Garden club completes beautification project
The job of beautifying the Carmichaels Town Square is completed. Garden club members who worked on the project were, kneeling, from left, Terri Jackson Laird and Susan Swala, club vice president; and standing, Ralph Nicholson, Dianne Nicholson, Renee Sahady, Linda Shefcheck and Kay Bair, club president. Not pictured is Suzanne Swinchock.
Carmichaels Town Square is shown as it looked before a beautification project June 1 by the Rices Landing Town and Garden Club.
Town and Garden Club members Susan Swala, left, and Terri Jackson Laird plant flowers in the Carmichaels Town Square as Ralph Nicholson, horticultural chairman of the club, looks on.
CARMICHAELS – Rices Landing Town and Garden Club was looking for a beautification project.
Carmichaels Town Square needed to be beautified.
By the end of the day on June 1, a beautiful merger had taken place.
The day was warm and breezy as garden club members and volunteers descended on a small grassy knoll that Carmichaels locals call the centerpiece of the borough’s Town Square.
The consensus among borough council members and residents was that this area needed “some sprucing up.” And that’s all the garden club members needed to hear.
Terri Jackson Laird, a member of the club and its horticulture committee proposed the project to the club and was instrumental in coordinating and supervising the work.
Carmichaels Borough Council was supportive of the plan, which gave impetus to the project.
Ralph Nicholson, the horticulture chairman of the club and a retired civil engineer, created a schematic plan detailing the overall design and placement of each plant.
“His goal was to divide the area into four quadrangles,” Laird said, which was appropriate since the grassy area was in the middle of a four-way intersection.
“The area is in the middle of the square, which is very similar to those hard-to-negotiate circles in major cities,” Laird said.
But after the plans were all drawn up, it was time to solicit some generous donations for equipment and supplies.
Fred Clark of Clark’s Nursery in Carmichaels donated all the plants, consisting of yellow marigolds, colorful petunias, yellow/gold barberry blue fescue and Stella d’Oro lilies.
Tony Shultz and Son of T.J.’s Lawn Service donated half the cost for sod removal and soil preparation and provided the landscape fabric, mulch and the river rock for the curb edge.
Tim Laird and his son, Tom, placed 16 two-by-two stepping stones to form the four pathways, creating four entrances, one from each direction leading to the flagpole.
As garden club members labored under the hot sign, Laird said traffic moved through the area at a slower pace. “
On-lookers observed the work and gave encouragement as they waived, tooted their horns or gave thumbs-up,” she said.
“This was truly a community project,” Laird said. It could not have come together without the work of the club members and those who volunteered their time, energy and materials.”