WILMINGTON — The city announced Monday evening it would begin a pilot program to help beautify medians via the community’s help. The meeting was prompted by upheaval along Fifth Avenue in the Brooklyn Arts District, as the city posted notices in October for residents to remove a median garden they had grown of their own accord, without permission, in the last decade.
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Around a dozen people showed up to the Skyline Center to hear Parks and Rec Director of Community Services Amy Beatty unveil a compromise. Based on the city’s 2015 community garden initiative — which allows gardens to be planted on city-owned vacant lots and green spaces — the median program will be open only to groups and organizations, not individuals.
“This could be churches, nonprofits, homeowners associations,” Beatty said. “If you have an ongoing relationship established with a large garden club or some other group, there’s nothing to prohibit them from adopting other areas and working with the neighbors.”
Groups interested in the partnership will have to send a letter of interest by Feb. 2. If no one from the north Fifth Avenue corridor submits one, the current neighborhood garden — which started in a small portion but ended up spreading in medians from Hanover to Bladen streets — will be removed completely.
Beatty clarified, even if a letter of interest came through and was approved, the current Fifth Avenue hardscape and plantings — rose bushes, zinnias, vitex, lantana, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and more — will have to be removed for the new plan.
“In the opinion of our safety officials and traffic engineering staff, it’s creating a hazard,” Beatty said at the meeting. “We would allow residents to reclaim what they have put there, if they wish, and then if they were interested in putting something in lieu of that out there after it’s removed.”
If a letter doesn’t come through, the city will continue maintaining regular upkeep of the north Fifth Avenue median.
While neighbors in attendance expressed general excitement for accommodating beautification desires, many wanted to understand more on how the partnership mechanics would work. Groups submit letters and if approved for the pilot program, they will devise a plan to adopt a median and grow city-approved plants and trees. Beatty said the goal is to stick with native plants and species for the most part — those with easy maintenance and don’t require a lot of watering.
“What we use when we are doing our own capital project with landscaping are native plants, drought-tolerant plantings, because there is not irrigation in these medians,” she said, noting the city would make sure the design plan decided upon is something manageable by the organization.
The group adopting a median bears the burden of service, including costs associated with the plant purchases, hand tools needed to manage growth, and gathering volunteers as needed. Beatty added a nonprofit organization could also apply for grants and suggested, with the city’s help, finding vendors willing to sell foliage at wholesale prices. The city also may be able to help formalize grant applications as needed.
“The parks department has a finite amount of resources with which to maintain all the public areas in the city,” Beatty said, noting it’s only equipped to mow and keep up with some trees and shrubs. “So if the public — or a particular group — is interested in something more elevated than that, then, yes, we would need the cooperation of the public to provide that enhanced level of care.”
As well, a median garden partnership can be revoked if the upkeep isn’t maintained by the group, according to Beatty. The properties then would revert back to city maintenance, but to keep that from happening the group has to comply with city standards, ensuring gardens don’t obstruct visibility and impede sight lines of motorists on the roadways.
The city will be responsible for inspecting the areas regularly to ensure the gardens meet code, do not become unsightly, overgrown and create risks.
Upon being asked if hardscape items would be allowed, Beatty said the city may “entertain it” in some instances, as long as it doesn’t create hazards.
“If somebody wants to put some pavers in a median that we think has the width to support it and not be a danger to anyone, we could look into it,” she cited as an example, also adding large equipment to maintain the garden should be kept off the median, else “we’ve created a different safety problem.”
For eight years, edible, pollinator and ornamental plants grew amid bird baths, rain barrels, benches and the like along the north Fifth Avenue median. The city’s notices placed in October cited three code violations: giving the city manager authority to remove all unauthorized shrubs, plants and trees, prohibiting people from putting benches, furniture, chairs, planters and the like in a public right-of-way, and preventing dumping and littering in public streets and rights-of-way. Yet, residents weren’t issued citations or fines, only required to remove the gardens — which then was put on pause until the city could work on a compromise of some sort.
The median garden was started by Fifth Avenue resident Dina Greenberg, who welcomed neighbors to join her in its cultivation back in 2018. Altogether they contributed plants, garden art and the like, often gardening and chatting together, enjoy the fruits of their labor by cutting flowers and vegetables for their homes or to give away to others. Greenberg said the project boosted neighborhood morale.
She and her husband, Bob — who helped maintain the garden by mowing and weedeating the median as well — started it as a way to thwart trash from being thrown there. And it wasn’t just fast-food containers, bottles and cans being tossed; furniture and mattresses often stayed in the public right-of-way for weeks on end without pickup from the city, they said.
“And it worked,” Bob told Port City Daily last month about the garden — ”the trash-dumping stopped.”
The Greenbergs couldn’t make it to Monday’s meeting, due to Dina being on a Fulbright Scholarship and Bob traveling abroad to visit her for the holidays. However, a few neighbors from Fifth Avenue were in attendance, such as Lloyd Singleton — former director for the NC Cooperative Extension in New Hanover County — who lives on Fifth Avenue.
“I bought my house because of the charm and the obvious community spirit for something like a median garden,” Singleton told Beatty, noting he retired as extension director for the county in April. “I have a lot of landscape maintenance experience — so I understand your woes.”
A board member for the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, Singleton said he saw this as an opportunity to pair up with the city in some areas in order to repopulate the tree canopy citywide, which has decreased from 48% in 2016 to 40% today. In unincorporated New Hanover County, ACFT has reported 3,000 acres of canopy disappeared between 2016 and 2022.
ACFT has worked across the city and county to repopulate trees, with 100 more coming to the Northside/Brooklyn Arts District area on Jan. 10 (volunteer planters accepted here). Singleton confirmed the trees planned in January won’t be going in the medians on Fifth Avenue.
Beatty admitted she thought the alliance would be a “great community partner” for the pilot program and pointed to successful garden agreements already in place, such as at Dock and 11th streets. The Rotary Wheel Garden at Greenfield Lake also is a partnership between the city and Rotary Club, the latter of which pays for landscape design and plant upkeep while the city focuses on mowing the area.
Groups who wish to submit letters of interest by early February will be notified by March 2 whether they’ll partner with the city on a beautification project. By 2027, the city will reassess and decide if new applications should be considered as well.
Surveys are also open on the city’s website here to garner feedback from residents on how well they think the medians are maintained in their neighborhoods.
Have tips or suggestions for Shea Carver? Email shea@localdailymedia.com
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