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KIB Greenspace and Gardens for 2007

Broad Ripple Village Median Planting

Irvington Median

St. Vincent de Paul

VA Medical Center Gardens

Windsor Park

Broad Ripple Village Median Planting:   The Broad Ripple Village Business Association, in conjunction with the Arts Center and other existing median adopters along College Avenue, will be beautifying the medians on College Avenue from 64th to 71st Streets. This will include extensive landscaping, art, and signage announcing the gateway into the Broad Ripple Arts District. Broad Ripple based landscape designers will be doing the design, with businesses and neighborhood volunteers doing the installation. The landscaping will add to existing greenspace in Broad Ripple, the canal, the Monon, White River, and Marott Park. It will also beautify a major corridor through Broad Ripple and hopefully help slow traffic on College Avenue.

Irvington Median: The Irvington Garden club has previously improved this median with trees along the length of the median, and a flower bed on the south end. This year we will be working towards completing the master plan for the median designed by the late Craig Hitner, Landscape Architect, by adding some small shrubs and additional flower beds along the length of the median. INDOT is improving the interchange immediately north of this median, so this will become a gateway into the Irvington area for motorists exiting I-70 here.

St. Vincent de Paul: We are helping to landscape the new food pantry run by the S.t Vincent de Paul Society on 30th Street. There are two goals of this project. One is to create a garden where the clients of the food pantry can grow their own fresh vegetables, and feel the fun and pride of growing their own food. This area will be located behind the facility where there is more room to grow the food. The other goal is to create a small out-of-the-way place, a relaxation / meditation park, where clients can get away from the “rat-race” of daily life and enjoy some quiet time in a beautifully landscaped place. Designed by David Gordon of Holeman Landscape, this area will include a round patio with benches, a few trees, and perennials, giving a lush surrounding feeling to the patio area, but within sight of the front door to the facility so even those who don’t take the time to use the area can enjoy its beauty.

VA Medical Center Gardens:  In 2005, KIB and the staff of the hospital built 9 gardens around the grounds of the VA Medical Center for the benefit of the over 3,000 staff, patients, and their families who use the facility every day. Restive landscaped areas were created to give everyone a place to get away from the stress of medical procedures and issues. Each of these garden areas has been adopted by a staff team (and some long-term patients also) who tend to and care for them. In 2006, we added another garden to honor the VA Police Officers who have fallen in the line of duty.

Now, a number of very large overgrown shrubs were recently removed and need to be replaced with low growing plants, so we will be creating a hosta garden around the patio near one of the entrances to the hospital. This will expand and add to the seating area with the fountain we built 2 years ago on the other side of that entrance. We will also be planting 25 trees around the parking lot and grounds to screen the hospital from 10th Street and to soften and shade the parking lot.

Prep work for this project will include removing the brick chip “mulch” and tilling the ground where the new hostas will go. Other prep work will include evaluating the existing gardens, adding new plants to them, spreading more rock mulch, weeding, and maybe laying a paver walkway from the lunch patio to the front door.   Please see some pictures of the Pocket Park which was part of the Greenspace Project.

Windsor Park: The plan to mass plant crocus flowers in the “Windsor Park neighborhood was inspired by the Netherlands, where every year a multitude of crocus flowers announce to all that spring has arrived. Crocus flowers are not only cheerful harbingers of spring, they are also perennial, no maintenance, relatively cheap and pretty; in other words, a beautification investment with high returns.

Crocus flowers bloom in early spring in shades of white, yellow, pink, and purple; they are often striped with contrasting colors and grow 3 to 4 inches tall. These hardy perennials are the perfect flowers for mass planting in “Windsor Park. They multiply annually and require absolutely no maintenance after they have been planted. Since they bloom before the grass starts to grow, they don’t get in the way of lawnmowers. The only requirement is an initial investment of money for the bulbs and the manpower it takes to plant them.

A mass planting of crocus flowers will produce a delightful spring spectacle each year in Windsor Park. The neighborhood will benefit from the beauty. There are many pedestrians in our neighborhood. Especially the school children on their way to and from school will enjoy the flowers. We hope that the residents of Indianapolis will be drawn each spring to come and take a look at the flowers.

Five years from planting, the bulbs will have multiplied and will continue to bloom every spring. We hope that springtime will be crocus time in Windsor Park, and that springtime will be the time for all of Indianapolis to come and enjoy the flowers. We hope that the local news stations will be compelled to cover our crocus flower springtime; we hope that the cyclists on the Monon Trail will be drawn to enjoy the crocus flowers, and that all Indy will be abuzz about the flowers blooming in our tiny neighborhood. We hope that not only our neighbors, but all the residents of Indy will enjoy a springtime stroll throughout the neighborhood.

For more greenspace and garden success, click now....

For more information, contact Phil Schaefer, pschaefer@kibi.org,
Vice President of Programs, (317) 264-7555ext. 109.

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