Muncie City Hall Going ''Dry''

The Muncie-Delaware County Department of Stormwater Management is leading by example by replacing this city hall landscaping with a Xeriscape of mostly native flora.

Hmm . . . , Muncie, Ind.? Why is that familiar? Ah yes, home to Ball State University. The Ball brothers and their eponymous glass factory moved to Muncie in 1888. In 1917, the Balls ''bailed out'' from foreclosure what was then called the Indiana Normal Institute. Not exactly world shattering news, like say the Russian Revolution of the same year. Still, it's refreshing that the ''bailer'' was a company and not the Fed. Students naturally referred to the school as Ball State, although it didn't become official until 1922. And the glass factory? It moved west to Colorado.

We imagine the last time Muncie, Ind. was dry, at least officially, was at the end of Prohibition in 1933.

The new ''dry'' here is Xeriscape, a term derived from the Greek xeros and coined by the Front Range Xeriscape Task Force of Denver back in 1978. Xeriscaping is, of course, the use of drought-resistant plantings of succulents, ornamental grasses, shrubs (e.g., bayberry, Washington hawthorne, Calif. lilac, spirea, etc.), and trees like acacia, carob and juniper.

The landscaping at Muncie City Hall is going dry thanks to $30,000 from the Muncie-Delaware County Department of Stormwater Management, a body created to reduce runoff into the White River. The funds in fact derive from stormwater service charges on county homes and properties.

The Xeriscape will not only almost completely reduce the need for irrigating turf and ornamentals, but also the need to fertilize and apply pesticides, just the kind of pollutants that get into the runoff and flow into the river.

The less thirsty plants poised for installation at city hall will include maple and redbud trees, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, daylilies, little bluestem and prairie dropseed. Healthy trees will not be removed from the grounds.