A Man for All Seasons
In spring when the flower beds and shrubbery of the C.W. Post Campus emerge
as a symphony of color, no one takes greater pride in the view than the
composer of the symphony. Case Joosse (pronounced Yo-say), grounds manager
for the campus, oversees every flower bed, the placement of every new shrub
and tree and the year-round mowing, pruning, planting, and trash pickup
that keeps the campus a visual pleasure in all seasons.
Born in Holland and trained there as a horticulturist, Case enrolled after
college in the Dutch equivalent of the U.S. Peace Corps to serve in Kenya
in East Africa. His job was to teach native farmers, accustomed to growing
tea and coffee as cash crops, also to cultivate chrysanthemums, not for
their blooms but for pyrethrin, an effective bug killer less toxic to human
and animal life then chemical poisons. Case met an American Peace Corps
volunteer, Kathleen Geehern, who was training Kenyans to be nurses. After
their tours of duty ended, they were married and settled in Northampton,
MA, where Case worked on the grounds staff of Smith College.
Recruited by C.W. Post in 1982, Case assumed care of the 305-acre campus
where careful landscaping and maintenance had long held a high priority.
Any campus is much more than a landscaped garden; it is a piece of working
real estate. Under Case's care, beds of bulbs and annuals and flowering
shrubs were planted to present their annual show of color in orderly sequence,
while normal college functions swirled all around the campus.
"Landscaping has cycles of fashion," says Case, "and for
the past five years bulbs have been in." In each of those years Case
ordered some 10,000 bulbs from a supplier in Holland and installed them
around the campus. Old plantings were thinned to provide fresh bulbs for
new beds. "This is quite cost effective," says Case, who notes
that horticulturists are developing new strains of bulbs bred for long lives
and replanting.
A man attentive to detail, Case mentions that the Post campus supports 92
species of trees, some surviving from the primeval open woods that once
covered most of Long Island. He counts 86 species of shrubs and climbers
around the campus and 26 species of bulbs.
With a nod to his hard-working staff, Case says, "We try to make the
campus appealing at all times of year." Mowing goes on all through
the growing season; bulbs go into the ground in fall, and winter is a time
for tree removal and cleanup of storm damage. Spring brings on the crocuses,
daffodils and tulips along with yellow forsythia, azaleas and rhododendrons.
Trash pickup is a never-ending chore, costly but necessary as campus residents
and visitors discard notebook pages, hamburger wrappers and advertising
flyers.
With fences and signs, Case and his staff try to divert walkers from lawns
to sidewalks without discouraging the students from using the lawns for
recreational purposes.
In mediating conflicting demands for green space and for parking, Case is
a predictable advocate for green space. He is pleased with the group effort
that produced a redesign of Riggs Circle, formerly a parking area, into
Riggs Park, with benches, outdoor meeting spaces and even more grass for
the frisbee players.
For more information call the C.W. Post Public
Relations Office at (516) 299-2333 or e-mail cwpostpr@aurora.liunet.edu
April 1997 |
