From Nailed: Belper Independent News
in the Valley Breeze: July 2019
Blackstone Is Blooming
Five of our Rhode Island Blackstone Valley communities participated in the first Blackstone in Bloom contest hosted by Keep Blackstone Valley Beautiful (KBVB) a program of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council. This friendly competition was an opportunity between our cities and towns to pick a spot, beautify it, enter to win bragging rights and possible cash prizes, while making a new beautified location in their municipality.
Sites were judged by Don Leighton from BETA Engineering, sponsor of the event; Jeff Studley from Lowe’s Home Improvement, supplying sponsor; and Katherine Reed a URI Master Gardner. After very tough consideration, the team announced the Town of Smithfield was awarded first place, Town of Burrillville second place, Town of Cumberland earned third place and the City of Pawtucket and Town of Glocester received honorable mention.
“All the projects were very impressive”, explains Donna Kaehler, from KBVB “which made the judging very difficult”. Each site displayed a well thought out design, engaged a variety of community partnerships, took multiple days to execute, and showed the hard work each that went into each project.
The Town of Smithfield, picked a barren area in front of Anna McCabe School on Pleasant View Avenue, and turned it into a beautiful display of trees, perennials and flowers. Now this garden along the new basketball court, designed proper storm water flow and brings color, interest and wildlife to an area that was once dirt. To complete this plan, Paul Pasquariello drew a planting design, with Parks & Recreation, Public Works, the Rotary Club, Rotary Interactive Group and Smithfield Public Schools all working together to accomplish this project.
The Town of Burrillville, redesigned Bleiweis Park on Sherman Farm Road, and turned this park into a wonderful peaceful area that makes you want to stay awhile. Burrillville Parks and Recreation, Lions Club and the Conservation Commission planted many new shrubs, trees and perennials, improved the beautiful stone marker and park sign, and designed storm water runoff to recreate this area. Bleiweis Park borders a fishing area, and offers picnic tables and a grill for all to enjoy.
The Town of Cumberland picked a town treasure and replanted the entrance at the Cumberland Monastery on Diamond Hill Road. This area had gotten overgrown hiding both the beautiful stone wall and the memorial centerpiece. Reusing some plants from the old police station, planting many new shrubs and perennials and refurbishing the signs, this new garden design now pairs with the feeling of park. This plan was completed with town administration and a council member, the Highway Department and town volunteers.
The City of Pawtucket enhanced their Festival Pier entrance on Tim Healey Way. The sign was over grown with trees and weeds. Their project now turned this into a beautiful nautical themed welcome at popular spot along the Blackstone River. Parks and Recreation and Public Works Dept. worked together chipping the brush, improving the sign, planting sea grasses and perennials, mulching, and seeding the area to make these improvements.
The Town of Glocester tackled a very large garden at their Senior Center on Putman Pike. This garden was overgrown and hidden with old debris, but is now a beautiful multi-flowering location showing many different types of perennials with a well thought out color palette. The Conservation Commission organized this project and did a wonderful job bringing this back to a thriving garden.
“It was fantastic to see how the contest brought out a huge sense of pride from all the communities and, in particular, the volunteers and participates”, Don Leighton noted. KBVB was so pleased to see everyone get involved and excited to hear the towns/cities said they are now looking at even more locations to beautify.
To see slideshows of each project, visit here.