HARLINGEN — The spasms of cold fronts which rolled through the Valley this winter were unusually hard on plants, with officials estimating 15 to 20 percent of those located in the city’s parklands suffering damage or outright frost kill.
A Valley-wide freeze occurred this year on Jan. 16-17, which was the first time that happened since last January. Another freeze hit earlier, on Jan. 3, although not all areas experienced it.
Since then, it seems practically every week has brought another cold front of varying intensity.
“Typically we don’t see damage to plants like that through the winter,” Jeff Lyssy, Parks and Recreation Department supervisor, said yesterday. “They’ll often go dormant, but never die.”
Lyssy addressed the board of Keep Harlingen Beautiful yesterday and recapped some of the areas which received the most frost damage.
The new plantings along the canals on Cleveland Street were especially hard-hit, he said.
“The new plantings on the canal banks, the jatrophas, they’re gone,” Lyssy told the board. “They all froze and they’re dead so they need to be replanted.”
“Out on Loop 499, I cut a bunch of plants out there and they’re still green, which means they’re still alive, although they appear to be shocked,” he added.
Even City Hall wasn’t immune to the waves of cold, and Lyssy said a city crew was working there yesterday digging out the dead plants and mulch and preparing the front entrance for new plantings.
“The flowers in front of City Hall were all damaged and we’ve since dug them out along with some mulch,” Lyssy said. “I purchased 64 society garlics which are really pretty and smelly plants, they smell of garlic fragrance. And I picked up about 34 African irises that are going to lead along the sidewalk into City Hall.”
Society garlic, also known as pink agapanthus, is a species of flowering plant in the onion family native to South Africa which is especially resistant to extreme heat. The plants also are hardy against frost, and will survive down to about the 20-degree mark.
Lyssy requested $2,000 from Harlingen Proud to be used to replant the jatrophas along the canal faces on Cleveland Avenue.
“We’re moving forward and we’re already removing a lot of the dead items in our parks and along our canal faces,” Lyssy told the board, “and now I feel comfortable, with it 86 today, that we’re going to move along and start planting those areas again and mulching them in.”
Gustavo Tijerina-Sandoval is one of two men accused of the August 2014 shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Javier Vega in Willacy County.
Vega was gunned down while fishing for gar with his wife, children and parents near Santa Monica.
In 2016, 197th state District Judge Migdalia Lopez, who hears criminal cases from Willacy County, moved the cases against the men to Cameron County because of extensive media coverage.
