Picture this: a freshly manicured lawn, bordered by a series of rock waterfalls and tree beds interspersed with native flowers and plant life.
This could soon be your view as you walk to class.
Facilities Services, with the funding of campus administration, has disclosed its plans to expand the existing Blueberry Falls green space next to the Claxton Education Building to connect Volunteer Boulevard and Phillip Fulmer Way as soon as late January.
The expansion will include a lawn for recreational use, a sidewalk with a bike path for cyclists, tree and plant beds and a waterfall cascade spanning the length of the pathway.
Dan Smith, the Blueberry Falls expansion project manager from Facilities Services, said the changes are intended to aid pedestrian traffic between the two streets as well as staff lot 9 and the new university center in an aesthetically pleasing way.
“The long and short of it is we needed some pedestrian connection there, and the decision was made to do it in a more attractive manner as opposed to just putting in sidewalks,” Smith said.
Ted Murphy, landscape architect with Facilities Services, said the plan is to keep the green space accessible and appealing with room for recreation.
“The approach was to keep the landscape simple,” Murphy said. “The design utilizes large swaths of mostly native plants to soften the edges of the corridor and provide seasonal interest and contrast.”
By actively creating more green space, Smith said he thinks the Blueberry Falls expansion and other campus beautification projects will help increase the attraction of promising students and faculty to UT.
“Frankly we have a world-class student body and faculty, and it’s very competitive to get those kinds of high achieving, high value people to come to UT,” he explained. “So anything that makes campus look better and feel more inviting has a value there.”
Smith and Murphy both agreed one of the primary goals of the new green space is simply to give students a nice place to relax between classes.
“People are happier when they are exposed to more plants and green spaces in their daily lives as opposed to just all concrete and all brick and all asphalt,” Smith said. “So by putting more green in such a high travel area, it allows us to put more green into the daily lives of our campus community.”
