To my eyes Greenfield becomes more beautiful every year. Many homes have less grass and more flower gardens that bring smiles to passers-by. There are flowering trees everywhere in the spring. Baystate Franklin Hospital, Greenfield Savings Bank and others have beautiful public plantings.
One new public garden is specifically designed to support pollinators, the birds and the bees. This Meadow Garden was planted and is being maintained by volunteers in front of the John Zon Community Center on Pleasant Street. Whether you walk on the Pleasant Street sidewalk, or want to stroll on a path through the middle of the garden, you are surrounded by blooming plants in every season. Nancee Bershoff spearheaded this project and Wisty Rorabacher made plant identification tags for the plants.
The Energy Park
Many people walk through the Energy Park at the end of Miles Street. In 1997 an unused space began its transformation into a welcoming park with trees and native plants as well as a train caboose, a wooden train for young children, stone benches for everyone and a solar array to encourage our thinking about energy production.
Nancy Hazard is one of the people who organized a group to volunteer in refreshing and maintaining the Park plantings. Last year two tulip trees and a disease resistant elm were installed along with new plantings of native plants. It is native plants that satisfy the birds and bees in our area.
River Works Park
Recently I visited the River Works Park on Deerfield Street with Susan Worgaftik, a volunteer. Worgaftik helped make this attractive and comfortable park that could be enjoyed by the local community. In 2012 Mayor Martin stated his plan for that space and worked with Worgaftik and a dozen other volunteers.
Because this park is built on a site previously used by a gas station, the ground was contaminated and could not be used as a playground.
Worgaftik pointed to Brookie, the steel sculpture a stunning element of the garden. “Every year the Wormtown Festival makes a donation to the town and that year, it was given to the park. That donation funded a sculpture which the mayor wanted. About 10 designs were presented but John Sendelbach’s brook trout, Brookie, was chosen. Then the call went out for stainless steel cutlery to help make the sculpture.
“Brookie moves with the wind and sometimes confuses people because the movement is so gentle. Local cultural councils paid for the lighting which is connected to town street lights right next to the park. Brookie is a beauty, day and night.”
Worgaftik and I sat on memorial benches and enjoyed the shade of the afternoon. She explained that plants, including trees are all donated. The town keeps the lawn mowed, but volunteers clean and organize in the spring and in the fall. “It doesn’t take a lot of labor to make the park a pleasurable place,” she said.
Greenfield Tree Committee
Mary Chicoine has always loved trees, no matter where her professional life took her. That love took her to the Conway School of Landscape Design, where she earned her Masters Degree in 2010. With a nudge from Nancy Hazard it also took her to volunteering with the Greenfield Tree Committee.
She was able to use her Conway School tools to benefit the town when she worked for the FRCOG. She was able to get a challenge grant from the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). With that grant she did a town tree inventory. It showed that the town needed more trees.
Chicoine is now retired and is working with a U.S. Forest Service grant that is paying for the planting of 800 trees over three years. Gala neighborhood celebrations accompanied the tree plantings on Haywood, Washington, and Birch Streets, as well as Oak Courts. “We’ll be training tree stewards, too,’ she said.
Chicoine happily added that gas lines will no longer be put on the tree belt which is public property. Trees belong on the tree belt and gas lines belong under the road.
The DPW has also been busy. Chicoine said Mike Duclos and Paul Raskevitz have planted 200 trees this year.
Fiske Avenue Garden
Parks and trees have an important influence on a town’s personality, but small gardens are also important. A small group of volunteers are renovating the weedy slope along Fiske Avenue. Paul Labreque, a co-owner of the Root Cellar music-lounge bar under Mesa Verde, expressed his pleasure as weeds came out and plants went in. “I was so pleased to see these people working on the bank. It definitely brightens up that whole area. They were using beautiful plants, not just ordinary things. It’s pretty beautiful,” he said.
Volunteers are creating many beautifying projects. Main Street has shade trees. The parking lot behind Wilson’s has rain gardens with pollinator plants. Four Corners School has a curriculum that includes learning about plants and our environment.
The question is what can businesses do to make our town more beautiful? What can town committees do? What can organizations do? What can you do?
Between the Rows August 24, 2019