Wakefield puts its best green foot forward; An inner-city gardener helps Taylor Park dress for the weather | Local news

SF. ALBANS — The Wakefields spend a lot of time in Taylor Park.

Every year from April to August, Kelly and Keith Wakefield can be spotted in downtown St. Albans planting the green of the city.

The two gardeners were contracted to maintain the city’s spring, summer and fall look from 2020, and people took notice.

Not long ago, Kelly Wakefield introduced herself to the online community of St. Albans via a short Facebook post. 400 comments later, she was overwhelmed by the positive feedback.

“I don’t need any more customers,” she said.

Fall in gardening

Kelly Wakefield didn’t set out to become a gardener, the job kind of found her.

Her first greenhouse gigs began in college, working summers to earn her Lyndon State tuition, but she kept it up after graduation, continuing to work in daycares to keep from having a job. office work.

Wakefield eventually started his own business in 2008 with just a few clients. Green Feet Gardening now has 42 clients, including some of the largest employers in St. Albans, such as Northwestern Medical Center and the City of St. Albans.

For just two people, the work required each growing season can be quite an undertaking. Wakefield said she has to track what she will need via a spreadsheet for each customer in the fall, then custom order it from H&B Greenhouse & Nursery. Wakefield gives the Highgate business a lot of credit for the beauty of the downtown hanging baskets, which are grown to order.

Wakefield said it’s the only way to do it all in Vermont’s short growing window. He doesn’t have days off when the weather warms up. It’s a compromise, she said. While gardeners spend most of their time outside in Vermont’s best weather, they also have to deal with the worst.

“Everything I do depends on the weather,” she said. “It might be too wet to work, although I work in the rain. And all those black flies.”

Kelly and Keith’s work in downtown St. Albans includes the installation of 163 planters and the arrangement of 90 hanging bushes, as well as the care of the many plots that can be seen on the streets of downtown St. Albans.

To keep the work fresh, Wakefield said he’ll try to mix up the arrangements each year. Two years ago, she used mostly white, pink and purple flowers, and this year, she’s going for more purples, reds and oranges.

She is also very careful about how each garden is laid out to ensure it matches what is happening around it. Wakefield said he would try to pair crossings or design themes for each street to repeat patterns while adding enough visual variability to downtown.

In a way, the work refers to some of her previous graphic design experience – choosing colors, arrangements and patterns – to create the best visual effect.

The extra effort doesn’t always go unnoticed. Wakefield said he doesn’t seek the limelight for his gardening work, but he also knows the people who bring the flowers downtown. She said she’s heard great compliments about the flowers from all kinds of people, even those big boys who seem like they’ve never stopped to smell the roses.

“It makes a lot of people happy,” she said.

Taylor Park and downtown

In 2013, Wakefield helped install the 700-foot-long rain garden on the east side of the park with Jeff Young and other master gardeners. It has since been labeled the “Golden Gate” garden because once they finish weeding at one end, they have to go back to the beginning to tackle whatever has grown in between.

The task is one of the most difficult in maintaining Taylor Park. Watering all the plants in the center is another. Wakefield said her husband, Keith, wakes up at 3 a.m. every other day to make sure every plant stays green. It takes about six hours to complete, she said.

The extra effort, however, is worth it in her eyes. Beyond the financial incentives to keep the city contract, Wakefield has a special appreciation for Taylor Park.

He recalled a time when he was having a bad day downtown. She couldn’t say exactly why, but she could remember what happened next, when the sounds of the fountain splashing mixed with the soft chatter of the lunch crowd to shake her out of her sour mood.

In that moment, she said, it’s easy to remember what Taylor Park can mean to the larger community. Every day, he sees people walking their dogs, relaxing and enjoying the public space. The city organizes events there. Live music brings out the community and sometimes kids can be seen playing on the field after school while people relax and dine just across the street.

“Taylor Park is such an integral part of the community. It’s used for so many things,” she said.

Wakefield pointed out some of the park’s unique features. Outside of the aforementioned rain garden, the central promenade had housed a reflecting pool until St. Albans Garden Club and master gardeners have filled the grounds with tulips and other perennials, and just south of the feature, park visitors will discover the oldest garden in St. Albans.

Taylor Park, of course, has its own past. The green space has been used as long as the city of St. Albans and has gone through several iterations and updates over the years as each generation re-imagines the park.

But these days, Wakefield is proud of the public space it has become.

That said, she’s not blind to public safety concerns about the park. She will see people experiencing homelessness regularly during the summer, but in her experience, they tend to want to help with gardening. Several people helped her carry heavy loads around the park for her.

He also picked up a lot of dog poop and cigarette butts. In five years, however, she said she found a needle.

Looking back at the historical record, the discussion of the use of Taylor Park is certainly not new. Even in 1870, residents argued over the central green space of St. Albans. Should it be an open public space where people can enjoy “a kind of perpetual festival of nature,” as one commentator put it? Or should it be a more exclusive formal affair, closer to a European promenade?

Well, Taylor Park was both.

“Attention is drawn to the necessity of a more vigorous enforcement of the law in reference to the care and preservation of the park,” reported the Saint Albans Messenger two decades later in 1892. “The practice of throwing stones into the well and disregarding . regulations regarding walking over and playing on grass have become very common. The park is one of the main ornaments of our village and it was made by spending a large amount of money.”

Another 30 years passed and Taylor Park fell into such disrepair that city officials cut down 50 dead trees in the park and replanted maples and elms.

For Wakefield, it’s just a matter of attention. When the city was considering what to do with Taylor Park during its most recent streetscape update in the early 2010s, she was there to point out that the park needed extra care if it was going to thrive.

As one of the people now tasked, she takes it seriously, sometimes going beyond her contract to ensure that Taylor Park and downtown St. Albans look their best, matching the look of each season, finding new ways to improve their visibility and tree trimming.

She also avoids weed killers and Round-up. In her experience, it’s usually easier to pull a weed early than to stop the whole thing from growing, she said. Anything less and she would be doing a disservice to the common space.

“I do it for everybody,” she said. “There’s all that good stuff going on here.”