GREENSBORO — Volunteers are waiting when the truck arrives, and soon the smell of pine ropes and Fraser fir wreaths permeates the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market.
Evergreen.
The fragrant mountain boughs are the center of Greensboro Beautiful’s largest single fundraiser. They are also a great metaphor for the organization itself. In 45 years, it has remained green, vital and growing.
As it begins its 46th fiscal year, the nonprofit is continuing to evolve and grow, ramping up its wreath sale into a Holiday Greenery Festival. The annual event, which opens at 8 a.m. today, now includes more wreaths and greenery for sale, 25 craft vendors, food and music.
In the coming year, the group will open a first-of-its-kind visitor center at its newest garden — Gateway Gardens. The group also is taking an active role in one of the city’s most contentious issues — tree-trimming by Duke Energy.
It’s all part of what is really a very simple mission — keeping Greensboro beautiful.
What would Greensboro look like without Greensboro Beautiful?
“Not so nice,” says Carolyn Allen, immediate past chairwoman of the group. She became familiar with Greensboro Beautiful when she served as mayor starting in 1993, and has been an active member ever since.
Greensboro Beautiful is best known for its four public gardens: Tanger Family Bicentennial Garden, the Greensboro Arboretum, the Bog Garden and Gateway. But most people don’t know when they drive down Market Street, Bessemer Avenue, Holden Road or Cone Boulevard that they have Greensboro Beautiful to thank for the trees that line those medians.
“Planting trees, landscaping projects, there’s probably gazillions of examples of that,” says Mike Cusimano, city urban forester. “They help maintain the balance between the need for development and the need to keep trees and beautiful landscapes in Greensboro.”
Greensboro Beautiful was an outgrowth of City Beautiful, which began in 1961 with financing from the city, garden clubs, merchants and the Chamber of Commerce. The organization as we know it today was incorporated as a private nonprofit in 1968.
City Beautiful continued as a branch of the Parks and Recreation Department, working with Greensboro Beautiful to coordinate projects and provide staffing for landscaping projects and garden maintenance.
This unique public/private partnership — established years before such things were common — has been one of the keys to group’s success, says Kathy Cates, director of City Beautiful.
“So much has happened because we were able to mesh the two so well,” Cates says.
Another key to success has been a veritable army of volunteers.
“And these are people who have volunteered for 30 years,” Cates says. “We couldn’t survive without our volunteers.”
That group now numbers 3,500, donating 3,900 hours of service per year.
People like Becca Pritchard, who says she’s been involved with the group, well, forever. She was one of many who donned gloves on Wednesday to help unload wreaths and ropes.
“I’m allergic to greenery, but I just take my meds and come on out because it’s so much fun,” Pritchard says.
Greensboro Beautiful has also been blessed with strong leaders, says current chairman Robert Capen: “People who have a real vision of what they wanted to happen in Greensboro.”
In 1968, the group started with an operating budget around $30,000 and a 12-member board of directors. Today, it has a $150,000 budget and two boards with 75 members between them. They’ve raised millions more in capital campaigns to build the gardens.
Greensboro Beautiful has four tree-planting programs: memorial and honor trees, Arbor Day tree planting, neighbor grants and the NeighborWoods Community Tree Planting. It sponsors community clean-ups and medicine disposal events, and holds classes in composting, organic lawn care and growing vegetables.
The gardens also host signature events, such as Art in the Arboretum and the Parisian Promenade in the Bicentennial Garden.
Though the group has met with opposition to a few projects over the years, it has generally solved them by being responsive to community needs and desires.
“One of the reasons we’ve survived so long is that we have always worked in a cooperative manner, not a confrontational manner,” Capen says.
They will be bringing that approach to one of the city’s hot-button issues — tree-trimming.
Its “Right Plant, Right Place” program will provide outreach to neighborhoods dealing with tree loss from Duke Power’s tree-trimming. They’ll provide residents with information on plants and trees that can be planted beneath power lines without posing future problems, information on trees that shouldn’t be planted there, and suggestions for other locations on their property that would be more appropriate for canopy trees.
“We want to try to turn this into a positive by approaching it in an educational manner,” Capen says.
Cusimano is particularly pleased about Greensboro Beautiful taking a lead role in the problem because of its expertise and its community capital.
“They are good at bringing the community together and forming relationships,” Cusimano says. “When they speak, a lot of people listen. They have that presence in the community. People know what they’ve done and accomplished in the past.
“It’s an honor to work with them.”
