Consultant to help Clinton with landscape design

By Randy Bell

A new contract for landscaping consulting is expected to offer suggestions for landscape designs for the City’s welcome signs, including the one pictured here on Springridge Road.

The City has decided it needs expert advice on how to spruce up the areas around some of Clinton’s welcome signs and recommendations on landscaping in other parts of the city. The Board of Aldermen has hired WAS Design, Inc. of Jackson to come up with “concept gateway designs” and other ideas which the City can use in seeking a contractor to do the actual work.

“They will help us, first off, to prepare our RFP [Request for Proposals],” says Mayor Will Purdie. “That’s one of the problems we’ve run into in the past, that when we’ve put out the RFP, it’s generally said ‘plantings and some seasonal beds.’ We want to get more specific to really get apples-to-apples bids and to be able to judge those bids fairly. So, [WAS Design] will give us the technical expertise to put that language in there.”

The $6,400 contract will focus on landscape designs at two “You Belong Here” welcome signs, one on Springridge Road north of I-20 and the other on Highway 80 near Shaw Road, along with the Clinton Boulevard “car island” at Mt. Salus Drive. WAS Design will provide detailed recommendations about spring/summer and winter plantings. It will also offer advice on the hanging baskets, flower pots and beds in Olde Towne, as well as designs for renovating the plantings at City Hall and the Police Department.

The mayor says once the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) finishes the transformation of Highway 80 into a boulevard in Clinton, additional beautification efforts could focus on the new raised medians in the middle of the highway.

“My goal, hopefully, once the Highway 80 project is complete, [is] to have landscaping along that [highway] which mirrors the [Clinton] Parkway.”

Another possible target to improve the looks of the city is the four-lane section of Pinehaven Drive where decorative lamp posts have been installed to match those on the Parkway. Unlike the Parkway, the raised medians on Pinehaven have no landscaping, only grass. The problem is, those medians are narrower than the ones on the Parkway, but Purdie isn’t ruling out the possibility adding some plantings on Pinehaven.

“I think it would be challenging. It’s kind of hard to retrofit those [medians], but I’m certainly not opposed to looking at that. I’m a big fan of landscaping.”

The consultant may also provide suggestions for landscaping of grassy medians on Pinehaven Drive.