Disappointed with the landscaping at the Palmer Fred Meyer

It’s not every day a new store gets built in Palmer, Alaska. So when Fred Meyer (Kroger) announced they were building one we all had something to look forward to.

Along with a new store came a very nice landscape plan, with a list of trees and shrubs to accent the building and give the customers, people of Palmer, and our seasonal visitors something nice to look at.

Palmer is an agricultural town. We take pride in what we grow and the area has many families that make their livings from farming and working the soils of the earth. I am sure we all would agree we would want the landscape to look as nice as the building. Well as you can plainly see that’s not what is happening at the new Fred Meyer store grounds. The people of Palmer have been ripped off, and no one seems to care.

This story is to simply let the people know what should have been planted at their store and what they actually gave us. This final landscape should have been rejected by the city of Palmer but somehow it passed inspection and was given the okay.

I can’t see how this happened considering the following.

There was to be 225 ornamental trees. There are not, the hill on the backside of the store was to be planted in white fir and Colorado blue spruce 5 to 8 feet tall, and hydro seeded. In fact, there are no blue spruce or white fir on the property. There should be 50 white fir, and 78 blue spruce. We were ripped off. There should be 26 paper birch trees, they should be straight and at the specified size, they are not. What we have is some dead and dying black spruce dug out of a local bog and a few dead home depot shrubs.

The seeding is non-existent and is mostly weeds. It’s hard to call it a lawn but that’s what we should have. Only weeds fill the seed areas.

There should be 36 spring snow crabapples along the front of the store, these are flowering trees that really would have given the place a great look in the spring when they all flower unfortunately there are none. They all died. They were replaced with a row of aspen trees that were dug in the middle of growth. They are mostly all dead. There should have been 35 Canada red chokecherry. That number is not there.

Now for the shrubs.

Total shrub count was to be 1,125, it’s not. There was to be 51 Serviceberry. There are none. There was to be 222 hedge Cotoneaster. There are not. There was to be 143 Jackman potentilla. There are none. In place of them we have a bunch of mostly dead native potentilla dug up in a nearby swamp.

There was to be 355 beautiful double flowering roses. We have some half-dead buried under rocks Home Depot roses and nowhere the number on the plans. They were to be 24 inches tall the ones installed are not even 12 inches tall. There were to be 76 black Currant plants. We got some more small Home Depot material that is mostly dead now. There should have been 43 full bushy Billard Spireae shrubs. There are none.

People of Palmer should be enjoying 39 2-foot tall Miss Canada lilacs. We have none. Even the 44 Boston ivy that were to hang off the large retaining wall are not there, only some rocks weed and dead black spruce.

Ripped off again.

There was to be bark mulch around certain planters. We have none just rocks. That’s one thing there is plenty of, rocks. One could only imagine how nice this store would have looked if all the intended plants were installed and looking good. Instead we all have this ugly eyesore to look at for years to come.

There was to be a two-year inspection by the city of Palmer to replace any dead plants that were put in as replacements last year but there has not and will not be one. But I guess they don’t care and what is there is here to stay. As citizens our job is to complain until they fix this and give us what the architect designed, and what was agreed on by the city and Fred Meyer (Kroger corporation).

It does not end here.

The same landscaper who is partly responsible for this nightmare is setting up to be the company that will landscape our new Glenn Highway after they widen it to four lanes from Springer Loop to the light at Arctic. One can only imagine the horror that awaits us if this guy gets to do our fairground frontage. We can’t let that happen. Speak up people it’s your tax dollars at work.