By Amy Deis

Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Resident helps with Pond Springs Road beautification

A 15-foot-wide stretch of grass between the shoulder and sidewalk on Pond Springs Road should have been in full bloom this year with big bluestem, green sprangletop, blue grama, black-eyed Susan, scarlet sage, purple prairie clover, bluebonnet and Mexican hat—all native wildflowers to Central Texas.

But Craig Lee, owner of Craig’s Cuts, a barber shop on McNeil Drive, said it looks more like the vegetative strip, as it is referred to in planning documents, got a crew cut. Where there should be flora and fauna, there is low-cut grass, short as a golf fairway.

Pond Springs Road is a 2-mile-long, business-lined road that runs from McNeil Drive at US 183 to north of Anderson Mill Road at US 183. It is in the Williamson County portion of Austin city limits.

The 15-foot-wide vegetative strip was added in 2010 as part of a $4 million roadside improvement project. The project, funded by Williamson County bonds, added 6-foot-wide shoulders on either side of Pond Springs Road and a 5-foot-wide sidewalk on the east side of the road.

“The biggest reason to re-establish roadsides is because of years like this,” Lee said, adding that native plants require less water and often have roots that extend several feet into the ground.

James Klotz, whose Austin-based architecture and development-planning firm, HNTB, oversaw the roadside improvement project, blames the drought and overmowing for the lack of wildflower growth. He said that right now, some of the grasses are going into dormancy for the winter, but with a good amount of rain, the plants could spring back up.

But Lee is not waiting for rain. He has taken it upon himself to bring to fruition the neighborhood’s vision of a blooming and natural walkway.

Over the past two months, the self-proclaimed green thumb has planted native wildflowers and vegetation, such as salvias, esperanzas and Pride of Barbados, on eight private properties that line the opposite side of the sidewalk from the vegetative strip. He said he plans to plant as many native flower gardens as he can along the corridor with the permission of the property owners.

Lee said he also plans to seek permission from the City of Austin to replant wildflowers that grow to be shorter than 18 inches in the vegetative strip. Having both the native grasses and wildflowers are part of the City of Austin’s 609S specifications for using native grasses and wildflowers for erosion control.

Lee’s ultimate goal is to get the area to look like what the community had in mind when it approached Williamson County Commissioner Lisa Birkman about improving the roadway, but, he said, he also wants to create an open butterfly exhibit that anyone could walk or bike past nine months out of the year.

Known to many school-age children as “Craig the Butterfly Man,” Lee travels to area schools in his free time with a mobile Monarch butterfly sanctuary to teach children about the lifecycle of the butterfly. Lee is planning a more permanent sanctuary at Countryside Nursery, 13292 Pond Springs Road, where his butterfly sanctuary resides when it is not on tour.

Although Pond Springs is dominated by businesses, Lee said he sees the area as “not just a bunch of concrete, asphalt and bricks,” but where nature is mixed in with the commercial, a place where people could walk down the road through a natural exhibit.

“What I do, nature takes care of. I water it to get it started, then we won’t have to mess with it,” he said.

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