New Entry Garden for a High-Visibility Garland Corner: When People Work Together, Big Things Happen

Vintage commemorative bricks outline the site for the new 11th-Street Entry Garden and Monarch Butterfly Waystation.

Garland's 11th Street runs in front of the new 200-square foot entry garden, to be filled with native plants, especially those that attract monarch butterflies.

A terrific partnership of neighbors, nonprofits, businesses, and our city government is about to turn a high-visibility but nondescript corner of Garland into a place of beauty and resourcefulness.

This example of how a neighborhood creatively works with multiple private and public partners is shaping up at the new 11th-Street Entry Garden and Monarch Butterfly Waystation at the entrance to South 11th Street from eastbound West Avenue D.

 

This small but significant project combines a high degree of talent and much symbolism in one 200-square-foot spot. It reflects the kind of Garland Kay and I have long known and hope to see continue into the future—one where citizens and others work together for the common good of all.

As one of our favorite sayings goes, "What we are together is more than what we were apart." Community espirit de corps is truly showcased here.

Not so long ago this corner property in the Travis College Hill Historic District was owned by a local church and was subject to "demolition-by-neglect", with the goal among some that the property ultimately would become a black-topped parking lot—and a scar on our neighborhood. Instead, neighbors, the deceased donor's family, and Garland's Code Enforcement office worked in concert to return this historic home to private ownership. A lovely young family owns the home and lives there now.

Like the house itself, the once Yard-of-the-Month landscaping is being beautifully revived by the new homeowners after years of calculated neglect.

And so it was that the entry-garden project began in the minds of neighbors not so long ago.

First, the new homeowners agreed to allow the 200-square-foot, circular entry garden to be installed on the southwest corner of their lot, under a vintage magnolia tree situated near the intersection of new sidewalks and retaining walls and to be filled with beautiful native plants and butterflies.

Next, Garland's city council agreed to provide at no cost a quantity of 100-year-old salvaged bricks from a building on the city's Square once owned by our neighborhood's Crossman family, who lived for many decades on 11th Street and cast a long shadow over much of early Garland. The commemorative bricks are now cleaned up and shining like new pennies; the name of Ferris Brick Co. in Ferris, TX, or its "Lone Star" subsidiary, can be seen on them. They tell a wonderful story not only of the Crossman legacy in the neighborhood but also of early construction days in Garland after the great fire of 1899 destroyed much of downtown and citizens turned to bricks and mortar instead of wood for better fireproof construction. The bricks are now set in place around the new garden.

Chiseling the decades off the 100-year-old commemorative bricks that now outline the 11th-Street entry garden

 A variety of Home Depot stores in the area provided the funds for metal edging to outline the new garden as well as sand and other necessities for setting the bricks and making bare land ready to blossom.

Neighbor Jim Bird offered expert guidance for installing the bricks on the sloping hillside that shows off the antique bricks.

Keep Garland Beautiful's Reba Collins provided a detailed plan for the garden, including not only a list of native plants to use but also a list of the special places at Fair Park and even Frisco, among others, to secure the best varieties. Planting will start in mid-October.

Reba's plan included exactly what is needed to have a Monarch Butterfly Waystation—to be officially registered with the national Monarch Watch Program as a certified monarch butterfly haven. Gracious Reba even sent us the proper paperwork to register the garden.

Reba Collins of Keep Garland Beautiful sketched out a master plan that will feature native plants and iris offered by homes in the neighborhood.

As planning commenced, a local builder stepped in with a donation of just exactly the right-sized landscaping boulders to add a special dimension to the garden.

Garland's esteemed and noted historian Mike Hayslip, who lived for many years across the street from Travis College Hill, arrived with the right color of heirloom irises to donate to the landscaping. The bed will feature irises offered from other neighbors' flower beds as well.

Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street, a local nonprofit with a heart for preserving and re-developing our special part of downtown Garland, is providing funds for some of the garden's native plants, including those purchased with special donations memorializing Hortense Weir Smith, who was born on the street and who died last spring at age 97 shortly after our annual Historic Home Tour in April. The Friends organization has also served as the conduit for other donations, including some listed above.

Hortense Weir Smith is being memorialized with landscaping donated in her memory. She was born on 11th Street and died last spring at age 97 after helping phenomenally with historic research.

Labor for the garden is being provided by a variety of neighbors and friends of the neighborhood.

The only remaining need is a vivid color interpretive sign telling the story of the garden and its native plants, the monarch butterfly, the donors including a tribute to Hortense Weir Smith's incredible memory of people and events on the street, the Crossmans and their role in Travis College Hill, and the history of the neighborhood itself.

Since the 24-by-36-inch sign is similar to one provided by the city for Garland's earlier Monarch Butterfly Waystation at Armstrong Park near I-635, we've asked the city's Office of Neighborhood Vitality, through a matching grant, to partner with us in securing the artistic sign.

A vivid color, interpretive sign similar to one the city installed in Armstrong Park is planned for the new 11th-Street Entry Garden. 

Even that sign will receive two other special donations: one is from Garland citizen and Plan Commissioner Chris Ott, who volunteered to make at his Rotary Performance shop on Buckingham the metal framework to hold up the sign, which then will be undergirded with more historic bricks. Chris is one of the directors of Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street. Also, award-winning photographer Jim Bird has agreed to capture the color photos of plants, butterflies, and people that will be featured on the sign.

It is truly amazing what Garland people and organizations working together can achieve.

May it ever be so in our city!