Success Stories
Campus
Landscape Blooms Thanks to Gifts and Expert Care
by Gloria Biersdorff
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| Head groundskeeper Frank Drengacz displays sunflowers in the campus greenhouse. Several local businesses have donated soil, seeds, shrubs and trees to enhance the college landscape. |
A voluptuous
brigade of sunflowers outside the Forum building, like many new horticultural
flourishes across campus, attests to local industry support of campus
beautification at Lane Community College. Since summer 2002, more than
$7,000 worth of containers, seeds, soil, mulch, blooming and foliar plants,
and evergreens, have been donated, crowding the greenhouse and nursery
area at the western corner of campus.
"It's almost brought me to tears," says head groundskeeper Frank
Drengacz, "to know that people are supporting us in what we're trying
to do, in any way they can; that the community can come to our rescue."
A bond measure passed by voters in 1995 funded several new buildings and remodels on campus. The budget for landscaping, however, was minimal and was leveraged with community support.
Grant Spies, founder of Grant's Landscaping, a division of Rexius Forest By-Products Inc., says the company's donations of nursery stock and containers worth more than $1,000 is "the least we can do to help out" an exceptional institution.
"Lane is a well-kept secret in our community. Most people here don't know how well thought of the college is throughout the region for its academic excellence and high standards," says Spies. "It offers something for everybody, and benefits the whole community."
Other contributors include Pleasant Hill Nursery, which donated 13 conifers and 100 rhododendrons, valued at more than $1,000. Log House Plants nursery arranged for a Holland bulb grower to donate the tulips and daffodils that brightened the campus landscape this spring. The bulbs' retail value exceeded $5,000. Balance Restoration Nursery donated 50 native plant seedlings worth about $100.
Besides donating
soils and compost products, Rexius established a contribution program
whereby customers can designate 2 percent of delivery sales toward the
Lane Community College Campus Beautification Fund. The program has earned
nearly $400 to date.
"We want to further the landscaping education in our community,"
says Rexius marketing manager Dan Sutton, who conducted a facilities tour
last fall for Drengacz's six cooperative education students.
Student Lisa Kroner, 42, has worked under Drengacz's guidance for the past two years helping cultivate the 17 acres of maintained campus property. She will transfer to the University of Oregon next fall to study landscape architecture. "We didn't have money to even buy potting soil," she says. The donations, coupled with Drengacz's expertise as a mentor, have afforded her varied and in-depth training. "Frank is so knowledgeable. He's really good at explaining why you're doing something, a good teacher. Through the plant donations I've been able to learn about the care of plants in a greenhouse."
Drengacz says his pesticide-free, fauna-friendly approach to groundskeeping is "geared toward growing a healthy landscape." He hopes to register Lane as a wildlife habitat with the National Wildlife Federation in the near future. Other aspirations include building a shade house, creating a cut-flower garden, and holding an annual plant sale in the tradition of Cabrillo Junior College in Santa Cruz, Calif., whose 25th annual plant sale netted $75,000 this spring. His long-term goal is to restore the two-year landscaping program, phased out in 2001 due to lack of funding.
To contribute to the Lane Community College Campus Beautification Fund, contact the LCC Foundation at 463-5226.
