The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Make Way: A worker in a Bobcat bulldozer cleared about 200 feet of the Meridian Avenue median on June 4.

WGNA braves brambles to brighten up Meridian

Volunteers will add vivid plants to area

By Rebecca Wallace

The house is breathtaking. It's got everything: two stories, five bedrooms, a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a leafy elm tree just waiting to be climbed. But to get inside, you've got to go through the ugliest, splinteriest, most beat-up front door you've ever seen.

That's kind of how J. Michael Gonzales feels about one corner of Willow Glen. And now he and the members of the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association are doing something about it.

He's talking about the Meridian Avenue median right near Interstate 280, just north of Fruitdale Avenue--which is, to say the least, shaggy. "This is one of the gateways to Willow Glen," says the WGNA vice president. "People are stuck in traffic right there, and what they look at is a dilapidated bunch of brambles."

On June 4, a worker in a Bobcat bulldozer cleared about 200 feet of the median, which Gonzales estimates is 500 to 700 feet in length. Now the way is clear for volunteers to go in and plant colorful trees and flowers, which is scheduled to happen in July.

"It cost about $500 to get the initial area cleared, which was well worth it because the stuff was pretty ornery brush," Gonzales said. The median is in the Caltrans right-of-way, and Caltrans workers helped out by closing off lanes of Meridian and providing dump trucks to haul away debris.

"We want to put a little spark in that environment by putting some color in there: flowers, trees, shrubs with color in them," Gonzales said. "We might consider a fruitless plum tree. It would show really well with a centerpiece." Gonzales added that WGNA president Kris Cunningham was the inspiration for the project, which in its entirety could take a few years.

The median project is being financed by WGNA money that came from a 1993 $66,500 urban-stream restoration state grant for the Los Gatos Creek Restoration project, Cunningham said.

The grant had included 10 percent of its funds to pay for financial management of the grant, but former WGNA president Larry Ames worked with the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department to manage the grant--and the county department did not charge for the service, Cunningham said.

The county then gave the saved money back to WGNA to use for neighborhood beautification, Ames said.

Gonzales said that it is not yet known how much the entire Meridian median project will cost; it depends on how much work Caltrans will approve and how much improvement work Caltrans does on its own in the area.

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