Normally seen as a point of pride for the university, the Mississippi State landscape has taken a brutal beating after weeks of steady rain and well-attended football games.
Grass lots used for game day parking have lost their green color and turned into islands of mud, while frequented locations such as the Drill Field and Junction appear neglected.
Associate director of campus landscape Roger Baker said the MSU faithful should keep their worries to a minimum.
“As of Tuesday morning everything still appeared too wet to work on, but by the afternoon the sun really helped dry a lot of the campus out,” Baker said. “By Wednesday, you will see us working feverishly to care for the campus so most of it is ready by this weekend.”
Even as landscapers hurry to revive grounds for this Saturday’s game and Homecoming, Baker said some areas will be off limits, for a short period.
“We are going to have to avoid parking in grass lots where there are hills or low lying areas,” Baker said. “campus landscaping and the game day committee are currently working together and will release any major parking changes before the week’s over.”
In doing its evaluation of the grounds, Baker said the landscaping team will use various tactics to combat the damaged land.
“Right now, we are at the end of the warm grass growing season so we are going to have to do a little prep work before we can make any major aesthetic changes,” he said. “Then we’ll seed it with cool-season grass, and within a few weeks you won’t even realize the grass had to be replaced.”
But as MSU landscapers try to remedy the situation, students are speaking out about the current environment of the campus.
Senior landscape architecture major Dustin Randle said the grounds’ condition has left him scratching his head.
“It doesn’t make much sense to me that we have to fix the grounds every time we have heavy rain,” Randle said. “Instead, [let’s] do something that is more sustainable,” Randle said. “A structure like a parking garage next to the post office is key in making sure we [the university] don’t have to go back and make repairs every time.”
Randle said if MSU wants to avoid the high costs associated with the garage, then grass pavers could also spare the landscape from degradation.
“Grass pavers are like cinder blocks turned on their side with a cross going through it that can be placed in the ground,” he said. “You then plant grass inside of the block and this creates a foundation in which the grass is capable of withstanding more foot traffic or parking; imagine a parking lot with grass over it, that’s what these things do.”
Junior landscape architecture major Brad Alexander said he believes all grass parking should be eliminated from game days.
“By tearing up these grounds, the university has to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to try to repair the grounds,” Alexander said. “I know by the landscape building a lot of our top soil is gone, and if it rains again it’ll cause a lot of run-off which goes into our wells.”
But even with campus not appearing in its best form, others are defending the actions of the university and its use of land.
Landscape architecture professor Pete Melby said not too much can be done with such grounds, and no one is to blame for its current state after two straight weeks of heavy rain.
“Campus landscape will have to do the best with knocking down the mud ridges and allowing the running grasses to reestablish themselves,” Melby said. “It is also time for overseeding with winter rye grass that will provide a green ground plane cover and help to hold the exposed soil until the more permanent grasses come back.”
With five home games left to the season, the MSU game day committee is making changes to parking to avoid further landscape damage. Makeshift parking lots will now be made by Sorority Row and Hand Laboratory.
As dryer conditions enter the Starkville area, Baker said the wet September will soon be forgotten.
“Three weeks from now and we won’t even remember this happened,” Baker said. “We [campus landscaping] see the heavy rains as an opportunity to fix the grounds and have them back to normal as quickly as possible.”