City Calls for Creative Solutions for Our Medians

This City Corner article appeared in Ashland.news on April 9, 2026.

Our medians have been a hot topic of conversation in the community over the last several months and the city is now inviting residents to offer creative solutions.

Late last year, the city changed the design of the median near the corner of Ashland Street and Siskiyou Boulevard, changing from ornamental shrubs to rocks around the trees. The change was designed to solve several problems and was intended to be the first of many median re-designs but the reaction from many in the community was swift and clear. Ashlanders wanted a different solution.

Near the same time, the City posted a notice that staff would be applying low levels of pesticides to other medians in accordance with city policy. While the Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission has a park-land specific Integrated Pest Management policy that results in park lands being practically synthetic-pesticide-free, the management of non-park land falls under City Ordinance AMC 9.28.

While some residents thought the City had a pesticide ban that had been overturned, that wasn’t the case. All applications are done in accordance with AMC 9.28, which eliminates pesticides except in rare instances. In those cases, only the safest, lowest toxicity products available are to be used.

Median Challenges

Our medians have become more of a challenge to maintain in the past several years for a variety of reasons:

· Our summers are getting hotter, which makes it harder to keep the grass green and the plants alive in the medians, especially with dark asphalt on both sides intensifying the heat.

· The need for water conservation continues to grow as the risk of drought increases.

· Distracted drivers are posing safety issues for our workers when they are maintaining the medians.

· Wildfire risk is increasing, pushing us to look more closely at our landscaping.

· Our weed whackers kick up rocks that damage passing cars.

· Deer frequent the medians creating a traffic hazard.

· The more time and water it takes to maintain the medians, the more it costs the city.

Moving Forward

As we continue to work to make our operations more efficient, conserve water, deter deer, protect our workers, safeguard the environment, and save money, re-designing our

medians is an important next step. The City Council will soon host a study session with the Ashland Parks and Recreation Commission where we will discuss redesigning the medians and the possibility of creating a single, unified pesticide policy that will govern pesticide use across all city and parks properties.

Calling for Creative Ideas

We are asking our community to offer creative ideas for our medians that address the issues above. Specifically, we are looking for median design ideas that:

· Conserve water

· Do not require pesticides

· Can be maintained with only three entries onto the medians each year (fall, early spring, and early June)

· Deter deer from the medians

· Minimize wildfire risk

· Contain costs in the redesign and maintenance processes

· Are pleasing to the eye

Help us solve these issues by submitting your creative idea here by April 29th.