starting between 6 and 7 a.m. and finishing in the early afternoon. Geyen is in charge of supervising and training the gardeners while also keeping on top of the groundskeepers' seasonal duties. These tasks include turf management during the growing season and leaf or snow removal in the fall and winter.

Theo Goebel, who has been a gardener at the UW for 15 years, said the groundskeepers use a typical garden calendar, which follows a seasonal pattern.

Autumn is the busiest season, with the constant removal of leaves. Despite the heavier workload, the fall colors make it Goebel's favorite time.

"It's fun to play with the leaves," he joked. "It isn't so much fun when they're wet and they're heavy and slimy, but when they're fluffy and light and we get to play with the blowers and blow the leaves around and make noise, that's fun."

On the other hand, Nora Strothman, another UW gardener, feels that the backpack leaf blowers are probably the task that annoys the most people, due to their loud whirring noise.

"We know they are obnoxious, and they are miserable to use, but we simply don't have the time to sweep everything by hand," she said. "We have to maintain 643 acres."

After the trees are bare, the focus shifts to winter pruning. To add excitement to the typically mild Seattle winters, Mother Nature usually decides to allow a few inches of snow to fall once or twice a year. While the white ground brings joy to some, the UW groundskeepers have a different sentiment.

"It's very stressful because you never know when it's going to come," Goebel said. "Snow is the absolute worst."

Needless to say, he did not enjoy the wave of snow and freezing weather that engulfed Seattle a couple of weeks ago.

If it's not the snow causing problems in the winter, it's the wind. The slightest breeze can cause a mess, he said, because it makes the coniferous trees lose their needles. Strong windstorms, like the infamous Inaugural Day storm of 1993, can cause major damage on campus.

Goebel recalled that the storm knocked down 18 trees, including a conifer that fell above the doorway of a building.

"We knew the wind was coming. We had radios so that we could go at a moments notice. As soon as we heard something was down, we were there trying to take care of it. We saw trees [HTML_REMOVED] as we were roaming campus [HTML_REMOVED] fall into buildings," he said. "It was horrific."

Even less-intense winds can cause dangerous conditions as pinecones and other parts of trees crash to the ground.

The arrival of spring generally signals calmer weather, and the gardeners are able to focus on planting colorful flowers and bulbs as well as mowing the lawns. The warm summer months are spent watering plants and keeping the grass trimmed.

Regardless of the time of year, groundskeepers keep the campus looking its best by weeding, watering, planting and pruning.

Strothman has been a gardener at the UW for 16 years and has experienced the best and the worst that the job has to offer.

"The best part of my job is creating an inviting place to relax, for example, a bench surrounded by colorful plants that change throughout the seasons, and then noticing how much people enjoy being in that space when they get time to take a break outside," she said.

However, the downside is picking up cigarette butts and litter from these areas after the gardeners make the effort to keep them beautiful.

Although the pay is not ideal, the career itself is rewarding. Improvements in the field during the past couple of decades, such as new irrigation systems that make watering easier, have added to the enjoyment. Within the past few years, mulching has begun to take place, which helps to control weeds and cuts down on the amount of weed killers.

"We've really come a long way in the last 10 to 15 years here," Goebel said. "The gardening, from what I hear, was archaic 20 years ago."

Reach reporter Abby Walker at features@thedaily.washington.edu.