Getting Ready for the Holidays

The members of the Beautification Committee have been busy the last few days, cutting and preparing the plant material, to fill the planters at City Hall. It is the last big project of the year, and the last time the members will get together before the holidays.
Go to our  photo album   to see more of our preparations, and more photos of the finished containers.

The Bump Out in Bloom

Beautification Committee member, Diane Smith, took these great photos of the Bently Bump Out, this past week.
Diane planned and planted much of this garden. She did replace the beach roses with "Knock Out Roses" for a season of continuous bloom This garden requires little care and little watering.
See the post below for the past history of the Bump Out. It is fun to see how a garden was started and how much it has filled in in the past three years.

WHAT IS A BUMP OUT?

In every city and town, you can drive around and find strange little forgotten spaces that have become eye-sores. We hardly notice them as we pass by, sometimes they are so overgrown that we have forgotten what they are or why they were made. Once you start to notice these spaces, they are hard to ignore.

Thus we arrive at what the Beautification Committee calls The Bently Bump Out [for lack of knowing what else to call such a weird little construction]. We were all in agreement that it was a mess, and this week we have finished redoing the whole thing. See above video.
A special thanks to Jim and Lisa Pettey for all your work on this project, truly heroic.

Is there a space that you have noticed, around the city, that you think needs attention? Perhaps you are just wondering how it got to be there. Take a few photos and email them to us [upper left hand column], or leave a message below in comments. Maybe we can help.

Seven Million Bulbs - A Video

 Tita Williams, co- president and member of the Beautification Committee made this video after returning from Holland just last week. It is a wonderful treat to see a display of bulbs like this, and to see Tita's skill as a photographer. This video is a great way to see how different bulbs can be planted together, and how color layouts can work. Thanks Tita.

Color in the garden - Painting tips

Paint some blue skies, paint some faded clay pots, paint a worn out fence, nothing gives you more value for the money then a can of paint.

A video from D.U.G.

  I am the member of the New London Beautification Committee who runs this blog, but I also have my own garden blog called  Diary of an Urban Gardener, where I post videos about my own gardens and garden projects.
At our most recent Beautification Committee meeting, the members had a long discussion on how to reach out to the public and get people involved in gardening both public and private. Members came up with some great ideas, which we plan to implement in the next year.
One idea that was easy to do right away, was to post more how- to projects on our committee blog.
The above video is the first video I made for D.U.G. and talks about planning your future garden, mostly on your computer. This is a great time of the year to dream about a new garden, or a new project for an existing garden, and when spring arrives, you will be ready to hit the ground running, so to speak.
In this video I do mention using a photo shop program, which are expensive to buy, but did you know that you can download a free program that does much of the same work. It is called Gimp, click here to go to the download page  
 I use this program all the time and find it is more intuitive and straight forward then programs that cost a great deal of money. So, get going, you have no excuses, you don't even have to go out in the snow. The Internet will provide you with the answers to any garden question you have, or email us, or leave a comment and we will answer your questions.