Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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We’re hearing that the wonderful New Canaan Beautification League hosted its second annual Mead Park Breakfast on a recent sunny morning, as a way to say ‘Thank You’ to town employees including many DPW crewmen for their support and partnership in making our village lovely throughout the year (see gallery above). The event was held in the colonnade at Mead Park (a popular spot that had been WPA-era children’s wading pool, originally). Recognized at a recent Town Council meeting for its effective local work, the nonprofit organization creates the hanging baskets downtown and manages many of the traffic triangles around New Canaan. “This non-profit organization of volunteers is open to all, whether for social, civic-minded or educational purposes,” league memberts tell us. “No green thumb is necessary.

Around Town

An Even More Beautiful New Canaan: 150 Hanging Baskets Go Up Downtown on Wednesday

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A cherished addition will grace the village center of New Canaan starting Wednesday, thanks to a partnership between the town and one of its most venerable nonprofit organizations. Members of the New Canaan Beautification League this week put together 160 hanging baskets that the Department of Public Works are scheduled to place on lampposts on Main, Elm and other streets in the downtown. “They do a fabulous job,” Libby Butterworth, a member of the NCBL for four years, said of the DPW workers. Of the Beautification League, she said: “It is a wonderful, very friendly and hands-on group, and everybody is welcome.”

The baskets themselves, which the DPW fertilizes and Walt Jaykus of the public works department waters in the mornings, include angel wing begonias, white wave petunias and blue petunias, Butterworth said. (The white wave petunias do very well in both shade and sun, she said, while the angel wing begonias, which are red, start out very small in June but by August take over the basket.)

The Beautification League itself was founded in 1939 and parts of its work in town also involves caring for the landscaping on traffic triangles throughout New Canaan.

Government

Beautification League Offers $50,000 for Town Hall Landscaping Plan; Tree for Ben Olmstead Proposed

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A nonprofit organization dedicated to making New Canaan beautiful is offering to fund $50,000 in plantings to the grounds around the newly renovated Town Hall, and wants separately to help plan for a prominently placed sugar maple dedicated to the memory of a beloved man and municipal employee who died following an accident last summer. The New Canaan Beautification League feels that “this is a special opportunity to make a large contribution not only financially but also visually to the town,” one of its members, landscape architect Keith Simpson, said at Monday’s meeting of the Town Hall Building Committee. Part of the landscaping plan that Simpson unveiled (it already has been shown to the DPW chief and first selectman, among others) involves the planting of a tree that would be dedicated to Ben Olmstead. A well-loved town DPW worker for 37 years who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the town, Olmstead died July 24 at age 71 after he was struck by a car near the intersection of East Avenue at 123. (Olmstead knew so much about the town that the DPW in making its fiscal year 2016 budget request put in for a full-time person to try and fill his part-time shoes.)

In reviewing landscaping plans from a colleague for whom he has great respect, Norwalk-based Eric Rains, Simpson said it was difficult to find a tree location that would indicate it was planted for a specific, special reason.

The Little Things

High Praise for New Wildflower Field at 123 and Parade Hill

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An avid tennis player at the New Canaan Field Club, town resident Suzanne Jonker drives up Route 123 all the time. Prior to this summer, nothing much caught Jonker’s eye as she passed the (harrowing) intersection at Parade Hill Road. That’s all changed, with the creation this year of a bright wildflower meadow that’s drawing high praise from locals. Here are a few photos that Terry took on Thursday, article continues below:

“It used to be all weeds, so it definitely caught my eye and I thought, ‘Wow, that is so nice,’ ” Jonker told NewCanaanite.com. “Really good work.