BUCKHANNON – The Fred Brooks Garden Club plans to plant two new trees at the Fred Brooks Triangle Park this Arbor Day.
Fred Brooks Garden Club president Beth Post attended the April 5 Buckhannon Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to propose several changes and upgrades to the park and request permission to plant the trees for National Arbor Day. The park is located at 13 Marion Street.
“I’d like you to think about safety railings on the steps,” Post said. “There are steps that are kind of steep – they’re oddly sized – and if you’re not really careful going up the steps, you’re going to fall. It would be nice to have hand railings. I don’t think you’d have to go into the concrete, I think you could go into the beds.”
The club also hopes to put a brick rectangle around the daffodil beds.
“The daffodil beds look random and unattended,” Post said. “We have the bricks, and we’re willing to do the work with supervision, but it would make it look so much neater and flower people care about that.”
The club also wants to rearrange the flower beds closest to Marion Street.
“There’s a long bed on the Marion Street side of the park, and there is a tree in a very odd spot, and there’s another tree near there that also looks weird. It’s a very cluttered area, and gardeners are all about symmetry,” Post said. “I believe both of the trees were dedications, so we would like to reconfigure these beds, make a smaller bed that would include those two trees at either end, and it would look a little bit more symmetrical.”
Post said the garden club traditionally plants at least one tree on National Arbor Day, April 28.
“This year, we hope to plant two trees, a serviceberry and a pink dogwood, but we are trying to be careful because we planted four trees last year, and only one has survived,” Post said. “We planted four trees between May and April. They were in the upper part, closer to Route 20, where we planted a dogwood and three serviceberries, but the dogwood is the only one that’s still kicking.”
Post said the club is still trying to figure out the reason these trees did not survive.
“If I remember right, last summer was either hot or rainy, so we have no idea why those trees didn’t make it,” Post said. “We dug up the soil sample from that upper area, so I’m going to get it in the mail in the next couple of days. I don’t know if you’ve got a soil issue, but we also took a sample from the area where we’re going to plant the new trees and one from up in the area where the three trees didn’t make it.”
Post also said Cub Scout Pack 128 would be performing service hours at the park April 7, when they would spruce up the green space and then have an Easter egg hunt.
The board agreed to forward Post’s request regarding Arbor Day to the Consolidated Public Works Board and also said they would add the additional request regarding upgrades to their list of potential facility upgrades and repairs. The Parks and Rec board is currently accumulating a list of potential repairs and upgrades across all of their parks and recreational areas within city limits.
