Cleaning up the park

Pine Haven's Etched in Time Park has been the center of a few concerns for the last few years that involved a miscommunication between the town's long-lived beautification committee and the last couple of councils.

According to the committee spokesperson Tammie McGovern, the council at the time of the park's opening agreed to take over the maintenance and management of the site. But with the changing of the governing body over the years, this agreement was lost.

With a better understanding of the situation, the two entities have reached a new agreement. The committee will continue to provide the hanging flower baskets around the gazebo and the town will manage and maintain the park.

Town Clerk/Treasurer and avid landscaper and gardener McGovern, working under the auspices of the council and with some assistance from Dwight Dierking and Bill Matthews from public works, has started the task of remodeling the park, an endeavor close to her heart.

"My plan is to bring more of the riprap rock in and fill that whole river in because that fountain no longer works...then run solar light throughout," she says.

McGovern hopes to have the pond filled in before winter and imagines possibly a tree planted there if the roots can penetrate the concrete base in the future and she is still considering what to do with the defunct "waterfall".

She has started with placing 145 45-pound bags of red wood chips as a deep bed of mulch, covering the bald areas on both sides of the once-running "river" and pruning the overgrown shrubs around the gazebo.

"It's been five or six years since it's had any [mulch] so I had to lay it really thick. I have 40 more bags to go... Next year, I'm going to add more shrubs and just do more landscaping," she says.

People have been reminded of the spaces still available for dedication in the park.

"What we need to do as soon as possible is get the bricks in there and then get it all grouted," she says.

McGovern will be ascertaining what kind of work will best salvage the oldest part of the signage that has begun to disintegrate as well.

Residents can expect to see more significant changes to the park next summer and fall, according to McGovern.