Azaleas, peonies or daffodils?

Oak Ridge council members debate appropriate plants for landscaping around the historic Redmon house at the entrance to Town Park

by CHRIS BURRITT

OAK RIDGE – Landscaping for the entrance of Oak Ridge’s Town Park is taking shape, one iris at a time.

After meeting for nearly 2 ½ hours, the council voted unanimously last week to adopt a plan for parking, sidewalks and lighting for the entrance to the park at Linville Road and Lisa Drive. Unsatisfied with a design firm’s initial recommendations for plants, council members suggested specific shrubs and flowers to plant around the historic Redmon house, as part of the structure’s renovation and expansion into the Farmhouse Community Center.

The council’s special called meeting last Thursday, June 8, offered lessons in landscaping, based upon council members’ gardening expertise and preferences. As members debated around a conference table covered by construction drawings for the park entrance’s master plan, they concurred that the plan recommended by Hill Studio, a Roanoke, Virginia-based design firm, missed the mark.

“There are no peonies,” councilman Spencer Sullivan said. “Where are the azaleas?”

The proposed design places plants too close together and doesn’t incorporate enough of the varieties that tenant farmers living