Garden Club meeting

Garden Club president, Nancy Tella and I met this morning for almost an hour to discuss the possible expansion of their volunteer services to the town, in response to my queries.

First, she was suggesting changing the plantings at the traffic islands on Hospital Road where it meets Rte. 27, to match the traffic islands at the intersections of Hartford Street and Rte. 108 or Harding Street at Hospital Road, where they is an actual planting bed inside a ring of cobblestones.  The Hospital Road location would need the installation of a water spigot, as the DPW did for the Hartford Street traffic island, and there is a water line that goes past the site.

Second, she was suggesting installing raised planting beds around the four major Medfield town signs on Rte. 109 and Rte. 27., created by rings of granite stones.  Again, the installation would need to be done by the DPW.

Third, she indicated that she would be willing to ask the Garden Club membership if they would be willing to co-coordinate with others the planting of street trees in town.  My inchoate idea is that we first get technical assistance from a local arborist about what street trees to plant, have a resident/DPW committee work through where to plant the trees, them have some interested group and/or groups coordinate the effort, enlist families to sponsor individual street trees by underwriting what I think might be about a $200-300 cost to buy the tree and the watering bag, and use the DPW’s expertise to actually plant the trees.   Nancy mentioned the importance of follow up care and watering to have the trees survive.  I suggested that I would favor the won paying to acquire a vehicle that could water the trees for them, which could also be used to water the 21 sites currently maintained by the Garden Club already.  The town gets such huge benefits from the tremendous volunteer efforts of the Garden Club, that the town should invest in providing the Garden Club members the tools to better serve the town’s interest.  It would be short money for the amount of return we would get.