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GARDEN GIRLFRIENDS
For years, Kathy Schrenk's exercise routine has taken her on walks through City Park. About a decade ago, she noticed that the park's City Park Avenue entrance at North Alexander Street was becoming neglected and overgrown. When she retired in 2001, she decided to do something about it.
"I called City Park and was told that a new volunteer coordinator, P.D. Towe, was being brought on board," Schrenk said. "So we got together and set up an adoption of the entrance area."
Schrenk's neighbor Ruth Stone enthusiastically got on board, then the two women set out to put together a volunteer group called "The Garden Girlfriends." Members include Schrenk and Stone, fellow Mid-City residents Barbara Olsen and Marie Spratt, Lakeview residents Jeanne Pfefferle and Jeanetta Phinney and Old Metairie resident Vickie Loubiere.
They started working on the garden "the Saturday before the 9/11 twin tower attack," Schrenk said. "I still think of it, even though it wasn't planned that way, as a sort of memorial to that."
The garden "also serves as a memorial to one of our volunteers, Ulla Cloke, a wonderful friend who died suddenly in September 2006," Stone said.
The garden measures about 2,000 square feet and takes in both sides of the entrance, originally called the Pizatti Gate. It is one of the two earliest surviving structures at the park. An arch installed in 2001 restored the entrance gate to its original glory.
Working with their own garden tools every other Tuesday for four hours, the group never runs out of things to do.
"Weeding, watering, deadheading, fertilizing, sweeping, raking, pruning and replacing plants are the norm," Stone said. "And we do three seasonal changes of plants in January, May and November."
Through the years, the women have learned which plants thrive and which don't.
"In the summer, we plant a butterfly garden with wild dill and milkweed, as well as salvia, zinnia, caladium and other blooming annuals," Schrenk said. "I think the butterflies are the most beautiful part of the garden, like winged flowers."...
