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WPBF’s Ruby Anniversary Gift to the City
The Maple Ave/Post Road Median Garden
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2005 was the 40th year of the White Plains Beautification Foundation, an occasion traditionally acknowledged as the Ruby Anniversary. In honor of this momentous occasion, WPBF has given a special gift to the City of White Plains: a lovely new gateway garden in the median island at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Post Road. Gateway gardens are those planted by WPBF at major entrances to the city. This new garden is near Soundview Avenue and Post Road School. Traffic studies indicate that approximately 10,000 vehicles pass by the site daily entering White Plains. |
The cost of installing the garden was $10,000, including site plan, bed and soil preparation, soil amendments, plants, mulch, and labor. Approval for the garden was granted unanimously by the Board of the White Plains Beautification Foundation at their September meeting, and the garden was then planted by Nabel’s Nurseries.
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The Maple Avenue/Post Road median garden is 143 feet long, expanding to 12 feet wide at the middle, and narrowing at each end. The perennial plantings in the garden include pink “Carefree” roses, Montauk daisies, Miscanthus (tall grasses), yellow daylilies, mixed Echinacea (Coneflower), and blue Nepeta (Catmint). These were planted in groups between an existing Cotinus Coggyria (Purple Smokebush), Cotoneaster, and two lovely Acer Griseum (Paperbark Maple). Around the perimeter and at each end of the bed, annuals will be planted for seasonal color. |
The garden displays a blue and white “Welcome To White Plains” sign and holds a large artificial rock, which houses the water supply to which a drip watering system will be attached by the City.
This lovely new garden now joins the other eight gateway gardens planted by WPBF at the
entrances to our city.
City In the Park
White Plains is well known as “A City in the Park” and our president, Dorothy Schere, would also like it to become
“A City in a Garden.” In order for that to happen we want to encourage more homeowners and businesses to create
colorful front yard gardens.
One beautiful day last September you may have spotted Dorothy and her Front Yard Garden Committee tooling around town, squeezed into a little red convertible with a back-seat designed perhaps for garden gnomes but not for grownups. However, we were delighted by what we found-dozens of gardens worthy of recognition in just two neighborhoods. |
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During the summer, many others were noted. We followed up by sending letters to over 100 homes this fall thanking them for adding to the City’s beauty. There are obviously more lovely gardens visible to the public that we missed. Come next spring and summer, we’ll be cruising around again, so start planning....Maybe we really can become “A City in the Garden."
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White Plains in Bloom!
by Jeanne Wilcox
VP, Gardens & Landscape
White Plains Beautification Foundation
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Again last year, I had the pleasure
of overseeing the 50-plus gardens
and parklets that are planted and
maintained throughout the city by
the White Plains Beautification
Foundation. By all accounts, the
gardens were lush and lovely
throughout the season, greeting our
tens of thousands of residents and
visitors alike with striking foliage
and cheerful color. We did not suf-
fer from persistent drought or sear-
ing heatwaves as in 2005, so our
gardens thrived and flowered con-
tinuously throughout the season.
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WPBF celebrated its 41st year in 2006, and both the foundation and the gardens have grown bigger and better
over the years.
Whenever I
mention to any-
one anywhere in
the area that I
am part of the
White Plains
Beautification
Foundation, words of praise and
admiration soon follow. Those of us
who live in White Plains can be
proud that our fast-growing city has
also become more beautiful and
floriferous year after year. WPBF's
newest gateway garden, planted in
2005 on Maple Avenue at Post
Road near the Post Road School,
bloomed early and continued on
through the season, greeting
passers-by with waves of welcom-
ing color. Our newest memorial
garden, in honor of Patricia
Terhune who oversaw the gardens
for WPBF for many years before
she died in March 2005, was plant-
ed in the spring at historic Purdy
House with azaleas, rhododendrons
and roses sporting the red and
deep-pink flower colors that
Patricia favored.
Last year, WPBF invested in two
large, shapely pots to flank the
doors of City Hall, and we planted
them with colorful tropical hibiscus
and annuals - a cheerful addition
and much appreciated by those who
work and do business downtown.
We renovated the Squires Parklet
garden at the Presbyterian Church
on North
Broadway and
Barker Avenue,
removing over-
grown shrubs
and replacing
them with two
Kousa dogwood
trees surround-
ed by flower
beds, and we
added colorful
annuals in the
fixed containers. We also renovated
and replanted the Divney Garden
on Heatherbloom and Hathaway,
replacing overgrown shrubs with
fairy roses, azaleas and more. Then
we braced for winter and trusted
that the gardens would hold their
own against the forces of nature
and produce another magnificent
show this coming season. I’m sure
we won’t be disappointed! |
Giant Trowel Lands on Rte. 119. & Hamilton Avenue
by Bill Cary
The Journal News
(Copyright 2006 The Journal News, reprinted with permission)
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Looking like something idly dropped by the Jolly
Green Giant in the middle of a row of peas, a huge garden
trowel landed yesterday in the middle of a busy intersection in White Plains.
It's the first of several garden-related sculptures by
Peter Wilcox that the White Plains Beautification
Foundation is planning for key gateways to the city. The foundation has planted more than 50 gardens across the city, and Wilcox's whimsical 7-foot trowel now stands guard over one of the group's median garden at Route 119 and Hamilton Avenue.
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The project has been approved by New York state,
which owns the parcel on Route 119, and won the enthusiastic endorsement of White Plains Mayor Joe Delfino and
Public Works Commissioner Bud Nicoletti, both of whom
attended yesterday's unveiling.
"Art is going to be a very important part of our city,''
Delfino said, "and to have someone local who has produced a very, very unique piece is just wonderful. How
can you not like a trowel?''
By day, Wilcox works as the director of real estate for
Juster Development Co. in Tarrytown, which develops
shopping centers up and down the East Coast.
"I do these sculptures in my quote spare time," he
says. "Altogether, it takes about six months to complete
one of these."
The trowel marks the debut of his "Giants of the
Earth" series of oversized garden tools. He's got a three
pronged cultivator in the works and plans for a hand saw
in his head.
The trowel, which Wilcox has donated to the city, is
made of an epoxy coated fiberglass skin that has been set
over a metal piping frame and anchored on a poured concrete foundation.
After much experimentation, he got the wood grain
finish he wanted for the handle by first applying a thick
dark polyester undercoat and then topping that off with tan
paint. For the metal part of the handle, he used automotive
spray paint and covered it with a protective clear coat and
a final epoxy topcoat.
Wilcox did most of the work on the trowel in the
Contemporary Sculpture Workshop that's part of the
Westchester Arts Workshop in the County Center on Route
119 in White Plains.
And yes, it borrows a bit from the better known oversized trowels created by Claes Oldenburg in the 1970s.
Oldenburg's Trowel I sits in the sculpture park of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, and
Trowel II is one of the favorites in the Donald M. Kendall
Sculpture Garden at PepsiCo's headquarters in Purchase.
"His work really inspired me," Wilcox says. "But
what really got me going was my wife and her love of
gardening." |
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