Gossage Garden ready for Earth Day

Gossage Garden is inviting the Lettered Streets community to help prepare the garden for spring on April 23 in recognition of Earth Day.  The event will begin at 10 am, end at 12 pm, and is open to everyone in the community.

            Park Steward Judy Buchanan, 57, said she will be overseeing the event, which will include edging, pruning, weeding, and some painting.  She said she welcomes the help and excited to have the event in celebration of Earth Day.

            “When people come together and volunteer there is a sense of community, ownership,” Buchanan said.  “The cool thing about having it on Earth Day is: that is the day that brings awareness to how people can be helping the earth.”

            Although Gossage has hosted many court appointed volunteers in the past, Buchanan said one volunteer event has fallen on Earth Day before. 

            According to Buchanan, she approached Parks Volunteer Coordinator Rae Edwards, 59, about getting some volunteers to help get the garden ready for spring, and Edwards suggested having a volunteering event for Earth Day.   

            “I think any time neighbors come together on a joint project it strengthens community,” Edwards said.

            In the past, Edwards said she has tried to keep Bellingham’s Earth Day activities near the Western Washington University campus, because there are usually a lot of student volunteers.  But this year, with the university’s budget cuts, there won’t be as much help from student volunteers.  As a result, she said she needed to find a new place to host Earth Day activities, and she thought of Gossage Garden.

            The triangular garden sits on the intersection of Cornwall Avenue, F Street, and Alabama Street.  Buchanan said she has patterned the organic garden after Victorian gardens, filling it with herbs, native plants, flowers, fruits, vegetables, a drinking fountain, and a gazebo.  Buchanan said she always tries to match her volunteers up with projects they’ll enjoy in the hopes they will take as much pride in the garden as she does.

            “I have a passion for this neighborhood,” Buchanan said.  “I live in the same house I grew up in.”

            Edwards said she feels it is important to care for Gossage Garden because of what it does for the Lettered Streets Neighborhood.

            “I think it adds a lot to that corner,” Edwards said.  “It makes me happy every time I go by it.”

            Buchanan said her biggest worry for the Earth Day volunteer project is that sometimes well-meaning people accidentally pull up flowers thinking they are weeds.  She said it is difficult to tell the difference between weeds and flowers, and she hopes people won’t pull up anything unless they are absolutely sure it is a weed.

“Even I can’t tell sometimes,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan and Edwards said they are also concerned about weather conditions on the day of the project.  Edwards said she is hoping for good weather for the volunteers.

Edwards also said she is glad to see people coming out to help Buchanan with Gossage, because she knows how much time and work Buchanan puts into the garden.

            “A little help can go a long ways,” Edwards said.

            Buchanan said she also is excited to share her knowledge of gardening and plants with her neighbors, because she loves teaching and nature. 

            “I practice Earth Day every day of the year that I can,” Buchanan said.

Street trees coming to Lettered Streets

The Lettered Streets Neighborhood Association is trying to create a more welcoming urban center with the addition of 20 new street trees by the end of fall, according to the association’s Tree Planning Subcommittee.

The subcommittee said it would cost about $2,000 dollars to purchase 20 high quality trees plus mulch, stakes, twine, and other planting necessities.

A permit must be obtained for a tree from the city’s pre-approved list before the neighborhood can plant along the parking strip, because the trees have to meet specific requirements.  The trees must come from the city’s preapproved street tree list of the best trees for urban environments, and they cannot be planted over sewer ways or under power lines.  Committee member and Volunteer Parks Coordinator Rae Edwards, 59, said since most of the power lines in the Lettered Streets are on one side of the road they won’t be much of a problem, but many of the sewers running under the sidewalks might pose a challenge.

            According to Edwards, the positive effects of street trees on urban environments outweigh the challenges.  She said studies have shown trees encourage drivers to slow down, increase air quality while decreasing heat, catch storm water runoff, decrease crime, and create a more walkable, inviting community.

            Edwards, who is also a part of Tree Keepers, an organization dedicated to educating people about the benefits of urban trees, said she is excited about the possibility of planting more trees in the Lettered Streets.

            “It makes it a more pleasant environment—less stark,” Edwards said.  “It just gives a completely different feel.  It feels complete.”

           

            Subcommittee member Jim Straatman said he also feels the trees will beautify the neighborhood and foster a feeling of community.  He is working on a website where residents can become involved in the project in three ways: learning about the proposal, making an online donation, or volunteering tree space on their street.

            Straatman said the Tree Planning Subcommittee hopes to receive about $500 dollars from the neighborhood association’s budget, which would leave them to raise an additional $1,500 through donations and grants. 

            The Tree Planting Subcommittee said they are in the beginning stages of planning right now, but are confident the neighborhood will support the project.  Edwards said there have been a few tree planting projects in the past, and residents were already making donations for street trees when the neighborhood association tried to plant trees in 2008, but the project died due to dwindling grant funds. 

            Although the neighborhood association said it supports the addition of street trees, some members are more tentative about the project.

            “I think we should start small,” said association MNAC representative and long-time Lettered Streets resident Howard Steiner. 

