I have been to Cedar Point about ten times in my life, and never once did I take time out from the roller coasters to look at its beautiful landscapes. It took a cold, windy and rainy day for me to look around and appreciate the time and effort that is put into the parks' landscaping every year. Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio is one of the most famous amusement parks in the world. I think that it gets its' prestige not only from the great selection of rides, but also from the ambiance that the landscape creates for the visitor. Although the park itself is considered commercial, the landscape is more of a feature for public enjoyment. Without the landscape, the park would not be nearly as appealing to the visitor because it makes the park look much more exciting.
Upon arriving at Cedar Point, we were met by the Superintendent, Mr. Tom Roberts. He is a college graduate with a degree in landscape horticulture. His staff consists of only nine full-time employees and about fifteen seasonal employees. He commented on a problem that he has been having with his part-time staff turnover. In an effort to reconcile the issue, Roberts started looking to a different group of workers. He started hiring housewives and retirees to work a few hours several times a week. This new workforce was very successful. He commented that they were not only dependable, but also did a good job and took great pride in their work.
The landscapes at Cedar Point are used to make the park bright and cheery. Thousands of brilliant colored flowers make the landscape standout to the eye. Besides being beautiful, the landscape designs must also be functional. The park has about 30,000 visitors on an average summer day and a season that lasts for about five months. One way that the design is functional is by routing pedestrian traffic. Flowerbeds are lined-up down the center of roadways in order to keep the general flow of traffic going the same way. Likewise, hedges and fences line the flowerbeds and roadsides to keep people from trampling the flowers to death.
The public also makes another constraint on the landscape: time. With 30,000 visitors each day, it is hard to keep up on maintenance. Hundreds of flowerbeds demand a lot of time for deadheading, weeding, pruning and mowing around them. It is also park policy that any maintenance that requires motorized equipment be finished by nine o'clock in the morning. You may be thinking, "What do they do the rest of the day?" Roberts and his crew are also responsible much of the surrounding land, which is also owned by Cedar Point.
Like every other company this year, the high heat and drought also caused problems for Cedar Point. Many of the landscapes do not have in ground automatic irrigation, since they were constructed a long time ago. This necessitates that water be brought to the most beds by hoses and sprinklers. Keeping the landscape watered is not only time consuming, but also expensive. Although Cedar Point is located on the coast of one of the world's largest fresh water sources, Lake Erie, it gets its water supply from the city of Sandusky. Roberts said that the park owners usually do not complain about the high water bills, but do enforce a very strict budget for the rest of his operations.
After visiting Cedar Point from a Horticulturists' point of view, I decided that is not a job that I would enjoy. It takes hard work and dedication to keep a park that size full of healthy, radiant flowers through good times and bad. It would be a good learning experience to work there for a summer, though. Roberts also mentioned that he would do internships for interested landscape students.