It’s not often that Mayor Kriseman and District 4 Councilwoman Darden Rice get to ride in the back of a 1960’s vintage pickup truck and tour a new neighborhood project. On August 25th this year, that’s exactly what St. Pete residents got a glimpse of if they were cruising through Crescent Heights. They were touring the neighborhood for the official “vine cutting” ribbon ceremony for the Crescent Heights Neighborhood Association’s (CHNA) most recent project.
CHNA decided to pilot a program planting street corner gardens on city land. Though there are hopes of duplicating the program across the city, they knew they had to start somewhere. The project centers around the use of native plants. This means the plants are incredibly low maintenance, they sequester water and carbon, require zero pesticides, and they attract native pollinators to the area.
It’s neighborhood beautification the sustainable rainwater absorption way!
The project began where all new projects do: an awareness building campaign. Former CHNA president, Thomas Paterek, hooked the association up with the Surfrider Foundation after connecting the dots about an ocean-friendly garden program the foundation champions. After learning more about the program, the association decided to work with Surfrider to implement their ocean-friendly native mini street corner gardens.
First, they needed to find a nursery that could meet their needs. They decided on Wilcox Nursery, a local nursery and landscaping company that specializes in all things native to our little region of Florida. It was through Wilcox that the initiative found Arnie Rutkis, an independent contractor who does landscape design for the nursery. He’d worked with several community-style garden projects in the past so he was the perfect candidate for CHNA’s corner gardens.
After finding the right partners, the association was ready to hit the streets. Corner houses were contacted about the project and several events were held to educate the neighborhood about the importance of native, ocean-friendly plants, what they could do for the egregious rain runoff that floods the streets every time a storm comes through, and exactly what the process would be for planting within the neighborhood. Awareness workshops were held at Wilcox, the Imagine Museum and even at Thomas Paterek’s house.
Together, they created micro-oases for beneficial native critters.
Over 150 volunteers came together through the duration of the project to create this garden success story and the age range was impressive. Kids joined forces with neighborhood members in their 80s to plant natives such as the hammock twinflower around a native coontie centerpiece. Amazingly, a CHNA Garden Club emerged from the project. Around 15 neighbors get together to check on the 38 native corner gardens and perform any needed maintenance…not that maintenance is a necessary component of the upkeep. That’s the amazing thing about choosing native plants. Not only do they sequester carbon and water, they also thrive in their native climate. St. Augustine grass may need an intense amount of upkeep here, but these plants thrive in the sandy soils of St. Pete so after a little post-planting TLC, they don’t actually require much maintenance. So why not start a project that supports your local flora and fauna and manages to do a little community building in the process?
Interested in replicating this process in your neighborhood? Reach out to Thomas at [email protected]
Are you a homeowner and looking for a more sustainable alternative to lawn or turf grass for your property? Contact Wilcox Nursery at (727) 219-9549 or get in touch with Arnie Rutkis at (205) 901-8600.
