Volunteers help bring Salinas Park back to nature
Ask and they will volunteer! Over 45 volunteers showed up at Salinas Park on Thursday, Oct. 17, to help to plant grasses, shrubs, and trees in the Coastal Community Association’s project to help bring back the habitats for creeping, crawling, hopping, flying critters. Before Hurricane Michael devastated it, the east end of Salinas Park was a wonderful habitat for birds and small critters.
“Indigenous trees that were here that drew the birds and the animals for foraging, nesting, and so on, they’re gone now,” Coastal Community Association board member Janna Rinehart told WMBB. “But I think over time we will be replacing them because we’re all realizing the significance of this place.
“By next spring we should begin to see some great groundcovers and shrubs starting to grow and entice the birds and smaller animals back,” she said. “The trees will take a little longer, but you never plant a tree for yourself. You plant a tree for your children.”
Coastal Community Association of Gulf County (CCA) has been working on this project for over three years. “We received a grant from Duke Energy which we used to plant 98 trees at the first entrance to Salinas two years ago,” said CCA President Pat Hardman. “As these trees have become acclimated to the site, they will be moved to other parts of the park. Individual donations have allowed us to continue with costs associated with watering and preparing for this second phase of the project.”
The Oct. 17 planting was the result of the Port St. Joe Garden Club obtaining a grant from National Garden Clubs, Inc. and working with Sandhills Native Nursery, which designed a landscape plan with over 750 plants ordered for planting. THE CCA got the area cleared and ready to plant with volunteers such as Sunshine Crew PSJ, LLC, a great lawn maintenance company that cleared the pathways.
“We planted 495 plants on Thursday,” said Hardman. “Early in the spring we will have another 250 plants from the garden club part of the project.”
Volunteers are still needed to help with watering and light weed eating.
Call or text Robyn Rennick, 850 527-4671, for more information.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.