Camden: Landscaping talk at Legislature: negotiation blooming?

“I’ve never seen weeds in the Capitol lawns worse, a lack of mowing. I’ve never seen the bulbs planted less properly, mold growing off our buildings. I’ve never seen this campus looking so bad,” Schoesler said. “We really aren’t getting anything for our dollar, and no input in it.”

Sen. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, also weighed in: “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen so many dandelions all over. Is it your policy not to treat dandelions?”

No, said Chris Liu, current department director. They use herbicides, but over the years have looked for more natural ways to treat the weeds to cut back on the expense. Lawmakers may be seeing more dandelions because of the latest treatments, but that should even out as the weed control plans evolve.

Does the department ever talk to experts on lawn management? Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, asked.

It actually has its own expert, a professional horticulturalist, said Deputy Director Bob Covington. The grounds-keeping budget got a 26 percent cut in 2009, he said, and that money hasn’t been restored. That’s when the standard of care dropped below pristine for the campus.

“If we want this place to look nice we need to pay for it, or we need to organize a pretty intensive volunteer effort,” said Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island.

Can you use volunteers to do work on campus? Sen. Randi Becker, R-Eatonville, asked. She’d be willing to bring her riding lawn mower and husband in to work on the lawns. “I have never seen (a state capitol) look like this.”

The campus has volunteers who plant and tend dahlias in the sunken garden, but he’d have to check with the union about lawn mowing, Covington said.

Much ado about dandelions

After spending about 25 minutes on how the state should or shouldn’t be handling its grass and dandelions, the Senate budget committee moved on to other issues.

To be clear, the Capitol Campus is a gem that is important to keep polished for the whole state, and it has looked better. One bit of positive information from the hearing was the department has abandoned its “Ecolawn” experiment on the main campus, which consisted of letting the grass and weeds grow. It meant one corner of the grounds began to look like an African savannah.

But in their zeal to improve the optics of the campus, Senate Republicans may have inadvertently handed the Democrats an optic in the war of words over who’s responsible for the current budget stalemate.

“The Republicans’ willingness to negotiate on dandelions, I would hope, would be transplanted to a willingness to negotiate a school budget,” Gov. Jay Inslee said the next day.