Volunteers with the Southold Town Conservation Advisory Council and ReWild Long Island’s North Fork chapter were busy on Wednesday planting a new pollinator garden behind Southold Town Hall.
The 713-square-foot garden was planned by members of the CAC, including CAC Vice Chair and ReWild volunteer Inga Van Eysden, CAC Chair Carol Brown, Cornell Master Gardener Anne Sande and architect Barbara Friedman, who took a seven-week ReWild garden design course to prepare for the project.
ReWild Long Island provides grants of plants and expert gardeners to help design and plant native gardens in public spaces throughout Long Island.
This garden was just one of 12 being planted throughout Long Island this week, said ReWild Gardens Coordinator Christine Iasso, who was assisted by ReWild Garden Coordinator Danielle Freda in guiding Wednesday’s planting day — it was Ms. Freda’s first garden planting with ReWild.
“I’m excited to come back and see it grow,” she said.
The CAC’s garden design incorporates shrubs including wild bayberry, itea and shrubby St. John’s Wort, switch grass and poverty oat grass, and flowering plants ranging from New York asters to purple coneflowers, blue wild indigo and anise hyssop, yarrow, Bradbury’s mondara, foxgloves, moss phlox, golden Alexanders and slender mountain mint, according to the design provided to The Beacon by Ms. Friedman earlier this spring.
“Everything’s native — mountain mint, some native grasses and plants that provide pollinator support,” said Ms. Sande, as members of the CAC and the town’s Public Works department staked out the garden on March 25. “We wanted it to have as long a bloom time as possible. We wanted to make it beautiful. People have the idea that native gardens are wild and weedy, but every plant we chose has a purpose.”
A new redbud tree will ultimately provide a shaded area, said Ms. Brown on March 25, and a patio built into the garden’s design will provide a seating area, bringing town employees and visitors out into nature.
The Town Hall garden has long been a dream of ReWild Long Island North Fork Chapter’s Co-Chair, Nancy DePas Reinertsen, who toured potential sites owned by Southold Town with Town Supervisor Al Krupski on his first full day in office in 2024.
“I think it’s a great spot. So many people do come into Town Hall from the back,” said Ms. Reinertsen. “The concept has been, all along — let’s make this a place where its a sitting area, where the people who work there can bring their lunch, or if it’s a nice day they can sit with some constituents.”
Mr. Krupski, Town Board member Kate Stevens and Southold Youth Bureau Director Heather Huerta joined the volunteers to help plant and set up a drip irrigation line for the garden on Wednesday.
The Town Hall garden is just one of four ReWild gardens being planted on the North Fork this week in May. Later Wednesday afternoon, ReWild planted a garden at Greenport’s Floyd Memorial Library and tomorrow, Friday, May 8, they’ll be planting gardens at the North Fork Environmental Council Headquarters from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and at The Butterfly Effect Project’s Aquebogue headquarters at 3 p.m. Volunteers are welcome at both plantings — they can sign up here.
If you’re involved with a public space where you’d like to see a ReWild garden, their grant program opens again this fall. Find out more.
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