Landscaping

The Oaklands Corporate Center has moved a step closer to completion as the West Whiteland Board of Supervisors has approved plans for the development of an additional lot on the 270-acre site, located on Route 30 west of Whitford Road. James J. Gorman, the developer, told the board Monday that building on the lot would be similar to others on the site. But Gorman agreed that the landscaping planned for the area might present a problem. Landscaping plans presented previously to the board showed that some of the trees and shrubs planned for the site were close to telephone lines, but the board approved the plans for development of the new lot with the condition that the landscaping plans be approved by the township engineer.

The Pennsbury Board of Supervisors has approved amendments to its zoning ordinance regulating landscaping and screening for new developments. The move came at the Monday night meeting after the third public hearing on the series of amendments designed to cope with growth in the township. The supervisors also approved an amendment regulating exterior light fixtures. The board asked its attorney to redraft amendments regulating microwave satellite antennas and geothermal heat pumps and will vote on them at a regular meeting, board chairman Edward Wandersee said.

Birmingham supervisors have allocated funds to spruce up the area around the Colonial-style township building on Route 926. At Monday night's meeting, they voted to spend $660 to finish the landscaping around the building and to use $890 per year from the capital- expense budget to maintain the grounds and plantings. The supervisors also approved a resolution accepting a deed of dedication for Heartease Drive in the 20-lot, 44-acre Heartease development on Wylie Road, west of Birmingham Road.

At Goshen Valley II condominiums they're going au naturel, at least when it comes to landscaping. As part of a summer-long experiment, the grounds around one building in the 192-unit complex will become completely pesticide-free, said landscaping contractor David Knight of Tops Tree Service Inc. "The only thing we will use on the turf is natural fertilizer," Knight said last week. . "We will monitor for weeds and insects, compile the data at the end of the season and see how it works.

Rosetree Crossing Apartments, Upper Providence Township, Delaware County. Mildred Fink had lived on the Main Line in a single family house for 28 years. When she sold it in a matter of days, she needed a place to live but hadn't thought about the Media area. "I had looked at a couple of apartments in the King of Prussia and Gulph Mills areas," said Fink, who has been a resident of Rosetree Crossing Apartments for five years. "One day I was passing by on Route 1 and saw this complex.

The Township Council made it clear Monday night that it wants some landscaping to accompany a proposed $2.5 million technology classroom building on Pennsylvania State University's Delaware County campus. Jeff Hawver, architect for the project, told the council that the university planned to rely on existing landscaping and reseed the area disturbed by the construction. However, Township Engineer Arthur Rothe said the campus would lose 26 trees with the new building. The university plans to ask the council to rezone the land from residential to institutional.

An urban planner has offered suggestions to lessen the impact of the Blue Route interchange on Lancaster Avenue near Route 320 and to spruce up other parts of Radnor Township. "Plant trees, columns of trees at the interchange and leading into Wayne," said Ronald Lee Fleming, president of Townscape Institute of Cambridge, Mass. "Combine landscape with public art. Have a planting program of color. " Fleming, also a designer, gave his views on enhancing the township, and in particular the downtown business district in Wayne, during a 40-minute slide program Monday night at the end of the commissioners' meeting.

Kingswood Apartments, King of Prussia, Montgomery County There's a plaque on the wall of the leasing office of the Kingswood Apartments that commends the complex in King of Prussia for its attractive landscaping. The award is from the Upper Merion Township Shade Tree Commission. "We think landscaping is very important," said Michele El Assri, the manager for the 772-unit, 52-acre complex just off South Gulph Road. "It's important for the residents, as well as those who are driving by. "We like to have as much blooming color as we can. " According to El Assri, the complex has won a number of other awards, ranging from landscaping to overall maintenance from the Philadelphia Apartment Association.

Despite concern about maintaining a wooded setting, Whitpain Township Planning Commission has recommended approval of two office buildings for the Blue Bell Office Campus. Hansen Properties plans to build a twin-office building on a vacant 13-acre tract on its campus at Walton and Township Line Roads. The commission reviewed the plans Tuesday and voted 6-0 to recommend that the Zoning Hearing Board accept the plan, if the township planner and engineer approve the landscaping. The four-story buildings would have a total of 198,000 square feet and include a walkway to connect the structures.

