On October 22, Keep Pickens Beautiful joined 19 other local non-profit organizations for Serve Pickens’ inaugural Day of Service. More than 200 volunteers helped these organizations with a wide range of tasks. KPB’s volunteers worked in our Memorial Garden in Lee Newton Park.
KPB’s Memorial Garden in Lee Newton Park
The Memorial Garden has been in Lee Newton Park for more than 20 years. Historically, community members could make a donation in memorium or in honor of a friend or relative; KPB would plant a shrub and place a marble marker in the garden. However, in that 20 years, the shrubs either grew large or didn’t make it, the park flooded multiple times so the markers started to get buried, and the markers had been repeatedly hit by mowers.
The Memorial Garden’s Historical Improvements
In 2015, we redesigned the Memorial Garden. We created a seating space, added paths from the Chamber of Commerce building to the seating area, and we relocated all the marble markers to a central, protected area. Since then, the space has become a popular area for residents to eat lunch, or to simply sit in the shade while enjoying the creek and wildlife.
Since 2015, the park has experienced several severe floods. The paths were in need of repair, much of the slate chips used in the path had floated away, and a general refresh was needed.
In April of this year, KPB completely reconstructed the paths from the Chamber building. However, we didn’t clean up the paths in the seating area and we created a new, very large garden space that hadn’t been planted yet. This was the ideal project for Serve Pickens’ Day of Service!
October 22 was the perfect, crisp Fall day for working in the garden. More than a dozen volunteers joined us to improve the paths and to plant starts in the new garden space. We also continued to improve areas around the paths that have continued to cause issues with drainage from heavy rains. The team was amazing! So much was accomplished in a very short amount of time!
The Seating Area
The priority for the day was to address the paths in the seating area. The team cleaned out the paths, spread garden soil and mulch, and planted creeping thyme along the paths’ edges. The plan is to fill the space with heaver stone pavers to better withstand future flooding. The creeping thyme will fill in the spaces between the pavers to suppress weeds and grass while providing a soft, beautiful, pollinator-friendly, aromatic ground cover. Mulch was spread to help hold the soil in place and to protect the creeping thyme. The pavers will be added soon. In the meantime, the paths have been greatly improved with plants and mulch!
The New Edible Jasper Garden Space
The second priority was to start a new Edible Jasper garden in the new garden space. Weeds and other invasive plants had started growing during the summer so our Team removed the unwanted plants. The soil in the garden was the dirt we removed when rebuilding the paths in April, so it was not very nutrient-rich. Additionally, it was mostly clay and contained lots of gravel from the paths. While this is fine for the base of the garden bed, we wanted better soil for the new plants we were adding.
To improve the soil in the garden bed, we taught our volunteers about ‘lasagna-style’ gardening. Since it was the start of Fall, there were already leaves on the ground. We raked lots onto the garden bed; the goal was to have 4-6 inches of leaves covering the bed. Then we added garden soil on top of the leaves. This will help hold them in place, will help speed up the decomposition time, and will give us some soil for the new plants.
Once the new soil was in place, we added new plants. These included white and yellow yarrow, creeping thyme, echinacea, dill, hyssop, rosemary, and sage. We mulched the bed to help hold in moisture for the new plants and to protect them for the winter. We’ll add lots more in the Spring!
The Drainage Challenges
The final project for the day was to continue to address the ongoing drainage issue in that area of the park. The back side of the path had historically been a low spot that would stay swampy after large rains. When we reconstructed the paths, we added a lot of dirt to that area to adjust the grade and help direct the water towards the creek. Since April, that soil had settled and had also gotten rutted from the lawnmowers driving through when it was muddy. We smoothed out the ruts, improved the drainage channel, and made other modifications to help direct the water. We will keep checking the area after large storms to make sure the water is draining properly.
An Amazing Team of Volunteers!
The inaugural Serve Pickens Day of Service was a huge success for Keep Pickens Beautiful. We met lots of new volunteers (who will hopefully continue helping with future Edible Jasper projects), and most importantly, the Memorial Garden got some needed attention. The next steps will be to add pavers to the paths in the seating area and to add more plants in the Spring. Come play in the dirt with us!
