‘Gorgeous Prince George’s’ — officials are beautifying the county one traffic median at a time

Flowers on a median — The most recent beautification effort focuses on medians along county-maintained roads, including the one along Greenvale Parkway at 70th Place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, which has been spruced up with new flowers and shrubbery. (WTOP/John Domen)

These posters highlight the efforts Prince George’s County is taking to beautify its spaces. (WTOP/John Domen)

County leaders will call it “Gorgeous Prince George’s” on many occasions, but county Executive Angela Alsobrooks has also said that one of the things people stop her to complain about the most is litter and unseemly aesthetics of blighted properties. (WTOP/John Domen)

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County leaders often call it “Gorgeous Prince George’s,” but County Executive Angela Alsobrooks has also said that one of the things people stop her to complain about the most is litter and unseemly aesthetics of blighted properties.

But standing in a grassy median in Landover Hills on Monday, Alsobrooks said the millions of dollars spent on beautification around the county were working, and the results are not just seen on paper.

The most recent effort focuses on medians along county-maintained roads, including the one along Greenvale Parkway at 70th Place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, which has been spruced up with new flowers and shrubbery.

Forty-year Woodlawn resident Ina Fells said what’s been done is good, and she thinks more beautification efforts in her community would help.

Fells won’t have long to wait because the county said that in addition to the 10 medians that received a beauty treatment last spring, eight more are scheduled to be beautified this fall.

Once a month, Fells and some other neighbors will lug a cart behind them and fill it up with litter they pick up on their own to keep their neighborhood looking nice. She said that beautified areas makes a difference in cutting down on litter.

Not only is it nice to look at, “it prevents the litter,” Fells said, adding that people don’t just leave trash in the middle of the flower beds there. “I think beautification will help anywhere.”

Medians have a traffic safety function — they divide traffic, said Michael Johnson, Prince George’s County’s director of Public Works and Transportation. But a lot of them are “underutilized from our perspective,” he added.

“Those are sort of utilitarian functions and we feel that they can serve also an aesthetic purpose whereby they can be beautified,” Johnson said. “They can sort of enhance gateways to communities, they can beautify this very beautiful county.”

Johnson said the county is also in the process of going from one street sweeper to six, noting that hundreds of tons of litter were picked up by one machine every year.

“We have invested tens of millions of dollars into programs across government that help beautify our county,” Alsobrooks said. She said the first four years of her administration saw the county collect more than 5,800 tons of litter from county roads. “That’s a problem. But the long-term goal is to show people living in and visiting our community that littering is unacceptable.”

Alsobrooks also touted the efforts put into increasing recycling and composting, noting that about 75,000 households currently have composting containers provided by the county to collect food scraps and yard waste.

“So far, we’ve processed over 61,000 tons of organics,” Alsobrooks said. “This helps us transform our waste into useful, nutrient-rich soil, which we can use to help plants grow across our county,” which she said has become a leader in Maryland when it comes to recycling and waste diversion.

Monday’s gathering also previewed the biannual Growing Green with Pride community cleanup events, which are happening all over the county this Saturday. Thousands of volunteers are expected to participate in litter pickup events throughout the county.

The 10 medians that have already been completed can be found at: