Mill Street Garden
New Photos of the Mill Street Garden Project
The last month has been filled with a lot of work on the Mill Street Garden. The plateau on this property has been planted and mulched. There has been over 22 tons of dirt brought in to make the garden. Then over 80 shrubs and unique trees have been added to the property. The flowers including cone flowers, daylilies, daisies, bee balm, sedums and more have been added as well. The next phase is landscaping the slope and then the building of the children's garden. Flagstone walkways will be instilled once funding for them can be raised.
Changing Our Community One Garden at a Time: The newly tilled plot on June 27th, 2014 on the top picture and the bottom picture taken on August 2nd, 2014 showing the transformation of the property.
Click on the picture below to scroll through over 40 pictures
of the process of our volunteers building this garden.
About the Mill Street Garden Project
In May of 2014, city leaders and the mayor of Hartford City asked Tori's Butterfly Garden Foundation to partner with them to help revitalize our community one garden at a time. The Build A Better Blackford group has been removing old blighted homes from properties for several years throughout Blackford County. Their federal Neighborhood Stabilization Grant to remove these homes has guidelines for what can be done with the properties when they are done. One of these goals is to make them into public green spaces, parks and/or gardens for the public.
The mayor has asked us to continue building gardens and has commissioned TBGF to build one on the corner of Mill and Washington Streets in Hartford City. This is near the east entrance into Hartford City from the east on State Highway 26. This is a very busy and well traveled corner and is directly across the street from the Senior Citizen's Center.
This property is two city lots which Build a Better Blackford removed an old store and a house from the property a few years ago. TBGF is working with Build a Better Blackford this summer to recycle materials from the houses they are tearing down to use in their garden projects both at Mill and Conger Streets. These properties have also have trees, shrubs and plants that will be relocated to the gardens as well.
Here is the preliminary drawing of the Mill Street Garden. We are looking at having a large children's garden area on the east side of the property and the flower and butterfly garden on the other section.
The new garden the Mill street lots will contain a large butterfly garden with many native Indiana plants as well as other perennial plants. It will also have a large children's garden with activities for kids to play and explore nature. Ground breaking on this property will began in June 2014 on the site. Construction on the garden will take most of the summer and fall to complete.
Volunteers are needed to help with construction and planting of the garden.