by Amy Martin, Eastwood Gardeners coordinator

While the entry garden is dormant, Eastwood Gardeners’ project in February and March will be the raised garden bed at the closed block of Whitehaven next to the apartments, located off Lake Gardens between Sylvania and Easton.

When speeding traffic entering the apartments’ Whitehaven back entrance plagued Lake Gardens, Eastwood Neighborhood Association petitioned the city to block off the street. We added the garden to make it look like. The flanking neighbors added the fence behind it, which was very nice of them. They did an excellent job and made the area much safer.

Over the past couple of decades, the bed has lost much of its soil. Now shady when it once was sunny. The plants are barely surviving.

A few heroic Eastwood Gardeners volunteers — Francis, Keith, and Sharon — started the rebirth process a couple weeks ago while I was home sick. First, they pulled out the dying vitex shrub. What a task!

Next up was to dig up the struggling red yuccas and set them aside, and bag up a whole lot of debris and trash.

Ta da! A lovely clean bed. You can see how low the soil level is.

Francis repaired the special industrial fabric liner that helped keep the soil in place, making it sturdier.

Sharon has come up with a dandy design of drought-tolerant native plants that provide lots of sustenance for birds, like beautyberry, coralberry, and woods oats. Most we can source out of garden supporters’ yards to save money.

But we will need some donations for the dwarf yaupon, beautyberry, and coralberry shrubs. An esteemed metal artist is offering us a sculpture for a pittance to add a vertical interest to replace the vitex. More on that soon.

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