To the editor:

I would like to commend the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department for supporting and implementing Lawrence’s Pesticide-Free Parks program. While friends and I were volunteering, hand-weeding one of our adopted beds in Buford Watson Park, I heard a rustling under a bush and got down on my knees for a closer look to find a healthy toad staring back at me.

As Journal-World garden writer Jennifer Oldridge wisely pointed out in a recent garden column, spraying of the supposedly “harmless” pesticide Roundup has proven to kill amphibians like this one. No longer sprayed with pesticides, the beds of Watson Park are showing other such signs of environmental health. Knowing that toads are able to thrive in the park has given me more confidence of my own and others’ safety there as well.

Lisa Grossman,

Lawrence