            Steiner said he thinks the subcommittee should purchase 10 trees instead of 20 and see what kinds of problems arise, because the program could always be expanded later.

            But Edwards said she doesn’t anticipate many problems with the trees or planting.  She said her greatest concern is creating and maintaining neighborhood excitement for the project.  According to her, the Happy Valley and Cordata neighborhoods began successful tree planting projects to improve their neighborhoods.

            The Columbia neighborhood is another place with many street trees.  According to Columbia resident of 14 years David Engebretson, 42, the trees have a huge impact on the neighborhood’s traffic and atmosphere.

            “They’re not only traffic-calming, but they also make the neighborhood warmer,” Engebretson said.  “But I think the traffic-calming issue is important.”

            Peggy Scaief, who works across the street from the Lettered Streets and whose daughter lives on Eldridge Avenue in Columbia, said she is of a more different opinion.

            “I like the openness here,” Scaief said.

            Scaief also said she is concerned about the shade created by street trees.  While Edwards said she feels the trees help cool down urban areas in the face of climate change, Scaief said she thinks the shade would better suit areas that experience more sun.  She said her daughter’s neighborhood is always damp and dark because of the trees.

            “I love trees, but I think they have to be careful not to create too much shade,” Scaief said.

            Edwards said she is trying to limit the number of tree choices to choose from in order to find the best-fitted tree for each street. 

            “The whole idea is having the right tree in the right place,” Edwards said.

            Edwards said she is looking specifically for trees with 1.5 to 2 caliber trunks, and is trying to narrow the tree options for each size, which come in small, medium, or large.  Small trees are usually below 40 feet, mediums are between 40 and 50 feet, and larges are about 60 feet or more.  She said she has looked mostly at various types of maples because they do well in Bellingham’s clay soil, have beautiful colors, and would require little maintenance.

            The subcommittee said it hopes to gather neighborhood support and volunteers to buy the trees and plant them in three stages.  The first stage would occur in the spring and include preparing the planting sites.  The second stage, in the summer, would involve weeding and maintaining the sites.  And fall, the best time to plant trees due to the large amount of rainfall, would see the actual planting of the trees.

            “We’re just in the beginning, and we’ll see where it goes,” Edwards said.

Lettered Streets Coffeehouse Expanding

            The owners of the Lettered Streets Coffeehouse, on the corner of Dupont and F streets, said they are looking to expand their business.  They said they hope to have a solid expansion plan for the coffeehouse by the time summer begins. 

            Ever since Anna Dean, 26, and Kjirstin Glessner, 30, bought the equipment from the coffeehouse’s previous owner in 2007 and reopened it as the Lettered Streets Coffeehouse, they have had dreams of expansion. 

            “These three years have been a great growing time for us, and I think it’s okay for us to think about growing some more and different directions,” Glessner said.

            Dean and Glessner said they are looking to expand by broadening the menu at their current location or by opening a second location.  According to Dean, a breakfast and light lunch menu offering sandwiches is the goal.  She said they don’t have a lot of room to expand within the current location, but they have thought about knocking down a wall behind the bar to create space for a small kitchen. 

            A second location is another possibility, the women said.  They said they haven’t looked at any specific locations yet, but they have considered areas, such as downtown.   If they do decide to open another location, the women said they want to stay true to the neighborhood they move into while maintaining their current business model.

            “We would never want to put a hot pink building in the middle of the Columbia Neighborhood or something like that,” Dean said.

            Either way, Glessner and Dean said they are committed to keeping their store local.  If they expand their menu they will continue to buy their coffee from Orca Bay in Everson, their pastries from the Grace Café and Food Co-op, and they said they will get their produce from local farms and markets.

            The women also said they will maintain the warm and inviting community atmosphere of their current location whether they expand in-store or add a second shop.

            “That’s what we will strive for the whole time,” Glessner said.  “We’ll be community based.  I don’t think the atmosphere will change much.”

Glessner and Dean said they are finally ready to begin the long process of expanding their shop, and this time they are armed with the knowledge they gained from opening a business during a recession.

            “We’re more about the elbow grease hard work, I guess, and kinda the do-it-yourself,” Dean said.  “So as long as you can be a little innovative with how you go about things, you know, then there’s really not too much of a reason to worry about failure.”

Dean said she feels now is the right time to make their dream a reality with the way the small business economy is slowly picking up. 

Dean and Glessner have been working with the Small Business Development Center, a program affiliated with Western Washington University’s college of business and economics that is designed to provide no-fee professional confidential business advising, research, and training to small businesses. 

Jennifer Shelton, the director of the center, said the trend for small business in Bellingham is going up.

“Businesses are finding a little more energy to grow and expand,” Shelton said.  “It’s going to be fantastic.”

According to Dean, friends and customers have been very supportive of the idea of coffeehouse expansion.  She said they are offering to help in any way they can, much like they did when the women opened the shop three years ago.

“They’re just excited to see a company flourish in these times,” Dean said.

It is too early in the process to know for sure whether the coffeehouse will expand its menu or move to another location, and way too early to discern how much it would cost, the owners said, but the Small Business Development Center is helping them figure that part of it out.

“Things are still very nebulous,” Glessner said.