About the only positive thing we can find to say about the mass of bushes that used to line the sidewalk just south of Bobby Morris along Pine is this: They were alive. Beyond that, it’s hard to say they’ll be missed.
A Seattle Parks work crew hacked those bushes to death last week and aren’t stopping there according to spokesperson Joelle Hammerstad. She tells CHS that the Cal Anderson maintenance team has also pulled the stumps. Those bushes are gone. In their place, Parks is placing a new, smaller, gentler, less crime and gross-stuff concealing planting of darling-sounding “dwarf variety” hedges.
“The area had become a magnet for illegal and nuisance behavior,” Hammerstad told CHS via e-mail. “Also, the maintenance folks had been finding lots of gross stuff back there – feces, vomit, etc.”
Meanwhile, Cal Anderson will be dealing with cutbacks of the financial kind (again, clever, aren’t we?) this summer as the city’s mid-year budget reduction plans start to kick in. Expect longer grass and lower overall maintenance effort in the park as part of those cuts. Also, the Cal Anderson wading pool days of operation will be reduced. Volunteer Park’s pool. on the other hand, will be operating at full strength this summer and is scheduled to open this Saturday.
Cal Anderson will see another big project later this summer when a 3/4 acre of the park will be closed and fenced off for a grass overhaul to improve drainage and eliminate the spotty cover that has plagued the park for year.
Trimming of trees, bushes and ground cover was instrumental in getting Miller Park’s drug problems under control in the late 80’s.
… this is designed to stop the drunks from the 20 nearby bars from late night puking?
… HURRAH PARKS, YOU HAVE MADE DRINKING LORE HISTORY.
… the old shrubs needed a very severe cut back, but not tearing them out. and pruning way back would have been cheaper in the current budget stress. I don’t know what the old bushes were as species, but they sure were loaded with great blooms.
… how about a few rows of corn? and some zuchinni?
So many rats lived/live in those bushes! It’s always fun/eeky to walk by and see them scurry around.
Maybe the second biggest rat population in the hill after the dumpsters behind Neighbors?
Watch in the downtown alleys at dusk – swarms of them … we are a seaport after all.
I have walked on that stretch of sidewalk often, never seen any. But, rat watching is not my favorite pastime. Yuk.
I for one, am very pleased by this.
Walking down Pine and being verbally assaulted by hidden individuals in the bushes was never something I enjoyed.
Let alone the unpleasant activities I unfortunately witnessed as a passerby in those bushes.
Good riddens. The rats will be fine, and the drunks can still puke there.
… come on … panhandling will not stop because there are no bushes.
Having walked the same sidewalk thousands of times, for years, geez, I missed something. Perhaps I lack imagination …. “what you saw” …
I’m with Friend. I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for 18 years and lived off an alley for the last 12, and I have never seen as many rats scurrying around as I’ve seen under those bushes. (Well except lately, the dumpsters behind the new build on Denny and 13th have become a rat haven) I don’t know what it was about those particular bushes, but I for one am glad they’re gone.
….well here is a theory — the play field is now covered with plastic called some version of astro turf – not rat friendly natural dirt and roots.
This strip is the only home … for blocks, just a guess …. another clue, the dumpster behind the taco joint …. across the street. Food.
Mike with curls- hmmm, I didn’t even mention pan handling. Don’t know how you got to that conclusion.
The activities I was referring to was to the folks participating in sexual activities in those bushes. And drug dealings. And drug use. And the verbal abuse I am talking about is being sexually harassed as I walk by. No one deserves being called some of the names that have been thrown at me when walking by that area.
Panhandling is part of Capitol Hill, hell, Seattle for that matter. It’s expected.
My hope is that the loss of the protective covering will at least lessen the crap that goes on there.