When Sewell landscaper Greg Deibert drove to Somerset County three weeks ago to buy a dwarf bonsai bougainvilla variegata for $200, he was entering Phase Two of his planning for next week's Philadelphia Flower Show. Phase Two consists of full-tilt, total obsession. Deibert says that most of his waking hours now are spent either working on or thinking about the exhibit that he will unveil to the public at the flower show's opening Sunday. Phase One for Deibert - the selection of a theme, the sorting of ideas and the preliminary planning - began last March.

Joe Fichetola saw what was coming, evergreens first. "They still almost looked alive in February," says the owner of Joe's Garden Center in Atlantic County. "With spring, they're coming out of dormancy and turning brown. " Adds longtime employee Joanne Chambers: "Now everybody in Brigantine wants shrubs. The ones they had, even the ones that tolerate salt water, got saturated. " As the first post-Sandy growing season starts, folks in and around Brigantine and Atlantic City - where ocean and bay floodwaters were the primary aftermath of the hurricane - are noticing which trees, bushes, flowers, and grasses appear to have survived.

First in an occasional series. Mayor Nutter's property tax reform has been packaged as the fix for a badly broken and unfair system of assessments, but a powerful undercurrent has also driven the long and difficult effort. Its most ardent advocates believe the Actual Value Initiative (AVI) will allow the city to finally right its notoriously business-hostile tax landscape, often blamed for Philadelphia's lagging behind other big cities in important economic categories. Advocates for a modern property tax system have been arguing for years that the city taxes the wrong things - businesses and wages.

The politicians and analysts have been talking for more than a year about the potential winners and losers from Mayor Nutter's property tax reform, and now the lines have been drawn. The results of a citywide reassessment key to Nutter's Actual Value Initiative (AVI) were released Friday, and the data confirm some long-held expectations - wealthier, fast-changing neighborhoods are facing stiff increases, and many large commercial properties will see big drops in their bills. Some hikes are jaw-dropping.

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged weakened and facing a redrawn political map Tuesday after Israeli television projections showed a surge for a new centrist party, Yesh Atid, in Israel's elections, making it a key element of a future coalition. Netanyahu's ticket combining his rightist Likud party with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction won 31 parliamentary seats, according to the projections, a sharp decline from the combined 42 seats held by the two parties in the outgoing 120-member legislature.

Approaching the Walt Whitman Bridge on the way to South Jersey, there's an ad for a website that seems so Philly. Next to a giant unhappy face, these words: NastyClient.com. Leave it to an incensed landscaper to create a digital place for contractors to dish about the customers who chiseled them. One morning before sunrise in March, Matt Stachel of Feasterville strapped his cloth sign to an empty spot on a fence that faced outbound traffic, and since then, his website has become a gathering place for the aggrieved.

THE SEVEN Big East schools that don't play Division I football are planning to leave the conference. If this news takes anyone by surprise then you just haven't been monitoring all this realignment business very stringently. More than a few folks saw this move as being pretty much inevitable, once the Big East started coming apart last year because of mass money-based football defections. The tipping point apparently was the recent addition of Tulane (Tulane?) as a replacement for Louisville.

William Trost Richards, a Philadelphia landscape painter of some renown during the late 19th century, enjoyed a working situation that few artists today are lucky enough to fall into. A wealthy patron, Philadelphia industrialist and art collector George Whitney, not only subsidized Richards and bought dozens of his oils and watercolors, but he also promoted the work among other collectors. The two were friends who corresponded regularly for about 10 years when Richards was out of the city.

Since the last time Barack Obama had to face a Republican opponent in Pennsylvania, the political battleground of the nation's sixth-largest state has changed a bit. Unemployment is up; jobs are down. The voting-age population may be slightly older, with more baby boomers in or near retirement. And Republicans have slightly narrowed the Democrats' voter-registration advantage. Some of the changes are subtle, and they don't all favor one party or the other. Analysts said it was hard to predict how they could affect the Nov. 6 election.

A report on private-sector jobs in the region finds that Philadelphians are fleeing the city at an alarming rate. Fortunately, they come back every night - for now. The daily out-migration of nearly 191,000 people to jobs in the suburbs and New Jersey outlined in the new Center City District (CCD) review is a stark reminder that there simply aren't nearly enough jobs in the city. Indeed, the decades-long downward trend in the private-sector workforce that provides 84 percent of city jobs shows no sign of leveling off. Another double-digit decline is possible by 2020, the business-funded group notes in its report released Thursday.