THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280086
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT STIFFLER, GARDENING COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 203 lines
Two or three days a week, no matter how hot, you'll see a group of women wearing straw hats weeding, watering and planting at the entrance to the Alanton area of Virginia Beach.
They're members of the Alanton Garden Club, and over the last seven years, they've built an immense flower garden in front of the neighborhood's brick entrance on Woodhouse Road. Now they're creating a wildflower garden behind the entry walls.
As with many good works, one good turn deserves another. Beautification efforts often take root in an area and inspire others to follow suit.
The Alanton project made such a difference that the Alanton-Baycliff Garden Club decided to landscape the entrance to Baycliff, planting it with numerous trees and flowers.
More and more, citizens are realizing that they can make a difference in their neighborhoods, whether it's through crime watch programs, beach cleanups or beautification projects. And with tax money getting tighter and tighter, it often falls to individuals or volunteer groups to take the initiative.
Examples of these efforts can be found all over Hampton Roads and northeastern North Carolina, from Ed Horner, a retired investment banker who planted landscaping around the entrance to the Bayberry Bluffs development in Duck, N.C., to Elaine Gordon who built a modest corner garden in the urban Colonial Place section of Norfolk.
There are too many places to name where individuals, garden clubs and civic groups have made a difference, but here are a few examples of the efforts that can change the way we see the world.
The Alanton beautification effort began in 1988 when members of the garden club and the Alanton Civic League started cleaning up trash along Woodhouse Road at the neighborhood's entrance, said longtime resident Doris Krantz.
Krantz and Marlene Ross soon became prime movers behind the project, pushing it along to the next stage of planting flowers. Planting was the easy part; keeping the flowers alive proved harder.
The women learned the hard way that their flowers wouldn't flourish without regular watering - easier said than done in many public areas. First, they had to pay to have a water meter installed.
``We watered with a hose,'' Ross said. ``But then the city turned the water off because of the water shortage. So then we had to take a 55-gallon drum and fill it, dipping out water to keep the plants alive.''
An irrigation system was installed for free by Ben Hancock, an owner of Gentle Rain Irrigation who lives in Alanton, but a well proved a major expense, Ross said. They held garage sales and campaigned door-to-door to raise money.
``It takes electricity to run a pump and an irrigation system, so we had to bring in electricity, which costs us $25 per month,'' Ross said.
In addition, there were other unexpected expenses: erosion washed away topsoil the women had hauled in, so ground covers had to be planted; to allow more sunshine, several trees needed trimming at a cost of $50 per tree; and a city encroachment permit cost $150. Recently the civic league donated $400 for a rail fence, behind which native dogwood trees will be planted.
Costs are kept to a minimum, because the labor is volunteered. ``We don't hire anything,'' Ross said.
Every few weeks a work party made up of Frances Fentress, Mary Barnes, Dorothy Whitehurst, Jan Mullahy, Inelle Conrad, Jan Wells, Van Jernigan and Gaye Clark weed and groom the plants. Karen Thomas drives a truck to haul mulch and heavy supplies. Rena Coughlin takes a daily walk to pick up trash dropped by thoughtless passersby.
And, although the garden club members are women, Ross said the husbands also deserve credit for helping out.
Krantz said the women have learned a lot, from remembering to apply insect repellents to refining gardening skills.
``We've learned a lot about design and color,'' Krantz noted. ``We found we needed bold, large flowers to make a show from the road, so we've used lots of blue and yellow.''
Today the entrance is ablaze with color from shrubs, perennials and annuals. Tall lavender lythrum forms a background for yellow Zagreb coreopsis. Blue platycodon (balloon flower) fronts that, with Homestead purple verbena bordering the roadway on each side. Bright yellow and orange daylilies are mixed into the beds. Two blue flowers that have performed in outstanding fashion are Sunny Border Blue veronica and Aster Frikarti. Each flowers until mid-November.
White phlox adds contrast, along with cleome and begonias. Azaleas are in the border for spring color and hydrangeas lurk in the shade.
But there's never time for the women to rest on their laurels. Recently city workers tore up part of a flower bed to install a fire hydrant. The women were on those workers like mother birds protecting their nests, and the city crew rebuilt the bed and brought in new mulch and erosion controls.
Not far up the road is an area that has been transformed from eyesore to a feast for the eyes. For at least 30 years, trash piled up in the triangle where Woodhouse Road, Alanton Drive and Duke of Windsor Road meet in Virginia Beach.
Three years ago, Edna Gibbs decided to do something about it. The 79-year-old woman who lives on Duke of Windsor Road planted an array of coreopsis, daylilies, azaleas and hosta in the triangle.
Gibbs hauled bucketfuls of water in her car from her home, but her garden still looked meager the first year.
``Three pine trees in the middle of the bed sapped up all my water and took away a lot of energy from the plants,'' she said. ``Because it is a street intersection, another problem is that this garden could not obstruct visibility.''
