A public park in east Alabama is more beautiful today thanks to the work of local master gardeners.
The Cherokee County Master Gardeners (CCMG) planted trees, bushes and flowers at Alabama Power‘s Slackland Beach in Leesburg, a day-use public park on Weiss Lake that is part of the company’s recreational sites called The Preserves.
CCMG project manager Susan Beavers said she came up with the idea after seeing an ad about Slackland Beach in a magazine. “Master gardeners are into plants but also into nature,” Beavers said. “We thought this would be a perfect match for the two of us.”
Beavers reached out to Alabama Power Shoreline Recreation Real Estate Specialist Josh Yerby who immediately embraced the idea. He worked with Beavers to coordinate schedules and materials.
“We were approached by the Master Gardeners group because they do projects similar to this throughout the area and they wanted to know what they could do to help us to beautify this area,” Yerby said. “It’s been a great effort by both groups to try and make something happen.”
All of the plants planted Tuesday are native to the area, including dogwood trees, red maples and blueberry bushes. A new pollinator plot was planted with native seed mix to attract pollinators.
“We love it,” Beavers said. “We can watch plants grow and we can see the pleasure in people’s faces when they come in and it looks pretty.”
Beavers and Yerby said the opportunity to work together was just as important as the project itself.
“It’s very important,” Yerby said. “We depend on these partnerships with local groups to help us maintain these sites. They can be our eyes and ears out here on the ground to let us know when something needs to be done. We really depend on that.”
To learn more about Alabama Power’s recreational sites, visit apcpreserves.com.
(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)
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