Unavoidably, some of the substances drift into the flower gardens. Rowe uses natural sprays such as garlic, soybeans and molasses whereever possible. She mixes up a gallon of commercial, all-natural crushed garlic, stirs it into 100 gallons of water and sprays the Italian cypress, azaleas and other plants. The cypress on the Academic Quad require about 200 gallons of the garlic spray, which leads one to believe the plant must have a genetic love for the pungent bulb. Sometimes the smell is so strong near the playing fields that athletes complain that the air smells like pizza.
Groundskeepers also use soybean oil to kill scale and other insects.
The oily-biodegradable spray simply smothers the bugs. Campus gardeners also use a molasses spray, which offers some benefits to plants and may harm insect pests. While the wildflowers may not get a boost from tasteful sprays, they do get some personal attention. Rowe, dressed in her drab brown groundskeepers uniform, kneels in a patch of red corn poppies, purple bachelor buttons, bluebonnets and red snap dragons. She fingers a small plant with fuzzy green leaves.