Last year Gibbs' garden began to make a show. She added colorful Homestead verbena, phlox, dusty miller, feverfew, daffodils and shrub roses, including The Fairy, and she planted a small dogwood in the center of the plot.
Because there's no water supply, Gibbs added cactus and other plants that can live with less water.
She says neighbor Van Jernigan has helped her some with the garden, and nearby resident Mary Barnes gave her some plants. But most she bought herself. ``I'm always looking for plant bargains,'' she said.
``I've loved gardening all my life,'' she said, ``and I hope this small garden will motivate other people to try it.''
Gibbs, who walks a mile a day for her health, is proof that gardeners of any age can make a difference.
Similarly, on the Outer Banks, Ed Horner got involved with beautifying his neighborhood after he retired and moved to Duck, N.C.
Horner, who was an investment banker in New York and Lynchburg, immediately noticed that the entrance road to Bayberry Bluffs was bare when he moved there in 1972.
Horner, who calls himself an amateur gardener and golfer, drew up a landscape plan, and developer Helen Cook agreed to pay for the improvements.
It's not easy to grow plants on the Outer Banks, where soil is little more than a sand dune, so Horner used those he knew could survive, starting with pineapple guava from Caymen Island. He also uses the hardy eleagnus, pampas grass, photinia and oleander.
Terraces were built at the Bayberry Bluffs entrance to hold soil and prevent erosion, and Marc Creecy, a local contractor, constructed a bulkhead and helps maintain it, Horner noted.
One large section is filled with variegated liriope. Another is home for junipers and a hawthorn tree. Horner collected blackberry lily seed from two lots and now has them in bloom, plus a pink-red honeysuckle.
The county extension agent gave Horner five American holly trees, but cautioned, ``They won't grow here.'' Now they're 25 feet tall and loaded with red berries each fall.
The Outer Banks' warmer winters allow Horner to use some unusual plants such as California peppertree (Scinus molle). He continues to add plants to the landscape, such as daylilies, euonymus, Shore juniper, cosmos, mums, sweet alyssum and Indian hawthorn. Yellow gallardia and red, pink and lavender cosmos attract attention from afar, and bulbs and lilies provide spring color.
Though Horner provides the labor, most of the plants are paid for by his community organization and neighbors.
``I've had lots of support from Helen Cook and Glen Miller, our association president, a retired Proctor and Gamble vice president,'' he said.
Beautifying the Green Meadow Point entrance in the Western Branch area of Chesapeake also proved to be a community effort. The Green Meadow Point Garden Club, with leadership from president Mary Sue Floyd and committee chairwoman Joan Nelson, undertook the beautification project last summer.
The entrance was already flanked by two brick planters, but they tore out all the plants except for the tall nandinas, which provided background height. Then the walls were pressure washed and entrance signs were repainted. Brick planters measuring 10-by-15 feet were installed and planted with Indian Hawthorn. Mums, bulbs and fall pansies were planted last fall, and white vinca was planted this spring for summer color.
``Water is a problem,'' said Barbara Ohmsen, a garden club member involved with the project. ``But the residents who live on each corner have been very helpful and do the watering. Before that we hauled water by hand. The entire neighborhood has also helped. We've asked for contributions, for we had to buy everything, and the neighborhood has pitched in.''
She noted that the project has garnered enthusiasm and new members for the garden club. ``We added eight to 10 last fall, just among people who helped work on our entrance project,'' she said.
In Colonial Place, an old Norfolk neighborhood, the contagious effect of beautifying small plots of public land is spreading.
Elaine Gordon, a resident for more than nine years, said she was inspired four years ago by seeing two ``corner gardens'' in the city, one in Ghent and the other just around the corner from her on Mayflower Avenue. The latter, she learned, was built by Jim Aker, past president of their civic league.
Gordon took charge of the corner at New York and Gosnold Avenues, planting a triangular garden with red and yellow cannas as the centerpiece, surrounded by iris and daylilies.
``Then I fill in low spots each spring with annuals, using low blue ageratum, red salvia and yellow marigolds,'' she said. ``They make a nice combination.'' This year she added silver artemesia for color contrast.
``The rewarding thing about this is that now others have built corner gardens on Gosnold Avenue,'' she noted. ``As you look down the street, you can see at least half a dozen. This makes our entire city a better place to live.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
BETH BERGMAN/Staff
Bernadine Demkowski, Barbara Ohmsen and Mary Sue Floyd help maintain
this garden.
JIM WALKER/Staff
Marlene Ross, Rena Coughlin, Doris Krantz and Mary Barnes at Alanton
entry.
ROBERT STIFFLER
Ed Horner planned and planted an attractive entrance area in Duck,
N.C.
Elaine Gordon works a corner in Norfolk's Colonial place.
Photo
ROBERT STIFFLER
Edna Gibbs hauls water to the garden she created at Woodhouse Road,
Alanton Drive and Duke of Windsor Road in Virginia Beach.
by CNB