City of Nacogdoches cultivates median beautification project

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KTRE) - Nacogdoches drivers will eventually notice something new in the road — the center of the road to be exact.

The City of Nacogdoches announced, along with other agencies, that they are starting a project to create more beautiful and sustainable medians at the entrance of the city.

Brian Bray, Community Services Director for the city, says this is something they have wanted to do for a while, and they are lucky to have great partners for the project.

“City council established goals that they wanted two years ago, and one of them was beautification of our corridors. And, at the same time from a park side, we really didn’t want to have to continue to mow the turf grass on a weekly basis. So, this project will allow us to beautify the corridor that meets the goal of city council but decreases the maintenance from the parks side,” Bray said.

Dawn Stover with USDA-NRCS says all the seeds that will be used are native plants. She says they created their own mix of low-growing grass species as well as perennial flowers that will grow year after year.

“It’s a very welcoming, pretty thing that tells people we are the garden capital of Texas, and so it’s a very good segue hopefully to the rest of the entrances into the city becoming beautiful, sustainable and low maintenance,” Stover said.

Tyler Wayland, Assistant Director of Texas Seeds, says there is a huge benefit in using native plants.

“This is one small step in the bigger picture of being able to utilize native plants across landscape. Whether it’s roadsides, highway roadsides, pipelines, energy rights-of-way — these are all ways that natives can be used for revegetation, in the medians in the roadways is one of them,” Wayland said.

Stover asks that people be patient with the progression of the medians.

“Often times we are starting with seeds, and so it’s going to be a while before we get to see the full potential of the beauty that’s going to be there,” Stover said.

Park staff has already started to prep the site with herbicide application.

The seeds will be planted in late February or early March.

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