Walking home Saturday I met my neighbor, Deborah Niedermeyer, who was tending our traffic circle. I realized I don’t know anything about the traffic circle, other than that the kids squeal when we bike around it an extra time.
I’m sure each traffic circle in Wallingford has a very interesting history, but here’s the story of my favorite one at 2nd Ave NE & NE 43rd St: in 1992, Deborah took pictures to document fender benders (before the days of digital cameras, mind you), wrote the grant, and in 1999–a week after returning from seven years in Alaska–finally got the call from the city.
Molbak’s Garden + Home donated the tree and Deborah has spent a couple hundred dollars over the last 12 years buying various replacement plants on sale. The bearded irises were put in by a well-meaning stranger, but they’re unfortunately over the height requirement and brought in crab grass. In addition to the height restriction, there are numerous other guidelines, including a disallowance of rocks and benches, in case a fire truck has to drive over the traffic circle to get down the street.
The threat of fire trucks and weeds aren’t the only enemies traffic circles face. Our traffic circle gets hit or run through by cars an average of once every three weeks in the summer and every ten weeks in the winter. Two of its three boxwoods have been killed by cars. The tree has been hit once, but survived. The reflective sign wasn’t so lucky and that’s why it’s a little shorter than the others. Deborah prefers muted tones in her own garden, but opts for bright yellows and oranges on the traffic circle as they’re most appropriate for “25 mile-per-hour gardening.”
Traffic circles beautify intersections and cut down on collisions, but require a lot of upkeep. They’re maintained by volunteers whose only super power is holding a permit for running their hoses across the streets to water the plants. If you’ve got a green thumb and see a neighbor working on a traffic circle, he or she may welcome some help. Your circle may even have as exciting a history as mine.
Think your intersection can benefit from a traffic circle? Read all about the SDOT Traffic Circle Program.
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At Kenwood and Woodlawn someone has placed a huge, eight feet long, spotted cow. Today someone lifted its head up higher and stuffed some lavender stalks into its mouth. The cow may weigh several hundred pounds. The traffic circle there seems to me to be well designed because within it there are no large rocks of hunks of cement.
I love that cow! I’m impressed with how well it’s holding up.