Category: <span>Civic Orgs</span>

Allyson Herbst, a student in Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College, has written a piece titled A Better Northfield Starts With Flowers, Group Says (PDF – full text below).

A Better Northfield Starts With Flowers, Group Says

By Allyson Herbst

Northfield residents last summer couldn’t help but notice a striking change that bloomed outside the Northfield Public Library. Where once a few scrubby trees dotted a lawn of exposed landscaping fabric and mulch, new plantings sprang up and hundreds of petunias popped out of pots all around.

While the library played a role in its own makeover, the prime mover was actually a new Northfield civic group – a local branch of a national non-profit called “America in Bloom” (AIB) – that is devoted to catalyzing community improvement by planting flowers and trees.

Less than a year old, AIB-Northfield in 2008 planted around $3,000 worth of flowers around the town’s public library, post office, the Northfield Hospital, the Cannon Riverwalk and in Bridge Square. They created an inventory of Northfield’s civic assets; sponsored a “Downtown Window Box and Yard Contest;” and worked with the Mayor’s Youth Council (MYC) and the police to install flowerboxes on the pedestrian footbridge downtown.

“We’re just getting started,” says Northfield resident Pat Allen, the founder of AIB-Northfield and its current chairman. “We have big visions.”

HISTORICAL SIGNAGE

In 2009, Allen says one of AIB’s goals is to add 16 new hanging baskets to Northfield’s streets. Next year the group also plans to continue work on local historical site signage, an anti-graffiti project, and restoration of the city’s old train depot near 3d Street and Highway 3.