‘A little oasis in Oakland’: Pitt’s spring landscaping features native plants and sustainable alternatives 

Pitt’s campus is transitioning into spring, and the grounds crew are adding more sustainable plants to campus.

The spring season began on March 20, and Pitt’s Office of Facilities Management is installing a variety of new plants and flowers, focusing on adding color to Pitt’s campus while supporting the local environment and incorporating native and perennial plants. 

Andy Moran, senior manager of grounds in the Office of Facilities Management, leads a team of 35 people who he said work to make Pitt’s campus feel like “a little oasis in Oakland.”

“We pride ourselves on first impressions. When parents are bringing their children onto campus for the first time, or when a relative is coming to visit a student on campus for the first time, we want their remembrance of the campus to be a ‘wow’ factor,” Moran said.

The grounds crew will plant approximately 21,500 pansies throughout campus in the upcoming weeks, which will be fully installed by the time families visit for graduation on May 3, according to Moran. Moran explained these flowers are more tolerant of cooler temperatures.

“Right now, the summer annuals can’t tolerate the cold weather,” Moran said. “In order to get some color on campus for our graduation, we have to use pansies.”

According to Moran, the pansies will be rotated out for summer annuals, though Pitt has plans to plant perennials elsewhere, which can survive year-round. Zackary Wolynn, a graduate student in public administration and member of both the Pollinator Habitat Advisory Committee and Conservation Club at Pitt, said perennials are better than annuals at supporting pollinators. 

“A lot of [annuals are] genetically engineered to look super pretty, but in doing that, they don’t have the sex organs that most plants have,” Wolynn said. “Then [they] can’t be pollinated, and it can’t support bees or other pollinators.” 

Moran said native plants are also central in supporting the ecosystem, adding that the staff is required to think of native plants first and only use non-native plants when necessary.

“99% of the time, we’re putting in native plants. Just today, a contractor started putting in 29 large native trees around the Cathedral lawn,” Moran said. “But if we have to match an existing landscape … we may have to put in something that’s non-native.”

As part of the first phase in a master landscape plan for areas around the Cathedral of Learning, Moran said his team will also plant 20 other native trees around the Cathedral including oaks, white oaks, sweetgums, maples, dogwoods and redbuds. Moran said this project, like all of the groundswork, will adhere to the Pitt Sustainability Plan which he helped create in 2018. 

“I’ve been here for over 11 years and each year we’ve built upon this sustainability plan,” Moran said. “From electric mowers and electric or battery-powered equipment to some of the fertilizers and the native plants, everything we do is trying to be on the more sustainable than non-sustainable side.”

Pitt has earned multiple sustainability awards, earning Bee Campus USA status in 2020 and Tree Campus status in 2021, both of which are re-certified annually. Laurie Ann Follweiler, Pitt’s greenhouse manager, said she has noticed a positive change since these developments.

“I am happy to see the native perennials and shrubs along Bigelow outside the Cathedral,” Follweiler said. “It’s a refreshing change to the old traditional landscape plantings that offer little to the environment.”

Wolynn said the Pitt Pollinator Habitat Advisory Committee and Conservation Club at Pitt developed a “plant matrix,” which is a list that dictates what species of plants go into which gardens.

“If you’re going to be planting along a narrow strip of a sidewalk, it’s worthwhile to plant native perennials,” Wolynn said. “But we couldn’t plant something tall and floppy, like sneezeweed, for instance.”

Moran said the grounds crew has a “right plant, right place” framework for deciding where plantings should go. His experience working at Pitt has taught him to factor in lighting conditions, growth habits, nearby landscaping and drought tolerance.

“We learn something new every day here on campus,” Moran said.

Sanjna Goyal, a junior environmental engineering major and president of the Conservation Club at Pitt, said the pollinator gardens typically feature native perennials like bee balm, coneflower and wild indigo. The club’s next project is a partnership with Free the Planet called the Posvar Pollinator Patch, which will be planted April 8 through 10. 

“For this garden, we chose plants specifically based on their bloom time,” Goyal said. “We try to choose plants that bloom at different times. That’s better for the pollinators because it gives them options.”

Goyal said choosing plants with varied bloom times also ensures there is something visually appealing to walk past at all times. 

“When flowers aren’t really in bloom, we try to still have native grass species and other things, so it’s not just twigs and sticks all throughout the garden,” Goyal said. “We try to compromise a bit in the sense that it’s still visually appealing for the most part. But we can’t promise … intense English roses, because obviously we do prioritize the native species over the non-native ones.”