Along with a [too] few other community members, I go gardening on Thursday mornings. Our targets are all those planters along Bronson (from Laurier to Gladstone) that the city installed, planted, and promptly ceased maintaining.

There seems to be some sort of fond hope that adjacent property owners are supposed to go out and weed them or add additional plants. And its true, when the city replaces grass in front of houses it doesn’t come back to mow it; and if it replaces driveway asphalt it doesn’t plow it in the winter. Somehow people know this, but miss the planters, expecting Mayor Jim and his crew to come out to weed and feed.

And what weeds ! Each planter has its unique own variety of dominant weed that attempts to take over the whole planter. And every planter is different. Here’s the planter and Primrose and Bronson, which we weeded already once in May. In just five weeks, a dozen vigorous weeds grew six feet tall:

They are so vicious, you can see in the foreground the disembodied hands of another gardener who wasn’t so lucky. There was an abundance of these weeds:

And yes, those are parsnip like roots:

But after an hour, the planter looked great again:

And we crossed the street to find one over-run with the most thorny-leaved buggers imaginable. And another one full of bind weed – thousands of those plants !

After four beds we were pooped, and headed home for a shower (separately !!).

The city needs to communicate to property owners and residents where planters are put in that they are expected to do some maintenance. And the city is going to have to break down and hire someone to tend to these “complete streets” and “greened” streets and roadways.

Parting shot: city planter on Somerset thickly grown with strangling dog weed: