I’m thinking Cambridge Street may never be finished. Mass Highway, which is soon to be folded into a larger entity called the Massachusetts Department of Transportation—MassDOT, anyone?—still has loose ends to tie up, including street signs at Garden Street, cameras, and a crosswalk condition at Staniford. This state agency is, as usual, blaming contractors and sub-contractors. One would think they could manage these guys, but one would be wrong. The unfinished items have prevented Mass Highway from ‘turning over’ the project to the city of Boston.

But the care of the plants has been turned over, not to Boston, but to the Cambridge Street Community Development Corporation, a consortium of the street’s players such as the civic association, MGH, Charles River Plaza and Suffolk. You get the picture.

I don’t like it when public responsibilities are assumed by private entities, but it looks as if that’s the way of the world these days. And the street is looking pretty good because of it.

One piece of good news is that the irrigation system survived the winter. Another is that so have the plants.

The plants the landscape architects chose for the median—hydrangea, rosa rugosa, day lilies, coneflower, sedum— work well in New England and are a relief from the office park varieties formerly stuck into the city’s green spaces.

The CSCDC, led by one of its members, Matt Bergin of Davis Marcus Management, which runs the plaza, has installed metal guards around tree pits on both sides of the block between Garden and Joy streets, and has planted them with colorful annuals. These little jewels make one want to sit down at the Hill Tavern’s sidewalk restaurant and have lunch.

The CSCDC has hired Waverly Landscape Associates to water and tend the plants and remove trash from the median.

There are still problems. Ben Colburn, the CSCDC’s chair, says they’re working on them, but it’s complicated since the city has responsibility for solving some problems that the $65,000 or so contract with Waverly doesn’t cover.

Some of the trees have died and must be replaced, but as they are replaced tree guards have to be installed at about $600 per tree pit to prevent dogs from fouling the soil and people from trampling the roots. Who will pay?

Some trees need pruning, since transplanting caused their tips to die back. The crab apples need to be sprayed since they suffer from blight, as crab apples do. And the trees near the Charles/MGH station that are leaning toward the east need to be straightened. Some gaps in the planting must be filled and the city needs to replace the plants that reveling Red Sox fans destroyed after the team won the world series in 2007.  Colburn promises these items will be fixed.

The pedestrian signals are still baffling. Why doesn’t a walk light come up when it’s obvious that all pedestrians are going to walk anyway? It’s not a problem for Bostonians, who are used to over-riding pedestrian walk signs by jay-walking, but it’s sad to watch a visitor patiently awaiting a walk sign that might or might not appear while all the locals just cross the street.

There are some items we hope the CSCDC will put on their list. Cleaning up litter needs to be a year-round program since last winter the sight of plastic bags hugging the shrubs was a bit depressing.

We hope this fall the caretakers plant a few thousand daffodil bulbs up and down the median so that it looks festive in April when the perennials are still small.

We also hope the street’s shopkeepers participate in making the street look good—sweeping their sidewalks, installing guards around their tree pits and planting and taking care of them. It’s possible these merchants don’t realize how many potential shoppers living in the West End and on Beacon Hill avoid businesses whose owners don’t care for the streetscape in front of their shops. The tree guards are a one-time expense, but a season’s worth of annuals costs less than $25.

It’s a good investment in return for neighborhood customers.

Our walks up and down Cambridge Street are vastly improved by the street’s reconstruction, and especially by the folks contributing to its maintenance. We should all thank Mass General, Davis Marcus Management, Suffolk University, Mass Eye and Ear, the 250 Cambridge Street Corporation, Talanian Realty and the Holiday Inn for making this happen. And we should ask other owners and businesses on Cambridge Street why they aren’t on this good neighbor list.