06-12-2013 Park Board Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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• • • Placed and hung flower pots and hanging baskets at Town Center. Also weeded new landscape beds and removed dead plants. • Installed four new Dogipots. Currently have 13 total throughout city parks and trail system. (They are getting used and we are receiving resident requests for new locations.) • Weekly garbage and Dogipot pickup. • Removed and stump ground 11 dead or dying boulevard trees in preparation of replacement planting • Prepped community gardens, removed last year's debris, tilled and leveled gardens. • Ash Tree inventory — EAB (Emerald Ash Borer) entered DBH (diameter at breast height), condition and GPS locations. Country Lakes Park has approximately 300 Ash Trees. Most of our other parks have 20 or less. We have begun removing small diameter and poor condition class Ash Trees from Country Lakes. Our goal is to remove approximately 90% of the Ash within the next three years. The high value Ash that we plan to keep will have to be chemically treated. We anticipate finding EAB in the city within the next five years. Our plan is to take a proactive rather than reactive approach to managing our city Ash Trees. • Brandywood Park — Japanese Beetle. Last fall we experienced significant turf damage at a number of parks. The cause, Japanese Beetle Larvae. Clearwater Creek, Sunrise, Marshan, Birchwood Acres, Birch and Brandywood suffered the most damage. Last fall we applied an insecticide, Dylox to the damaged areas at Clearwater Creek, Sunrise, Birchwood Acres, Birch and Marshan as a rescue treatment and seem to have had good control and the turf seems to be recovering this spring. Brandywood was not treated because the grubs were too deep in the soil for effective control. We lost approximately 70% of the turf at Brandywood due to the extensive feeding by the grubs and the lack of rainfall last fall. (Brandywood is the only park that does not have an irrigation system.) This spring we tilled, leveled and reseeded approximately .7 acres at Brandywood. We plan to treat the area with an insecticide attached to a fertilizer to control this falls grub population. Those are the major highlights so far for 2013. I am hoping we don't have a repeat of the Japanese Beetle damage and that we don't find EAB for a least five years. Time will tell.