Seeing a need to beautify Irwin Park, the New Canaan Park and Recreation Commission unanimously supported a plan presented by the Irwin Park Committee of the New Canaan Garden Club to update and improve the 36-acre park’s visual aesthetics at the main entrance on Weed Street.
The Irwin Park plan.
The plan, presented by committee chair Katie Stewart, calls for the removal of several unsightly, overgrown and dying trees on either side of the driveway, just past the entrance. This includes three pines on the left side of the driveway and a juniper, two oaks, a maple and several hemlocks on the right. In their place will be a 12-foot Copper beech as well as Stewartias and Kousa dogwoods that Stewart told the commission will complement the visual presentation of the park.
“It will form a nice, gracious canopy in that area,” Stewart said. “We all agreed that opening up spaces in the park is our goal, creating vistas in all directions.”
Irwin Park (Credit: Terry Dinan)
Stewart also opened discussion of burying existing overhead wires running across Weed St. into the park. Recreation director Steve Benko said that while the town did bury many wires in a project that took place several years ago, such an undertaking could be cost-restrictive.
“It will be expensive because you have to bury not only the electrical wires, but the fiber-optic telephone wires,” Benko said. “It could be an expensive proposition.”
Irwin Park (Credit: Terry Dinan)
According to the commission, tree warden Bruce Pauley has already marked the trees designated for removal in the park. Once a 10-day grace period is up, the plan to remove the trees will go before the Board of Selectmen for approval. Benko estimated that “by the end of the month, they’ll be down.”
Funding for the project is already complete, as the cost of the plantings will be covered by the Irwin Park endowment fund, Stewart added.
“We can’t think of anything more worthwhile than being given the stewardship of the ongoing beautification of Irwin Park,” Stewart said.
“I think it will beautify the front of Irwin,” Park and Recreation Chairman Sally Campbell said before the plan was approved. “The time to plant is now.”
The garden club is responsible for many substantial and aesthetic amenities at the park, including the 5,000 daffodils on the great lawn.