Over several decades, members of the St. Anthony Park Garden Club (SAPGC) have purchased plants and helped provide labor to install and maintain the gardens and window boxes at St. Anthony Park Library. In recent years, the St. Anthony Park Library Association has also contributed funds and volunteers to the gardens and landscaping around the library.
SAPGC raises money for these plant materials and other community projects from its biennial St. Anthony Park Garden Tour, which will occur in July.
Now the club has taken on a bigger challenge on the library grounds. In December, garden club members arranged to have the invasive and aggressive woody plants removed from the hillside adjoining the children’s library addition. This spring members will plant perennial flowers on these slopes for stability and beautification. The club would like this area to become a “community” flower garden. How?
The area is shady and fairly moist. Perennials that thrive in these conditions include astilbes, ligularias, rodgersias and Japanese anemones. Most perennials are best divided in April and early May. The club is asking for the public’s help in creating a diverse planting.
If you have any of the abovementioned perennials in your garden, would you dig up one or more varieties and cut or saw a division to share with the garden? Club members do not need to know the cultivar name of these plants; however, members would like for you to indicate the height that they reach on a tag. These divisions will be installed in May. Look for the event date in the May Bugle.
Your plant divisions will help create a community garden that will bloom throughout the summer. For more information about donating divisions from your garden, contact Mary at magui011@umn.edu or call her at 651-644-7388.
The garden club also welcomes all members of the community to assist with the annual planting of the window boxes and the gardens and regular maintenance during the summer. The gardeners meet once a week for two hours to maintain the plantings.
If you would like to help garden at the library, contact Alice Duggan at comeforteamn@gmail.com.
Mary Maguire Lerman is a member of the St. Anthony Park Garden Club.
