Community Planting Project a Success

Volunteers from the October 12 planting session.

Last month, the Campus District organized volunteers from the community, CSU, Tri-C and the Trinity Cathedral Urban Service Corps to create two test plot perennial beds in the East 30th Street median strip. Twenty-five volunteers weeded, removed bricks and sand, laid topsoil, and planted beautiful perennials in two 5’ x 10’ planting beds.

The flowers planted were voted on by residents of the Cedar-Central neighborhood at a recent East 35th Street block party. The perennials planted on October 11 and 12 have taken root, and hopefully will come back even stronger next spring. Ron Hartmiller of the Garden Club of Greater Cleveland led the volunteers, and Brittany Barski, horticultural specialist with CMHA, designed the planting plan.

The project is a do-it-yourself approach to re-claiming East 30th and, in the long term, aims to create what the Campus District’s Executive Director Bobbi Reichtell envisions as an experience paralleling Euclid Avenue. If the two plots that were planted this fall take well to the conditions, she hopes to continue the work with more extensive planting sessions next spring and fall. The Campus District will hire two neighborhood youths to tend the flowers with funding through Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland of Ward 5.

Please support the generous donors who made this project possible:  Kurtz Brothers, Gale’s Westlake, Home Depot on Berea Road, and Petiti’s Garden Center.

A special thank you to all of our volunteers: Idrissa Aidara, Steve Ashby, Kim Bui, Melany Castro, Alisha Conway, Donna Dieball, Heather Doerschuk, Makayla Dozler, Keila Eddy, Joe Gabra, Ron Hartmiller, Aliyah Henderson, Armond Hill, Larry Kell, Jason Knauer, Jenna Madison, Anna Meyer, Donetta Monk, Christopher Monroe, Robert Pindell, Bobbi Reichtell, Veronica Robinson, Olivia Smosarski, Tasiana Stigall, and LaQueta Worley.