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Posts Tagged ‘landscaping’

Training Others for Outdoor Jobs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 12, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Frank Carini/ecoRI News.
These Growing Futures RI staff members help trainees get landscaping experience through park maintenance.

In a win-win reminiscent of the Great Depression’s Civilian Conservation Corps, trainees are gaining valuable work experience while benefiting Rhode Island parks.

Frank Carini at ecoRI News has the story.

“The infamous hurricane of 1938 built the Tefft Hill Trail. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. One of the most powerful hurricanes in recorded history did the no-bid prep work. The FDR-era Civilian Conservation Corps, while conducting search and salvage operations and helping with the cleanup, built the Tefft and many other hiking trails in the area that would become known as Arcadia.

“The Rhode Island Department of Agriculture and Conservation — now the Department of Environmental Management — acquired the 14,000-acre Arcadia Management Area a few years before the 1938 hurricane struck. Today, Arcadia features a wide range of natural landscapes, including hardwood and pine forests, hills and valleys, ledges, fields, and lakes, ponds, and streams of various sizes. It also boasts miles and miles of trail.

“DEM doesn’t have the staff necessary to maintain all of Arcadia’s recreation aspects, so a 21st-century version of the Corps lends a hand — many hands, in fact. … The trails in Rhode Island’s largest management area are maintained and tended to under the direction of Jordan Miller, director of education and training for the Rhode Island Nursery & Landscape Association and the leader of RINLA’s Growing Futures RI initiative. …

“For the past three winters, Miller and the program’s two other staffers — Christie Milligan, director of workforce programs, and Mason Billings, program associate and resources coordinator — shepherd 30-40 workers into the Arcadia Management Area to maintain trails, clear overgrown vegetation, repair wooden walkways, and remove invasives. …

“Throughout Arcadia during its destination heyday, there were picnic tables and other amenities, offices in the woods, and a house for the caretaker and his family. In the decades since DEM changed its management strategy for state-owned land, the picnic tables and structures that once decorated Arcadia have faded into the landscape. The baseball field swallowed by vegetation. …

“After the campground closed, the state maintained the beach and recreation area until the mid-1990s, which is around the same time that the universal access boardwalk was built and the Tefft Hill Trail was being transformed into an area more accessible to those living with mobility issues.

“Funded by a federal grant, the boardwalk and bridge were built in three phases over 10 years. DEM’s Division of Forestry did the work using no mechanized equipment to avoid disturbing the sensitive environment,’ according to Michael Healey, the agency’s chief public affairs officer. …

“Miller, who has worked in the horticulture industry in a variety of roles since 2004, was hired in 2020 to run RINLA’s new initiative. The purpose of Growing Futures is to ‘cultivate, train, and educate the next generation of natural resource professionals who will be charged with stewarding, protecting, and responding to a changing environment and feeding our community.’ …

“Every January and February for the past three winters, the 30-40 workforce trainees, under the guidance of the Growing Futures trio, prepare Arcadia trails for a new season of hiking and nature watching. Trainees are hired for a week or five, and crew leaders from RINLA’s 250 member businesses are loaned to the program to ‘help run things in small groups,’ according to Miller.

“ ‘One of the main reasons for that is timing of when our industry starts up for the year and hires people, which is typically in March,’ he said. ‘So we’ll do the training so that people graduate and then they go straight into job interviews and are able to get jobs for the season. The other part of it is because that’s a winter layoff time, we can actually get crew leader staff who were laid off from their landscaping jobs to be able to help us out.’ “

More at ecoRI News, here. No paywall. Nice pictures.

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Flowers for the Capital

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2021| 8 Comments »

Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP.
Gardening gurus Jim and Cindy Kaufmann met when they both worked at the National Gallery. Today they work in separate government jobs to brighten Washington, DC, with 300 acres of landscaping and flowers.

Have you ever thought about how the beautiful flowers appear in public places like the US capital — and what it takes to keep them beautiful, even in a pandemic?

Cari Shane reports at the Washington Post reports about a married couple who are responsible for more than 300 acres of the the Washington, DC, landscape.

“Cindy Kaufmann, 56, is chief of horticulture services at the National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden. Her husband, Jim Kaufmann, 48, is the director of the Capitol grounds and arboretum for the Architect of the Capitol, which maintains the buildings, monuments and gardens on the U.S. Capitol campus. He also chooses the National Christmas Tree. …

“They call themselves ‘garden geeks’: Jim is ‘a tree guy,’ he says. (His favorite is the white oak.) Cindy loves pink flowering plants the most. ‘But it’s like having children,’ she says. ‘You really just love them all.’

Cindy grew up in Rockville, Md., where she spent hours in the garden, ‘growing flowers and vegetables just to see how they would look,’ she says.

“After studying horticulture at the University of Maryland, she started at the National Gallery right out of college. Jim grew up in Philadelphia, helping his parents take care of their vegetable garden. He attended a public vocational-technical high school that specialized in agriculture, then graduated from Temple University with a degree in horticulture. They met when they both worked at the National Gallery. …

“Cindy’s pre-pandemic life meant arriving at the office at 6 a.m. and ‘walking five miles every day, visiting the campus and directing the wide variety of areas we support from the Sculpture Garden — the greenhouses, the garden courts, terraces and every exhibit and interior space,’ she says.

“Now, like for many of us, her work is done mostly over Zoom. The National Gallery closed and reopened a few times over the past year; each time, Cindy had to be ready, constantly ‘planning for normal.’ The museum’s March anniversary is celebrated annually with a rotating display of 250 azaleas in the Rotunda, and Cindy and her staff spent the winter preparing the plants to transfer from greenhouses in Frederick, Md., but the museum didn’t reopen after all. (The Sculpture Garden reopened in February.)

“For Jim, the pandemic and the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol — which was followed by the erecting of non-scalable fencing — meant some pivoting, too.

“He and his team continue to care for more than 4,500 trees and all the flowering plants on 274 acres of Capitol landscape. …

“Like Cindy, Jim’s days this past year have been less hands-on, which he misses. ‘Nothing ever replaces the ability or the experience to walk the grounds, feel the landscape and talk to people,’ he says.

“But the pandemic has allowed the Kaufmanns to spend more time in their own garden in Silver Spring, Md. Last summer, tending it was their ‘pandemic therapy,’ says Cindy. It reflects their different horticultural styles, and over the years, the yard has naturally divided into ‘Cindy’ and ‘Jim’ sections.’ “

More at the Washington Post, here.

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Barefoot Books

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2011| 2 Comments »

Barefoot Books, the children’s book publisher, opened its retail store in Concord this past spring.

In addition to selling books, the shop offers storytelling and pottery every day and numerous other activities, like music, dance, and yoga for children. There is a puppet theater play area, a kitchen for food events, and toys. Note the list of August activities in the photo.

The neighbors, by and large, loved the way the company decorated this long-empty building. And they especially loved the new landscaping.

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