Utilities Kodiak Facility was the parking lot islands.
Being a new facility, the parking lot islands had a
conventional design with two trees at each end,
and a mix of fescue and Bermuda grass had been
seeded to cover the compacted soil. For the first
couple of years, these had been mowed with a weed
whacker, which took a lot of time. With no effec-
tive way to get mowers to the island, combined
with the desire to reduce maintenance costs, these
islands were converted into a native plant land-
scape that has low maintenance requirements.
As the VM Group reviewed the locations for the
mowers, they found themselves asking, "Do we need
to mow that?" In some cases the answer was "no"
and a landscaping alternative was found. This opened
the door for low maintenance alternatives such
as pollinator plots that added texture, dimension,
and color to an otherwise uninteresting landscape.
When the answer was "yes," they looked for a power
source. Almost all of the infrastructure being mowed
had not foreseen the invasion of robot mowers that
would come and did not have outlets in convenient
28 CityTREES
The robot mower is significantly quieter than conventional mowers.
