Our New Community Garden! Check It Out!!

NOMA has a new community garden...thanks to the City of Salisbury Planning and Code Enforcement departments, and the many volunteers that came out early Friday morning bearing plants and garden tools!

We transformed an ugly corner into one of the most cheerful spots along the North Main Street corridor into the City of Salisbury NC!

108 W Steele Street (and 902 N Main as it is known on the North Main National Register of Historic Places Inventory) at the corner of Steele and Main Streets is the former site of the circa 1900 Miller-Cress House and the circa 1930 art deco Bowers Performance Shop that both experienced tragic fires in 2013 and 1998 respectively.

A blight to the North Main Neighborhood, neighbors worked with Code Enforcement and Salisbury Police to have the damaged structures removed. And extensive demolition project was completed in the early months of 2015. The demolition project focused, of course, on removal of the damaged buildings, and regrading and reseeding this large corner lot.

The former service station parking lot, a small concrete pad, remains intact at the corner. Two right-of-way islands remained between the sidewalk and North Main Street, that had fallen to neglect after the properties were abandoned and subsequently demolished. Weeds, aging landscape materials, and demolition debris littered the two 'tree lawns' (or what author Evelyn J. Hadden calls the 'Hell Strip' in her book "Hell Strip Gardening"!).

NOMA residents attending the monthly SNAG meetings the Salisbury Police host (Salisbury Neighborhood Action Group) requested that this be addressed as the final step in restoring the aesthetics of this unfortunate lot.

In working with Code Enforcement, we said that if the City would help us clean up these two areas, NOMA would pitch in and help with plants and muscle power.

We did it!!!

On Friday May 22nd, we hosted a MULCH DAY! The City dropped off a HUGE load of mulch, and prepped the two areas by clearing the debris and spreading a bit of it for starters.

The plant donations started pouring in:

Lavender plants, daylilies, iris, hosta, coreopsis, rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan), liriope (monkey grass), dianthus (carnations), alcea (hollyhock, and nigella (Love-in-a-Mist) came from NOMA residents and beyond!

 An entire flat of melampodium,or butter daisies, came from Carolina Lily!

Two large burning bushes that turn a brilliant red in the fall were donated! (Thank you, Sean Meyers!)

Godley's Garden Center donated a beautiful crepe myrtle tree to match the existing corridor of crepe myrtles long the avenue.

Ivies and euonymus arrived, as well as blue-blooming spiderwort!  We even got tomato seedlings!  What's a community garden without a few edibles?!

By 8:00 AM, the sun was shining brilliantly and it was a thankfully cool and humidity free morning ~ a glorious day as volunteers began to arrive with rakes & shovels, and more plants.

Coffee, donated by our Koco Java, was hot and fresh on a neighbor's porch, along with some Krispy Kreme donuts for hungry gardeners!

What a day for a community garden!

All morning, people stopped by to say hello, drop off plants, or just waved to our worker bees ~ giving us the 'thumbs-up'!

By 11:00 AM, as the sun rose high in the sky, we tidied up and could stand back with pride and look at what is no longer a 'hell strip' on North Main Street!

Thanks to volunteers, Koco Java, Godley's, City of Salisbury ~ we have a community garden to be proud of.  Thank you so much for showing NOMA the love!!

Did you miss it?  We will still take plants if you want to participate!  The more the merrier!

The areas will take anything that can withstand serious (10+ hours) of blazing sunshine and don't require daily watering or fussing!  (Think planted medians on the Interstates! No one is watering/weeding there and they look fantastic!)

Thank you to all who help make our wonderful downtown neighborhood a great place to live!  We ♥ NOMA!!!