Published: April 27, 2007 04:04 pm            

GARDENING: Volunteer gardeners bring color to the region

The word bloom has taken on a whole new meaning in the Niagara region this spring, as volunteer gardeners brighten sidewalks, street corners and local parks with radiant colors.

In North Tonawanda, volunteers have been working in a Sweeney Street greenhouse for weeks to transplant tiny green buds that will eventually beautify Webster and Oliver Streets.

In Niagara Falls bands of volunteers, fresh from a city-wide cleanup, are turning their attention to restoring the city’s once lovely Rose Garden.

And, in Lockport, one group’s request to adopt a park has blossomed into a legion of volunteers who brighten gardens in every corner of the city.

“We have gardens everywhere,” said Charlene Bower, chairman of the Lockport Parks and Flower partnership. “And the prettier the city looks the more people are interested in helping.

The Lockport program was started about ten years ago when Bower’s Zonta organization contacted the city and asked if they could adopt a city park. “Of course they said yes,” she said.

Now, there are about 30 groups participating, giving about 2,450 hours a year--including the Faery family of Lockport, who has adopted a triangular garden near the bocce courts at Outwater Park.

For the Faery’s, the adoption was especially sentimental. “We were married in this park at the Rose Garden,” said Cindy Faery, during a recent gardening session at their Outwater garden. Her husband Butch, and their two daughters, Betty, 14, and Jessica, 9, do the cleaning, digging and planting, but Butch is the one who stops by nearly every day in the summer to water the little garden.

“We feel like we’re really doing something for our community,” said Butch.

“It makes the world look better,” added Jessica.

“Anything that makes the world look better is a good thing,” added her mother, Cindy.

In almost all cases, the cities and towns purchase the plants and tools. The volunteers are responsible to digging, weeding and watering. In North Tonawanda that means troops of volunteers spending spring Saturdays lovingly nurturing and transplanting a multitude of tiny sprouts. Such efforts save the city about 75 percent of what it might cost to purchase fully grown plants.

The North Tonawanda group, called Project Pride was started by Donna Burgio and her husband, Dave Burgio, before Dave ran for and completed a term as North Tonawanda mayor.

The Burgios were transplants from the Town of Tonawanda before they started Project Pride. “We didn’t know anyone,” Donna Burgio said. They made themselves at home by getting involved.

“We have fun doing it,” said Dave Burgio, who has also been working to help enhance the city’s Sweeney Street greenhouse where 10,000 transplanted sprouts now lay in wait. Burgio, formerly in the construction industry, changes shutters on fans, and has built transplant tables for the gardeners. “It beats sitting around watching television,” he added.

Once the seedlings begin to flower they will be transplanted by the Project Pride volunteers. “We fill those hanging baskets and round containers on Oliver and boxes on Webster,” Donna Burgio said, adding that volunteers are also being sought to adopt specific planters on the streets.

“Two years ago we started an adopt a planter program,. You come, you help plant it. In the summer you check on it and water it, and in the fall you pluck it out,” she said.

“I think every community should do it. It gives you a sense of community togetherness.,” she said, noting such efforts take some of the burden off city and town governments trying to do so much with so little. “They can turn their attention to something else.”

Community gardening efforts are generating more attention at every turn.

In Niagara Falls last week about 700 people participated in Beautify Niagara, spreading out all over the city in an network of scrubbing and cleaning that readied the garden areas for the volunteer gardeners.

On the fresh slate of newly cleaned city gardens, the Niagara Beautification Commission members will now dig in, planting flowers and tending gardens where and whenever they can.

Marge Gillies, chairperson of the commission, a master gardener herself, said her group dreams of a greenhouse in the city and a horticultural school in Niagara Falls, which could create and keep gardens. The group is currently working with the horticultural program at Niagara County Community College, where students will be are redesigning the Hyde Park rose garden.

“Many people who celebrate weddings go to the garden when the roses are in bloom. Our goal is to try to do a full season upgrade of the garden, so that wedding pictures would be beautiful throughout the year.”

Overall, Gillies sees progress in the Cataract city. The commission recently took a bus tour to see how issues they had earmarked were being addressed. “Niagara Falls is cleaner than it was five years ago, but it still needs improvement,” Gillies said.

Niagara Falls communities also benefit from volunteer gardeners mobilizing with the city’s revitalization organizations.In the Highland community, near Niagara University, neighbors joined together to reclaim a blighted lot and turned it into an inviting green space, according to Willie Dunn, director of the Highland Community Revitalization Committee. The greenspace became a gathering place and neighbors started planning informal programs. “For a whole summer, they took this space and filled it with jazz and gospel music,” Dunn said. The whole community is engaged in keeping the space looking nice.

“The neighborhood youth will tell people when they come to play football “man keep out of the flower beds, my grandmother planted those,’” he said.

Evidence perhaps that volunteer efforts reap benefits beyond the garden borders.

As the spring makes its way towards summer Project Pride, Lockport Parks and Flowers, the Niagara Beautification Commission and hundreds of volunteers in cities and towns throughout the region will be helping to nurture the beauty of blooms. They will be digging, pulling and planting in gardens all over the region, despite sometimes challenging circumstances.

Rev. Calvin Babcock, former chairman of the Niagara Beautification Commission, once stopped with his grandchildren to weed the raised garden beds near the Whirlpool Bridge, Gillies said.

“They were questioned by police,” said Marge. She laughed. “It happens to us now and then.”

The triumph, it appears, will be worth the challenge when gardens around the region bloom because volunteer gardeners lent a hand.



Contact Michele DeLuca at 693-1000 ext. 157

        

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