If you love gardening and have a passion to beautify Brookland, come dig in the dirt with us! By signing up below, you can expect an email once a month with opportunities to volunteer.
The Welcome to Brookland sign
This year, BNCA partnered with ANC SMD 5B04 to start a native plant garden at the Welcome to Brookland sign at 12th Street and Rhode Island Ave NE. We raised over $2000. Right Proper Brewing Company, one of our local craft breweries, matched $1000 in donations. Thank you to everyone who donated!
In Spring, we planted over 100 plants in the area directly around the sign. Most of the plants were lovingly transplanted from our home gardens. Volunteers brought in truckloads of free compost from the city to amend the soil. Our local hardware store, Annie’s Ace Hardware, generously donated $1000 worth of mulch, and delivered it to the spot, stacking the bags so high you could not read the sign!
Here is a full list of the natives we planted:
- Anemone virginiana, Thimbleflower
- Carex pensylvanica, Pennsylvania sedge (donated)
- Carex appalachia, Appalachian sedge
- Clethra alnifolia, Summer sweet (donated)
- Echinacea purpurea, Purple coneflower (some donated)
- Heuchera americana, Alum root
- Ilex verticillata, Winterberry
- Penstemon digitalis, Beardtongue (donated)
- Rudbeckia lacinata, Green-headed coneflower (donated)
- Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, Aromatic aster (donated)
Looking ahead
We are going to keep the Welcome to Brookland sign clean and weed-free. The money we raised will help us to water the garden through 2024, ensuring it is well established. We will also install a plaque that explains what the garden is and markers that identify plants.
The Brookland Neighborhood Civic Association was awarded a plant grant from Bona Terra to continue our planting. In Fall, we will plant the rest of the area adjacent to the sign around the corner and up 12th Street. We are growing many native plants from seed this summer, and planning a community-wide native plant giveaway in Fall. We are also placing several planters to beautify 12th Street.
If this sounds exciting to you, sign up to hear about our workdays. All skill levels are welcome!
