President Barb Crowe (center) introduced Joan Routledge from Communities in Bloom (CIB) at our Sept. 19, 2011 meeting. Barb has often admired Joan’s garden at the back of her home by the Lion’s Club. CIB is a group consisting of seven women and Jason Thorne from the Town. They put the plans together and give them to Jason to execute. They have an excellent working relationship with the Town...
Flowers are only a fraction of what CIB does. Other categories include landscape, environment, turf and ground cover, floral arrangements and tidiness. The hardest thing they had to do was create a binder with brochures on Sussex for the judge of CIB . CIB Sussex met with the judges last month, and when they met, they invited the representatives from several other groups in the community. The judges found this to be a great advantage to be able to represent Sussex in that manner.
CIB was a great help with our Rotary Flower wheel in O’Connell Park, and it looks better than ever. She did say that they will start earlier next year and have a few tricks up their sleeve to improve the wheel even more next year. They also said that they would like to see the backside of the mound changed, so it is not just earth and grass. Right now, it is wasted realty, and they would like to do something with the side facing the park itself.
Their other focus is to have a friendly “Welcome to Sussex” once you get into Town to show off the entrance to the Town itself. They feel that the sign off the highway does not accomplish that well enough, so they want to represent better the Town and the area that the town “begins,” so to speak.
Joan is at Sun Nurseries now, and she mentioned that Michelle at Sun told her to let us know that they are always interested in helping out or participating in any fundraisers or projects we are looking at doing in the future.
Lou thanked Joan for coming in to talk to us and especially thanked CIB for helping out with the Flower Wheel.