"A Gem Within a Gem"

Members of the Chelmsford GC receive their award.
That's Betty in pink in the center, presenting the award.

Update:  At the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts' Annual Meeting on June 7, 2017, the Chelmsford Garden Club received the National Garden Clubs Inc.'s top award for a civic development projects.  In the view of the judges, the club's project of creating a new park on the site of an old fire station represented the most significant project by a club of any size, anywhere in the country.  Congratulations to the Chelmsford Garden Club!

The Centre School circa 1890.
the fire station in 1953

The first recorded use for the small piece of land in the heart of Chelmford, Massachusetts was as a blacksmith’s shop in the first decade of the 19^th Century.  By 1851, the quarter-acre site housed Chelmsford’s central school.  The school was razed in the 1920s and, in the early 1950s, a fire station rose on the site.

But by 2014, the fire station was outdated and, worse, “glued together” to reinforce significant weakening and cracking of the structure, according to Patrick Maloney, co-chairman of the town’s Permanent Building Committee.  At the Chelmsford Town Meeting in November of that year, Malo

ney’s advice was, “We think it’s best to rip the building down, figure out the use at a future time. Make it another gem within a gem,”

The fire station was demolished in
April 2015

In April 2015, the fire station was torn down, leaving behind a forlorn, rubble-strewn lot. The 7 North Road Committee was established by the town to find the best use for the space.  Options considered were a parking lot, an information center, and the new site for a historic house. 

One community group presented another option: the Chelmsford Garden Club suggested a garden.  The club had done its homework.  While the triangular Town Green was across the street, that park was largely inaccessible because it was hemmed in by busy roads and had little seating or greenery beyond a scattering of trees.  The fire station site, on the other hand, offered the possibility of a more intimate, inviting, and tranquil space.

On September 28, 2015, Chelmsford’s Board of Selectmen unanimously voted in favor of the park idea, and turned over the project to the 79-member club for implementation.

It was about that time that I first heard about the project.  Betty received a phone call from Chelmsford Garden Club member Brenda Lovering, who chaired the committee that was charged with making the park a reality.  A few days later, Betty visited at the site.  She came home and described it as “weeds and rocks, but a terrific location”.  But she also spoke of the group’s determination to marshal the resources to turn that desolate site into a first-rate garden.

The new park was dedicated June 14

Last week - on June 14 - less than nine months after the garden club was handed responsibility for the project, I attended the dedication of the Chelmsford Public Garden.  More than a hundred people were on hand for the event.  The finished (or nearly finished) project is a testament to determination of what a group of “garden club ladies” can accomplish.

First there was the fundraising.  Even the best-endowed garden clubs have finite resources.  Building a park would require a substantial outlay of funds.  Chelmsford’s Town Preservation Committee supplied a portion of the seed money, but the Garden Club canvassed both families and businesses for a more substantial donor base.  The Club’s pitch: you could be a part of something that was beautiful and enduring, and with a positive impact on the community.

The park site highlighted in red.  As
recently as April, this is all there was.

Creating the park meant turning a lunar landscape of rocks and nutrient-free dirt into something hospitable to plants and trees.  Chelmsford’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and an excavation firm hauled away truckloads of compacted debris left over from the fire station, brought in loam, and re-graded the property.  The nearby Google Maps photo shows the site (outlined in red) in April.  The photo shows loam in place, but nothing else done.  That photo is less than two months old.

Before the first trees were planted, the infrastructure needed to be in place.  A fence was built around three sides of the site; and a patio and walkway built from pavers were installed; all done with the Town Preservation Committee providing funding, and local construction firms providing materials at cost.  An irrigation system was installed as was lighting.

Monica Kent

Ultimately, a park’s worth is in its design and its horticulture.  As Monica Kent, another member of the committee said at the dedication, “We were good at choosing eye-catching plants.  We sought expert advice to choose plants that would survive in this location.”

The “landscape design and tree consultant” for the project was Weston Nurseries, which in 2012 had established a satellite garden center in Chelmsford.  When the Mezitt family was approached about the project, they responded enthusiastically and encouraged the Chelmsford staff to be both generous and creative.  Weston’s Jim Connolly and Terry Duffy were the principal liaisons to the project.  Bypassing the standard retinue of park landscaping staples, they proposed a palette of trees and shrubs that would thrive in the site yet offer a bloom calendar that would attract the eye from early April through the last hard frost.

Weston's Terry Duffy (L)
and Jim Connolly, with
an unplanted blueberry

The plant list for the garden is as intelligent as it is a treat for the eye.  A not-too-tall blue spruce (Picea pungens) called 'Fat Albert' welcomes you at the front of the site, and a beautiful 'October Glory' red maple (Acer rubrum) will provide shade for generations of visitors.  A great, underused native, the Oxydendrum, will have showy white racemes of flowers in mid-summer.  There's even a Magnolia 'Elizabeth' to offer beautiful yellow blooms in early spring.  Among shrubs, Weston proposed several natives that should make the park a year-round bird magnet, including an Ilex verticillita 'Red Sprite' with its bright red winter fruit for avians; a Fothergilla 'Blue Shadow' with its vivid, blue-green foliage that turns (and holds well into autumn) to brilliant gold and reds with the change of season; and multiple specimens of highbush blueberries.

Club president
Carolyn Langevin

The dedication was a joyous affair - over-the-top hats were the order of the day -  and was capped not with a ribbon cutting but, rather, the severing of a garland made with greens and flowers.  Afterward, I spoke with Weston's Terry Duffy, who stresses that the park will be a work in progress, and who also credits the landscaping firm of Branches and Blooms for their more than 100 hours of work in planting the greenscape to meet a tight timetable.

“We’re taking a hiatus for the summer,” he said.  “We’ll carefully monitor the traffic the space generates and the patterns it creates, then go back in and add more perennial and ground covers.  This time next year, the space will be fuller and have even more variety.”

At the center of it all:
Committee Chair
Brenda Lovering

Which is to take nothing away from the park as it was on June 14.  What the Chelmsford Garden Club has created is a small wonder: a space that seems destined to be filled with people every day.  To echo those hopeful words of that town official uttered a year and a half ago, it is a gem within a gem.

My congratulations on a job well done.