Plant Establishment. 3.8.1 It is the responsibility of the Contractor to ensure the resumption and continued growth of transplanted material.
Plant Establishment. Plant establishment periods for highway planting performed in conjunction with a roadway construction project must follow the policy described in this section under the heading “Separate Contract Requirement for Highway Planting Work on Roadway Construction Projects.” Plant establishment periods for highway planting performed under a separate contract from a roadway construction project must be three years in length. Plant establishment periods for required mitigation planting may exceed three years when required by a regulatory agency. Exceptions to this policy must receive concurrence from both district maintenance and the district landscape architect and approval from the Headquarters Landscape Architecture Program.
Plant Establishment. Strong plant establishment with effective weed control is a necessary first step to ensure low lifecycle costs for projects. The plant establishment period is typically three years following plant installation. This period is intended to quickly, fully, and densely establish desired plants in a weed-free state on roadsides to minimize the potential for subsequent weed invasion, which is more likely to occur on bare or un-vegetated ground. Roadsides with poorly established vegetation at the end of the establishment period fail to meet WSDOT specifications, and if accepted by WSDOT they will result in extra, unbudgeted work for WSDOT maintenance crews. Transferring roadside projects to maintenance crews in poorly established conditions may result in short-term savings but will increase the likelihood of long-term weed infestation problems. In the case of shrub communities a three-year plant establishment period may not be sufficient to ensure good vegetative cover of soil and associated reduction in weed pressure. Unlike other highway elements such as concrete, plants do not immediately fill the need when installed. Additional or more prescriptive standards may be necessary to ensure that shrub beds provide dense vegetative cover before being turned over to WSDOT maintenance. These standards could take the following forms: • standards for plant vigor and plant health • standards for complete vegetative coverage prior to shifting the area to maintenance • standards for plant survival (for example, 90 percent of plants have been in the ground and in a healthy, vigorous growing condition for at least two years). • standards for highway construction contracts that require additional years of plant establishment before responsibility is shifted to the maintenance staff. Long-term maintenance costs will be reduced by achieving, as quickly as possible, a level of plant establishment that reduces opportunities for invasive vegetation to become established. Some of these methods may entail adopting different design solutions, some may require changes to construction contracts or to installation methods, and some may result from changing maintenance practices during the establishment period. To minimize lifecycle costs of roadside vegetation, WSDOT should explore all realistic methods of ensuring quick and full plant establishment. We found that case study sites in the region with dedicated maintenance crews were more successful than those in regions without dedicated...
Plant Establishment. Monitor contractor efforts for the plant establishment throughout the project including intermittent inspection of plants and verifying that irrigation systems wor properly and that all plants are established or replaced.
Plant Establishment. 50 Roadside Maintenance and Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) ............................. 53 WSDOT Organizational Structure/Considerations. ............................................................... 56 Use of State Departments of Corrections (DOC) Crews and Volunteers ............................ 57
