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Garden Club will ride again

A letter to the editor about the Spring Hill Garden Club's broken riding mower results in local donations.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published October 29, 2005

SPRING HILL - The waterfall, along with its plantings and landscaping, at the entrance to Spring Hill off U.S. 19 is without a doubt the best manicured, greenest parcel of roadside real estate along Spring Hill Drive.

It's not easy to keep it that way.

So far, Jeanne and Jim Erickson, who constitute the waterfall beautification committee of the Spring Hill Garden Club, have been equal to the task. Now, their efforts are in need of community help.

The committee's 7-year-old riding lawnmower has broken down to the point that the cost for engine repairs would be nearly equal to the cost of a new mower, Jeanne Erickson wrote in a recent letter to the editor published in the Hernando Times.

The committee is seeking donations from those who appreciate the entrance amenity and want to see its maintenance, seasonally colorful plantings and crisp lawn care continue.

Although the Ericksons haven't yet shopped for a replacement mower, Jeanne estimates the cost at $850. They're hoping to garner a discount from a local dealer.

On Tuesday, representatives of Lodge 164 of the Fraternal Order of Police appeared at a Garden Club meeting with a check for $500. Detective Peter R. Ciucci and Deputy Frank Loreto Jr. said the club had given to the community for so long that the union wanted to give as well.

Exit Realty Shoppe gave $100, as did a club member. Other individual donations have come in to the tune of about $150.

So, it appears the Ericksons will ride again, a necessity as he is 73 and she is 65. And Jim Erickson estimated that the lawn that needs to be mowed is the size of two football fields.

Four used push mowers and two lawn edgers have also been donated.

"Right now it's just the two of us taking care of it," Jeanne Erickson said. "A lot of our members are very elderly women, and they just can't do it."

But come November, she said, club members will be assigned to help out with landscape maintenance chores, usually conducted every Monday and Thursday morning.

The waterfall project has a yearly budget of $1,000, financed by the club's plant sales at its nursery on Parker Avenue.

"We have a lot of expenses with sprinklers," Jeanne Erickson said of the waterfall parcel. "People run over them.

"We buy mulch, buy plants, and there's gas expense for mowers and edgers."

Plant costs are minimal, about $100 per planting, because members grow and donate many of the perennials as well as such annual bloomers as pansies, marigolds, petunias, dusty millers and coleus.

When the Deltona Corp. was building Spring Hill, Jeanne Erickson said, the construction firm gave the waterfall to the county, and the Garden Club volunteered in 1978 to care for it and the first two islands of the medians.

Numerous residents and businesses along Spring Hill Drive complain about the lack of maintenance to the wispy grass and weedy, tree-spotted medians east of the Garden Club's charter. "That's all owned by the county," Jeanne Erickson said.

But the club aims to preserve its waterfall entrance to Spring Hill. Anyone who would like to help may contact the Ericksons at 688-4131.

Beth N. Gray may be contacted at graybethn@earthlink.net

[Last modified October 29, 2005, 01:45:21]