Downtown beautification project seeks volunteers to adopt garden beds

Whether you have a green thumb or are all thumbs around greenery doesn't matter. If you want to help beautify downtown, the parks and recreation department is looking for you. And your thumbs.

Six garden beds throughout the downtown need to be adopted by volunteers who will weed, clean, water and maintain the spots. Another six have already been adopted.

"The beautification of downtown Wrangell is everybody's responsibility in that your community is what you make of it," said Lucy Robinson, director of Parks and Recreation. "This isn't just for visitors, this is for us. When you have a nice downtown district, it encourages patronage and people to come out and explore and be a part of the community."

She said the department is looking for people who would like to get out and get active and possibly socialize with other volunteers. The initial cleaning shouldn't take much, since Parks and Recreation advisory board member Cindy Martin has been going around and doing some light upkeep to the various beds that remain unadopted.

Some folks, like Georgia Selfridge, have adopted two beds. She adopted the planters and areas around the new public restrooms across the street from Angerman's and the bed across the street from Rayme's Bar at the intersection of Front Street and Case Avenue.

"She said she wants the worst beds because she wants the biggest challenge," Robinson said.

The Rayme's location is one of the bigger spots and has needed help, said volunteer Nancy Delpero, who adopted the bed in front of the dentist's office at the corner of McKinnon and Front streets. She is also a Parks and Recreation advisory board member. She said the Rayme's location needs a weed barrier and bark chips laid down, which could be a group effort. "Then it will look fine," she said.

Delpero adopted her spot along with Lori Bauer and they have been keeping it up for a few years. Though no new flowers, shrubs or other plants need to be planted, she and Bauer did replace daisies that were proving to be high-maintenance and requiring extra water yet kept dying.

"I have more of those astilbes (false goat's beard) with the pink plumes," Delpero said. "Lori actually planted some at the Elks (bed). There were daisies planted in there but they got trampled on the Fourth of July. Astilbes will be pretty nice because they have a pop of color."

Other than experimentation with the astilbes, the existing plants will suffice for now, Robinson said, since they have to think ahead. Plants also have to be a certain height so as not to obstruct the view of drivers.

"My focus would be, how are we going to manage this over the next 10 years, what do we want it to look like, and how can we keep it simple?" she explained.

Volunteers do not necessarily need to have their own gardening tools, since the parks and recreation department has loaner tools.

There were only 11 beds to be adopted, but then Delpero, Bauer and Bonnie Demerjian noticed the strip between the Stikine Inn and the post office needed some work. They cleaned up the site and added it to the number of places to be kept up. Robinson said the spot "needed something," and the work the volunteers did made a difference.

"If you go into some of the other communities in Southeast, you'll see how beautifully the grounds are kept," Delpero said. "We're certainly getting more visitors from cruise ships, but we need a certain level of maintenance to look like somebody cares about our town. It really is just to see we have pride in our town."

Those who wish to volunteer can call 907-874-2444 to sign up. Robinson said it's a community effort and comes down to being everybody's responsibility.

"I just like to encourage people to think about that," she said. "Oftentimes, when you're driving (you might say), 'Oh, they should do this, and they should do that.' Who is 'they?' How can we make it more of, 'Hey, I see a problem. How can I help with that?'"