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Board wary of community garden in front of school By KATY SAVAGE ksavage@eagletimes.com 8 hrs ago 0 SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — The school board is hesitating on a decision about whether to allow a community garden in front of Union Street School. The garden would be located in a vacant space where a building was demolished last year. The board requested more information about the proposal at its meeting Monday night before making a decision. “I’m not crazy about the idea,” said board Chairman Ed Caron when asked about the project after the meeting. Caron said he wanted to know the long-term goals of the community garden. Union Street School fifth-grade teacher Vanessa Stern presented the idea at Monday night’s meeting. Flowers, trees and edible food were mentioned as some of the items that would be planted. Stern has been involved with previous garden projects at the school, including an outdoor butterfly garden in the back of the school. She has also worked with students to prepare raised garden beds which she incorporated into the science curriculum. Lori Claffee, who has been working to revitalize the area for five years as a member of the Union/Park Neighborhood Association, hoped the board would approve the garden. “It will be a community builder, it will be a teaching tool and it will be pretty,” she said. advertisement A few organizations, including the Parent Teacher Organization, pooled together and gave a total of about $3,500 to support the garden the first year. The less-than one acre space, owned by the school district, has been vacant for the past year. A former “drug house” building that sat there was demolished last July after Springfield voters approved the purchase of the building in November 2016 as part of a beautification effort. Grass seed was recently planted at the site, said Caron. He said the board had discussed keeping the land open and placing a flagpole there before the idea of the garden was presented. Caron planned to walk through the proposed layout of the garden this week. He had concerns about how it would be funded in future years. Caron asked the teachers to come back to a following school district meeting with more details.
My vote: lawn, nice clean, well kept, lawn. I've seen the 'garden' in front of riverside school. It all may start out with wonderful intentions, but it turns into a pile of weeds. Lawn.
ReplyDelete^ X2. This is not the Bronx and public gardens are not a fit here. As mentioned, they start with the best of intentions by do-gooders and ultimately become an eyesore. Springfield needs to insure that doesn't continue to happen.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the others, these types of plans sound good in theory and never last, I've seen these gardens start out and then they just become abandoned and then who cleans them up and puts them back to where they are now the tax payers. Also sure brings around a lot of people to the school area, who knows who is out there, some for good, maybe some up to no good. I have granddaughter's that go there, I would keep the property to the people who are associated with the school, and hopefully everyone knows who should be in the area.
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