Until this year, the gardens on the east side of Phelps Grove Park were neglected and, by the end of summer, were overgrown and unruly. But a partnership between neighborhood residents and the Springfield-Greene County Park Board has changed that.
If you visit Phelps Grove Park now, you’ll notice several beds of brightly-colored flowers, carefully tended and thriving. These beds, to the north of what were once rose gardens – the areas surrounded by shrubs – were not like this last year.
"All the planted areas now, previously, were just weed-eated down a couple of times a year,” said Clifford Barratt, who now works for the Missouri Prairie Foundation but who was a Missouri State University student working for the park board when he became interested in the neglected gardens. On this day, he was at the park with his dog, Banjo, who kept trying to get our attention.
"I took it upon myself to come in over the fall, you know, get a feel for what had been growing here, looking at dead stems and whatever seeds were left,” he said.
He planned to come back in the spring and get to work. In the meantime, he worked with the MSU Horticulture Club and the parks department and reached out to the Phelps Grove Neighborhood Association, to get some help with the project.
Association members, Fran Giglio, Vicky Trippe, Ester Bultas and Connie Ryan, met with Barratt, and everyone was fired up to help.
“We just made up our mind that this was going to happen,” said Giglio who’s lived in the Phelps Grove Neighborhood for many years.
This spring, with a little help from the Horticulture Club, but with the bulk of the work done by Barratt, the neighborhood association members and a frequent park visitor from north Springfield who offered to help, the gardens were transformed.
When they started, Trippe, also a longtime Phelps Grove resident, never imagined they’d be at this point.
“We thought when we started, maybe we could do a garden or two," she said, "and it just kept growing, and so we’ve done three, four, five, six, seven gardens.”
After working as a volunteer at the site, Ryan was hired on a part-time basis by the parks department just to focus on the gardens.
"I said, 'well, I'm already doing that for free as a volunteer,' she said, laughing. " 'And I could get paid part-time as an employee?' What a gift, you know?"
It’s been a labor of love for those who have worked on the gardens, which Trippe said date back to at least the 1940s — a neighbor showed her photos of the flower beds, which date to that time period.
Many of the plants for the gardens came from avid gardeners -- Trippe’s and Giglio’s -- yards.
“All of the echinacea came from Fran," said Trippe. "Fran started some of the zinnias, and Ester had a whole bunch of zinnias that she brought over. I had coreopsis in my home.”
She said they were able to salvage plants as they were digging up the beds – plants that had survived years of neglect – including peonies, asters and lilies.
The group got a $1,000 grant to help purchase some plants, and a neighbor donated $500.
Barratt is focusing on planting natives. He said, for him, native plants are a source of satisfaction that he’s doing something right.
"I like knowing that the plants I put in the ground are...doing so much work that I can't see and that — you know, I don't need to see those root structures to be excited about, you know, how they're benefiting our soil and how they're benefiting the plant."
He said his aim isn’t to create a garden that’s the same every year going forward.
"I want to create a garden that's dynamic and that, you know, as we confront lower precipitation or unequal precipitation, rising temperatures and, you know, unpredictable weather going forward...as we've clearly seen over the past four years," said Barratt, "we can make our spaces beautiful without needing to baby them and without needing to, you know, watch over them constantly to know that they're going to provide the same, like, ecosystem benefits, the same beauty value."
Trippe said they’ve planted spider milkweed, which blooms earlier than other milkweed species, to help monarchs as climate change causes them to migrate before their host plant is up.
“Look at all the butterflies, look at that,” said Ryan while standing near the flower beds.
The pollinators, and other insects, love the gardens.
“There are dragonflies chasing each other,” Giglio pointed out, to which Ryan replied, "that's awesome."
Ryan said she could never have imagined the gardens would be this far along when they first got to work. The project was daunting in the beginning, according to Ryan.
"I mean, to see these beds neglected for, what — 10 or 15 years?" she said, "completely overrun with (common evening) primrose and Canadian goldenrod, I was having a hard time seeing the vision."
But she trusted in that vision and did what her fellow volunteers told her to, and it worked.
Giglio said the best part of the project for her is "to see flowers blooming and to see the joy that it brings to people. We wanted to make this a peaceful place where, we're going to put some benches in where people can come and read if they want to or just sit, because flowers do something to your soul."
Recently, the pathway that runs from the north side of the old rose garden was widened to allow for wheelchair users, and pads were poured to accommodate new benches. Future plans call for installing an arbor where weddings and other events could be held.
Plastic has been laid in the old rose gardens to kill weeds, an irrigation system has been installed, and plans call for adding native bushes and other plants that are beneficial to birds.
Trippe enjoys seeing the fruits of their labor.
“We are already seeing people come by, have their pictures taken, put down a blanket," she said, "you know, do all the enjoying-the-park things that we did when we first moved here and that nobody was doing when the gardens were so ugly.”
Ryan said it's nice when people stop by as they're out working and thank them for what they're doing.
For all of those who have put sweat equity into the gardens, the rewards keep coming.
"The thought that we can not only make the neighborhood more beautiful, but we can help to feed the bees and the butterflies and the birds," said Trippe, "is a really good feeling."
Correction: The spelling of Vicky Trippe's name was changed after the story was published.
