Karla Rendon
Editorial Director
The University of La Verne has placed drought resistant plants around the north side of the campus in an effort to save an estimated 1.1 million gallons of water each year.
Different types of grass, sage and dwarf bottlebrush plants have debuted their appearance near the Counseling and Psychological Services building, Stu-Han, Brandt and the Avenue of Trees.
“The liquid amber trees in front of the Chapel all died unfortunately because they ran into a disease called ziela,” said Robert Beebe, senior director of physical plant operations and services.
“So we had to redo that whole part and I suggested we make that whole area sustainable,”
“These kind of trees all over California are dying,” Beebe said.
“There’s a bug that basically drills into the tree, gets inside the tree and it’s basically like cancer for the tree.”
“I am glad there was talk about replacing the trees with more trees and with the same type of vegetation,” Professor of Biology and Biochemistry Jay Jones said.
The installation of the drought tolerant plants came as a part of President Devorah Lieberman’s Commitment to Climate Action as well as the Billion Dollar Green Challenge.
“There are benchmarks where we have to show within every four years to show how we’ve spent money on green projects,” Beebe said.
“These plants will help us live our mission at the University because we’ve been bad about that in the past,” Jones said. “We would say one thing and not follow through with it.”
All of the new drought resistant plants on campus are native to California, an effort made possible by Jones and Professor of Anthropology Kim Martin.
“There were a number of us who were very active in getting the plants to be native,” Jones said.
Jones was interested in making the plants local to benefit one of his classes.
“I was interested in making the plants native to California because I was interested in being able to integrate them into my plant biology course.”
Jones had given Beebe a list of California-native plants to choose from.
“We were able to find about 80 percent of the plants on the list and we planted them,” Beebe said.
“What that means is that when they’re having their classes, they don’t have to get in their cars and go look for these plants.
“Students will be able to just walk across the lawn and see them,” he said.
“It made business sense, ecological sense and it made sense to help out with the educational component to make the plants native so it was like a win-win-win,” Beebe said.
The new plants are estimated to save a little more than a million gallons of water annually.
“Every bit of water we use that is unnecessary here puts a lot of people out of work, causes financial hardship to others and puts water on the water distribution system when it can be used to better affect elsewhere,” Jones said.
“Water has traditionally been inexpensive but I project that will change very soon because if people don’t conserve and if the drought continues to worsen then they will raise the prices of water,” Beebe said.
Beebe felt that placing drought tolerant plants around the campus was the right thing to do.
“I was less concerned about the payback as I was trying to make sure we did the right thing,” he said.
“Luckily we were able to get payback because we got good rebates and the rest of the project’s savings are going in the Green Revolving Fund,” he said.
Despite the hardship on water, Beebe suspects the University is doing well on sustainability.
“I”m finding out that we are doing quite well on sustainability here at La Verne,” he said.
“A lot of the times I don’t give us enough credit until I go to conferences or education endeavors and meet people from Georgia and Arizona who say they wish they were able to do what we were doing here at the University,” Beebe said.
“We’re looking to leapfrog ourselves further and get ahead,” he said.
Professor of Biology Emeritus Robert Neher felt inspirited about the new drought tolerant plants.
“I am very encouraged to see the University aggressively taking actions that save or preserve natural resources and decrease our use of water and energy, thereby reducing our carbon footprint,” Neher said.
Currently there has been other turf identified in other areas of the campus where Beebe plans to remove the area and convert it to more drought tolerant plants.
“We are working on proposals for that right now,” he said. “We will not relent; we will keep pursuing all of this.”
Karla Rendon can be reached at karla.rendon@laverne.edu.
