Written by: Victoria Mills
Seeds and plants are beginning to arrive at Southern’s Landscape Services in preparation for spring planting. The process for planting flowers and other plants on campus for the 2020-2021 school year began during late summer of last year, according to Landscape Supervisor Todd Wever. Wever orders the seeds and plants online from the Park Seed company in Hodges, South Carolina. The process of sowing is detailed and specific to each type of seed.
“Once they sprout, we will take each individual plant and put them into individual cells, which is what we take and plant around campus,” Wever said. “We pretty much plant the same thing every year.”
Alyssia Rich, a senior animation major who is part of the planting crew, said she enjoys nearly the whole planting process, from planning where plants go to pulling them up when they die.
“The best part is that, typically, Todd will give us freedom of what color of flowers to put where, or like the pattern we want to put them in,” Richard said.
Wever said that the process was not always this seamless. Since 2006, Wever has tried many different plant combinations, eventually discovering what worked and what did not for spring planting.
“Every year I was constantly tinkering and playing with it,” Wever said.
When he first began working at Southern, Wever inherited what the person before him had ordered instead of ordering the plants and seeds himself.
One of the seeds was for a plant called Celosia. That plant self-seeds, meaning it proliferates and spreads very easily on its own. Due to this process, the plant was hard to remove, and landscape workers had to clean up Celosia plants for years.
“Every year since then, there are still plants that pop up [14] years later,” Wever said.
Even with such challenges, Wever is glad that spring is coming and Landscape Services will be responsible for beautifying Southern’s campus once again.