I had a question regarding the standards of care for the city 'greens', those swaths of medians termed greens rather than parks, but seem to be under ABQ Dept of Parks care. On today's morning walk I noted that the city park division was again at Hermosa Green (at the junction of Laurel Dr and Parkland Cir SE), installing pansies and birds of paradise, in very careful ordered lines. From my observation over the last few years, at least three times a year they put in new flowers; this spring they already planted and removed pansies and oriental poppies. Usually they'll do one more installation in September, and remove it the week after Balloon Fiesta.

On my same walk today I noticed them weed-whacking the flowers in the Carlisle median; usually they'll just blast through them, killing some of the plants in the process. And then of course we are familiar with the Amherst green, which is cared for by the considerate neighbors rather than the city. From what I understand, there has been an issue getting the city to put down landscape cloth and rock on the Amherst green.

Is Hermosa Green 'sponsored' somehow? Does it have anything to do with the neighborhood association? The workers there this morning were in city trucks, so it didn't appear to be volunteer effort. There seems to be a disparity of care between the three examples I just mentioned, and I wondered what could account for the difference, and of course how to get some of the same attention applied to Amherst.

Thanks, Heather