Folsom Park is one of nine parks included in the city’s pilot program for the Organically Managed Lands Program. In the past the city has employed a conventional approach to managing the more than 8 acres./Photo by Steve Eginoire

The man with the plan

Osborne reveals plan to guide city’s new approach to parks
by Tracy Chamberlin

Chip Osborne has a plan, one that he shared Tuesday with the community and the Durango City Council.

The plan, part of a pilot program with the Parks and Recreation Department, lays out a framework for transitioning the city’s parks from a conventional management style, which relies more on synthetic products, to an organic management style, which turns to natural products for healthy soil and weed abatement.

Right now, the Organically Managed Lands Program is just about the grass – the turf grass. The idea is to give the turf the tools to feed itself rather than feeding it with synthetic nutrients and fertilizers. “We are taking a feed-the-soil approach rather than a feed-the-plant approach,” said Osborne, founder and president of Osborne Organics based in Marblehead, Mass.

The foundation of organic management is to let the organisms do the work that synthetic chemicals once did. Conventional maintenance systems provide the nutrients, like nitrogen, that grasses need to grow and remain healthy. It treats the symptoms, whereas the new organic program is a proactive approach that would treat the source of the problem.

The city plans to implement the plan this spring on nine selected parks – Brookside, Fanto, Folsom, Iris, Needham, Pioneer, Riverfront, Riverview Sports Complex and Schneider – and measure the results over the next year.

The plan also requires an investment from the city – in both time and money. It will take around $100,000 to purchase the equipment needed to implement the plan; and, it will take time for the soil to transition, time for the results to be measurable and time for the community to adapt.
“This kind of program doesn’t happen right out of the gate,” Osborne said.

It’s believed that maintaining the turf grass using organic instead of conventional methods will eventually be cost neutral because the labor and materials involved in the two processes have similar expenses.

“The labor part will be comparable to what I’m doing now,” explained Ron Moore, the city Parks and Cemetery Manager. “(Osborne’s) mimicked my program of synthetics with organics.”

The city is paying Osborne $36,000 for his services and estimates spending about $100,000 on additional equipment, such as a sprayer, aerator and over-seeding machine.

Osborne said he believed the city will see a payback on that investment in three to five years.

Time will be the other expenditure. Since organic management works with soil health and living organisms, it takes time to build up the biomass and see results.

It also does not have the scheduling flexibility that synthetic products do. The new program has to work on the organic timetable.

Just like there are certain times of the year when Durangoans plant their gardens, there are specific “windows of opportunity” within organic management.

Representatives from the youth soccer and youth baseball organizations attended the community meeting Tuesday at the Rec Center, wanting to know what kind of scheduling issues they would face under the new program.

Cathy Metz, Parks and Recreation Director, told them she understood the importance of ball fields to the community and its youth programs.

However, under the new program, the city would have a 10-day window to get the fertilizing job done, which is a shorter timeframe than conventional management allows.

Osborne said the program is founded on science, and that’s just how he explained it at Tuesday’s meetings. He talked about the phosphorus, calcium, potassium and magnesium levels in the soil, and looked at the pH levels and percentage of organic matter.

“The most important element of the transition is the attention to the soil, not just texture and chemistry, but the biomass as well,” Osborne said.

After testing the soil in November to determine its chemistry, texture, biological factors and nutrients, Osborne determined the soil here has an abundance of what is needed, establishing a good baseline for the turf. “We’ve got good fungi; we’ve got good bacteria.” He attributes that to the way the city has managed their parks in the past.

The plan is not about changing the way the city does thing, but rather switching out the materials used in the process “to an organic framework that begins to address the soil and soil health,” according to the draft plan.

The success of this first phase of the Organically Managed Lands Program will determine its future. It will be measured the same way it has always been measured, like determining the percentage of weeds growing in the park.

Osborne called the draft plan a “work in progress,” noting that he will stay on as consultant for the next year to help make adjustments as necessary.

The transition will take some initial monetary investments, but the idea is simply to replace a conventional management style with an organic one. And, only the investment in time will tell whether or not it will work for the city and the community.