There was a time when the standard for arterial street landscaping in Manteca was what you find today along Union Road between the railroad tracks and Louise Avenue but not nearly as nice.

The Manteca municipal standard was a 6-foot masonry sound wall, then a six-foot wide sidewalk with two by three foot tree wells, curb, and gutter, five lanes of asphalt with a turn lane, and a repeat of the sidewalk and sound wall on the other side.

The trees, due to the size of the tree wells and how they were planted, were either stunted or uplifted surrounding sidewalks to create tripping hazards.

The masonry walls, concrete, and asphalt absorbed heat so well on summer days that long after sundown they’d radiate heat making it miserable on pedestrians  walking past them.

Residents dubbed the corridors constructed in such a manner “Manteca canyons.”

They tended to collect a lot of litter and were anything but attractive.

The city liked them because they were cheap to maintain.

Developers started changing the game with more elaborate and inviting landscaping.

The city resisted at first due to ongoing maintenance costs, but developers answered that by lobbying Manteca to establish landscape maintenance districts where property owners within a subdivision that was built were assessed for annual maintenance costs of common landscape areas.

In 2002, residents near Sierra High were irked that the city planned to require the builders of a new subdivision to develop Fishback Road from Wawona Street to Daniels Street as a Manteca canyon.

They were vocal about what they didn’t want in their neighborhood.

It is what led the city to establish the standards you see today for landscaping arterial streets.

As for “mistakes” the city created along stretches of Union Road, Louise Avenue, and Lathrop Road; they were improved with a redo.

The original trees were acquired not because of quality or whether they had minimal droppings, would fare well, or even add color to the corridors.

They were purchased in the 1970s and 1980s because the city got them at a bargain basement price.

The result underscored the old adage you get what you pay for.

Efforts by Ed Maze, who was running the parks division tree program in the 1990s and early 2000, resulted in an effective redo of the Manteca canyon corridors.

Tree wells were made larger.

Trees were selected based on whether they’d do fairly well in such conditions basically surrounded by concrete.

The replacement trees did not include those with droppings that went beyond leaves.

And the trees were also picked on how attractive the fall foliage would look and if they would provide a decent canopy without doing a number on the sidewalks.

The past 23 years has seen a significant transformation in arterial landscaping as well as the health and vitality of Manteca’s municipal urban forest that now numbers 16,000 plus trees.

Homeless help

dry up park grass

Manteca’s upkeep of the Spreckels Basin BMX park grass drew criticism last year because it looked more yellow than green.

The blame, though, doesn’t belong to the city.

It turns out the homeless trying to charge their smartphones severely damaged the irrigation system controllers.

The situation was compounded when the city took months to try and secure equipment for re-connecting the controllers to PG&E after the standards had changed.

City crews did their best for the better part of a year to manually turn the irrigation system on and off.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com