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Press Release Punta Gorda Garden Club teams with Home Depot and Powell Nursery to landscape Blanchard House Museum .In anticipation of a dedication at the Blanchard House Museum, 406 Martin Luther King Boulevard, members of the Punta Gorda Garden Club joined forces with Team Depot, a community outreach group from the Punta Gorda Home Depot store, to prepare and plant the new Military Garden, which was dedicated on March 4 at 10 a.m. The group also redesigned the existing landscape around the house museum using new plants, relocating existing ones and adding cement edging. The result has created another oasis of beauty not far from downtown Punta Gorda.It all began a few months ago when John Murphy, president of the Bernice A. Russell Community Development Corporation, contacted Garden Club President Carolyn Honour to ask if members would take on the project of designing and planting the new garden, and the club agreed to undertake the task. Member Kathy Zimber developed the garden plan that features a bronze bust of Lt. Charles P. Bailey, a Tuskegee Airman who was one of the seven Punta Gorda brothers who all fought in World War II or the Korean War. The Garden Club provided plants, cement edging and a watering system along with their creativity and hard labor. As part of the Punta Gorda Garden Club’s Youth Projects program, a mural is being painted on a wall along one side of the Military Garden. Member Jill Kennedy created and will coordinate the artwork which will be completed with the assistance of neighborhood children. The Punta Gorda Garden Club enlisted the assistance of the community by obtaining all trees, plants, and landscaping materials locally . From Powell’s Nursery, the club purchased a crepe myrtle tree and natal plum, dwarf allamanda, brunfelisa, gardenia, and ixora plants. Powell’s donated other plants including a Jatropha tree, a Dwarf Royal Poinciana tree, and a fire bush plus zanadu, croton, and ixora plants.The Home Depot store not only donated mulch, topsoil, and plants (Indian Hawthorne, bush allamanda and podacorpus) for planting around the bust of Lt. Charles P. Bailey, but nine employees including Human Resources Manager Carol Behling, provided hands-on assistance in the enhancement project. Team Depot members brought along specialized tools including augers that made the job proceed more easily. Butwell Stone donated 4 yards of much needed topsoil for the project. This endeavor is part of the outreach efforts the garden club enjoys doing throughout the community and is an example of how the club will continue to "Celebrate Gardening" which is the theme of President Carolyn Honour’s administration. The PGGC, a member of the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc. and the National Garden Clubs, Inc. Deep South Region, uses the proceeds from their annual Holly Days Home Tour for community projects and to maintain their public gardens at the Punta Gorda Woman’s Club, Punta Gorda History Park, and Punta Gorda Library as well as for scholarships for graduating seniors at the local high schools. They also fund camperships for students in grades 3 - 8 to attend the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs’ summer camp and donate funds to several environmental and ecological groups in the area. To learn more about the PGGC, go to their website at www.pggc.org
Photos See YOUTH to see their contribution to the Garden
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