Volunteers prep area for traffic light project

Volunteers Tuesday discuss whether to save a particular tree at the Botanical Garden. The Pilot/Arwyn Rice

But not entirely.

A large slice of the garden will be lost to the project, which calls for the reconfiguration of existing roads and installation a traffic signal. A line of wooden stakes through the middle of the garden marks the border of the new road.

On Tuesday, more than a dozen members of the Brookings-Harbor Garden Club moved 48 wheelbarrows of bark, 37 wheelbarrows of gravel, azalea bushes and dozens of plants in preparation for construction, scheduled to begin Monday (it was originally slated to begin today).

But not everything could be saved, said garden club President Fran Watson.

Several trees and shrubs, swaths of California poppy, foxglove, ferns, columbine and dozens of other plants are too large, too small or simply have no place to go and will fall to ODOT bulldozers.

Several benches and a large stone drinking fountain remained. The benches were to be moved Tuesday afternoon, and club members hoped to save the fountain as well.

It’s not all bad news for the garden. As much as the garden lost to ODOT to the east, it will gain more to the west.

The weigh station will be relocated to a new site on Highway 101 in Harbor. Most of the station’s asphalt will be removed and use of the ODOT property turned over to the garden club. Part of the old weigh station road will become a parking lot, with access from Azalea Park Drive.

Ownership of the land will be retained by ODOT.

The garden club already has plans for the new area, which will include a rock garden and an all-native plant riparian area near a creek that runs behind the current weigh station.

“It will be a three- to five-year project,” said Watson. “It all depends on our funding.”