Dear Editor:
On Saturday June 4th Home Depot on Rte. 440 and Renato’s Pizzeria on Central Avenue helped make our Spring Planting of Leonard Gordon Park a complete success. Head Manager Michael Romano was incredibly generous and he and his store donated five thousand dollars worth of plants, planting materials & planting tools to our 501c3 effort. They all went towards creating the three new community gardens you now see, two by the Kennedy and Manhattan Ave. entrance; and a third by the Kennedy and Hutton St. entrance. Later, Manager Romano has promised to return with his team to install a tasteful garden fence and garden sign posts. Residents donated other plants. Renato’s, as usual, donated all the delicious pizza, sandwiches, salad and sodas that we could eat and drink. Thanks to Councilman Yun for being the only person who remembered to bring a camera to take some great pictures. We also want to thank Co Chairman Marc Wesson of the Friends of Van Vorst Park for donating many bunches of the extra liriope which had multiplied in the park he oversees for use in Leonard Gordon Park; on August 28th; 5 of us from the Friends of Leonard Gordon Park dug them up there and transplanted them into our three new gardens. We thank the City of Jersey City for all the cobblestones that surround our LGP gardens and Mayor Steven Fulop for nurturing the greening of Jersey City.
Finally, we thank the Jersey City Parks Coalition; especially its leaders Laura Skolar, Marc Wesson, Charlene Burke and Mory Thomas for launching many wonderful greening initiatives in our city such as the Big Dig and the recent tree initiative. It takes a community to develop a Park. Come to our next meeting at Nicolaus Copernicus Library at 7 p.m. on Friday September 9. Questions: clifford.waldman@gmail.com
Dr. Clifford Waldman
FoLGP; President