| Story: | Driving down Vandeventer crossing Tower Grove Avenue, you’d never know that the small bus stop corner at that intersection was only days ago barren except for empty Fritos bags, broken beer bottles, and rocky dirt. With organization from Brooks Goedeker, Community Development Specialist at the Washington University Medical Center, and Angela Slape, Volunteer Coordinator at AmeriCorps St. Louis, volunteers were able to create a small garden oasis out of this long time eyesore in an afternoon.
On November 10th, a team of 24 descended upon the corner armed with trash bags, wheelbarrows, gardening tools, stacks of sod and the determination to beautify this long neglected piece of the Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood. They started by removing the trash that had piled up over the years and raking the soil back to garden condition. Then the back half of the corner was landscaped with hearty plants and trees, while the front half was laid with sod to create a smooth lawn.
If you’ve never laid sod, you might be surprised by how complicated it is. The sod is both heavy and delicate: hard to lift but easy to break. Ferrying it from stack to ground involved a lot of teamwork, a lot of wheelbarrows and a lot of old fashioned gettin’ dirty but the results were gorgeous. Once the process was finished, volunteers gleefully rolled around on the new lawn to test it out, and pronounced it perfect. The neighbors and commuters driving by gave out lots of honks, enthusiastic thumbs up and smiles to show their approval of our long afternoon’s work. That corner of Forest Park SE probably hadn’t seen that kind of love in a long time.
If you are in the St. Louis area and are interested in volunteering or sponsoring a project, please contact Angie Slape at AmeriCorps St. Louis: outreach@americorps-stl.org or 314-772-9002 ext. 277.
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