Community helps plant a garden

When southeast Las Vegas resident Jenny Care organizes a groundbreaking, she means business. Community leaders at the groundbreaking of the new Winchester Center Park Serenity Garden may have expected to say a few words and throw a ceremonial spade of earth, but no one balked when Care broke out the work gloves and requested genuine manual labor.

Friends of Winchester gathered with community members and representatives from the Southern Nevada Water Authority and Clark County Parks and Recreation to plant more than 20 trees at the groundbreaking for the new garden on the northeast side of the park at 3130 S. McLeod Drive.

"This park is designed by the people who live here," Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams said. "It just goes to show what can happen when we work together."

Care, wife of state Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, said the trees planted in March are only the beginning of the Serenity Garden. The garden already has a completed walkway loop with four wood bridges spanning over a rocky, waterless streambed. Shady arbors span over a few sections of the path. Additional planting dates were planned for April 7 and 27 and for Arbor Day. Over the next few months, Care hopes to see shrubbery, native desert plants and additional trees added to the garden. She said they may even add drought-tolerant vegetable and herb plots if there is enough interest.

The project was funded with seed money from Barrick Goldstrike Mines Inc. of Elko and through matching grants from the United Way and Neighborhood Services. The park's advisory board, made up of nearby residents, began the park project. Residents decided the park needed something new to add interest and to demonstrate water-efficient gardening.

Because the garden qualifies as a low-water project, Southern Nevada Water Authority landscape designer Jim White put in time to design it. White said the new garden will serve as a satellite of the Desert Demonstration Gardens, showing local residents just how nice draught tolerant landscaping can look.

White was on hand at the planting to teach volunteers the correct way to plant a new tree in the desert.

"The trick is, you don't want to plant it too deep," he said. The plant expert added sulfur, phosphates and good old-fashioned turkey manure to the soil before shoveling it into the holes around the trees.

While most of the volunteers gathered with shovels in hand, Boy Scouts from troops 345 and 267 had their hands full building the wood bridges.

Bryce Pickett gathered boys and leaders from his troop as part of his Eagle Scout project.

"These bridges are huge. It took us all day last Saturday to build them and we still weren't finished. We had to work through the week on them," Pickett said.

Joe Peart, a landscape architect from Clark County Parks and Recreation, said the garden is only a part of the plans for the Winchester Community Center and Park. Next in the works is a skateboard park for the Southwest section of the park. So far the design includes skating bowls, ramps and grinding rails.

Peart said he's excited to see the neighborhood getting behind projects in the parks.

"The level of apathy people show has decreased considerably," Peart said. "All it takes is for people to know that they can organize and put their wishes down on paper. Then they can contact the county or their town board. If they get involved, they can have a voice in what gets done."

"This is how we build communities," Williams said.