(On September 10, volunteers spent a few hours at the Lee Boltwood Park surface weeding in preparation for more fall plantings and to keep all of the weeds at bay. Left to right: Vivian McLean, Arlene Rowe, Joanna Frizell, Kim Bonin and Gloria Murdock. All photos: Brian Beattie, SGHS Member)
In 2021, the Stittsville Goulbourn Horticultural Society (SGHS) took on a new community project – the preparation and ongoing maintenance of the newly named Lee Boltwood Park. The park was officially named in June 2022, in honour of a long-standing member of the SGHS, Lee Boltwood. The park will have a pollinator garden in the smaller of two flowers beds and a pathway crossing the berm for children to enjoy as they see the flowers in the beds.
Arlene Rowe has been instrumental in leading the planting and maintenance of the garden. During this past spring, Arlene recruited volunteers and the SGHS put a call out to the community for donations of drought tolerant and native plants. The request was answered with hundreds of plants being donated. Not to mention that Arlene also grew seedlings, a backyard full, to be sown at the park.
Last week from September 7-10, Brian Beattie, a member of the SGHS, retired and a photographer, spent a few hours each day at Lee Boltwood Park capturing the volunteers at work and the beauty of the flowers that are diligently being attended to. Overall, Brian took over 700 photos and reached out to share a few of the best with Stittsville Central. Brian’s photographs captured the hard work of the volunteers and the beauty of the flowers for the public to view at the park.
Brian loves photography and told us, “being the photographer is great because I never get my face in the photos – LOL”. Having said that, there is one character who obviously wanted to be photographed. Brian shared, “I wanted to share the sunflower that I took of it alone – a honey bee travelling at warp speed had entered the photo – I didn’t notice at the time LOL!”. The SGHS members must be pleased to see that their work creating a pollinator garden is successful when viewing this photo.
While at the park on September 10, Brian took a photo with his DJ1 Mini2 Drone, which he loves using, of the volunteers who had come out that morning and were busy maintaining the garden and clearing weeds for more fall planting of bulbs After taking the initial group photo, two more volunteers showed up to also lend their hands – David Plouffe and Darlene Palsson (they are in the photos below).
The SGHS maintain the flowers and plants at several sites around Stittsville. The gardens at Lee Boltwood Park are now their ongoing community project. For years, the members have filled the planters at Village Square Park with a variety of plants and flowers for everyone to appreciate. Cleaning the Capital is an annual event in which SGHS has participated for many years. For numerous years they had maintained the gardens at the ‘Welcome to Stittsville’ sign at Hazeldean Road and Main Street, but the folks at Hazeldean Gardens now ensure they are taken care of.
