Hanover
The School Street Park — as its designers, local landscape architects, gardeners and a public-private volunteer group of town officials are calling it — will be located on an empty town-owned lot between School Street and the municipal parking lot behind Hanover Town Hall.
“Anybody can learn from what we’re doing here,” Larry Litten, a gardener and Sustainable Hanover Committee member who helped plan the park, said in an interview on Thursday.
Conceptual drawings show a hard-pack oval path linking together flower beds, benches, mulch beds, a children’s play area and a rain garden.
Litten said organizers envisioned the School Street Park as one of several recreational areas to be located on both public and private land, all of which would utilize sustainable landscaping techniques.
The flower beds, for instance, would show aspiring gardeners the ecological benefits of promoting native pollinators. The rain garden, located around a town sewer grate, would filter out toxic runoff from the nearby parking lot before it reaches the water system.
Each feature would have learning materials nearby, Litten said, including a sign with a QR code — an image that, when scanned by a smartphone, would connect visitors to more information.
Litten, who lives on School Street, said he also hoped this and future parks would bring community members together. The Sustainable Hanover Committee and other organizers are looking for volunteers to help maintain the park, he said, and already some local businesses have agreed to donate employee volunteer hours.
“It would be a community-building exercise,” Litten said, “as well as a beautification and education resource.”
The currently empty town-owned parcel is located between a private residence and the Edgerton House, an Episcopal campus ministry at Dartmouth College.
Town Manager Julia Griffin said the 0.28-acre parcel, assessed at $164,000, “formerly housed our old community center and is now a rather under-inspired public space.”
Project organizers said the total cost, including expenses covered by the Byrne donation, would be about $88,400. The town will provide the land and site preparation, and the Sustainable Hanover Committee and other organizers will provide the plants, benches and signage.
“Ideally, the park will be constructed next spring,” Griffin added, though Litten said the timing would depend in part on how quickly the park planners could raise money.
Litten said sustainable landscaping practices already were catching on in his neighborhood, where several residents have started implementing those methods in their own gardens.
Other potential sites for sustainability parks are in the Sustainable Hanover Committee’s sights, but none are yet solid enough to identify, according to Litten.
“Stay tuned,” he said.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.