MANSFIELD — Bill Collins has retired from the Kingwood Center Gardens. But his love for flowers and plants has roots that go much deeper.
Collins and other members of the Mansfield Men’s Garden Club displayed that love for horticulture on Wednesday.
Members of the club — celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2023 — weeded, cleaned up, dug holes and then planted about 2,000 new plants at the Richland Carrousel Park in downtown Mansfield.
For more information on the Mansfield Men’s Garden Club and all of its activities, visit the club website at http://mansfieldmensgardenclub.com/.
You can also find the club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/818967012914226
“Bill designed the layout, picking all of the types of flowers and plants,” said Doug Versaw, now in his third year as the club president.
“We can do this in three or four hours, depending on the help. And today, it looks like we’ve got some pretty good help.”
Collins, whose college degree is in horticulture, said the ground on the northeast side of the park at 75 N. Main St. gets a great deal of light. He selected and ordered the plants to be used, getting them from Kingwood and also Richardson’s Greenhouse in Loudonville.
“Because this is all sunny, we’ve got some taller things. We have bananas and we have cyperius, which is related to the papyrus. We have a number of grasses.
“Then I fill in with things like impatiens and begonias and ageratums, things that will do well in bloom and really accentuate this site,” said Collins, a club member for 36 years.
The club as a whole took over the annual Richland Carrousel Park project in 2017, though member Jack Bright handled it largely on his own for many years, according to Versaw.
The work at the carousel is just one of many activities for the club of about 50 members, Versaw said, including participation in the annual “Downtown Mansfield Beautification Day.”
“We’ve been doing a lot of new things and making it a lot of fun. There’s a lot of programs that we have. We’ve added some new programs.
“Not only do we do the Carrousel Park every year, we also have the beautification awards that we’ve been doing every year. I think this is probably the 46th year that we’ve done that,” he said.
The club, which has about eight membership meetings per year, is accepting nominations for that awards program, which has categories for residential and commercial/civic efforts.
The deadline for nominations is July 1 and awards will be presented in September during the club’s annual Corn Roast Awards Dinner at Kingwood.
Fliers with nomination forms have been distributed to area greenhouses and are also available on the club website at http://mansfieldmensgardenclub.com/abanform1.jpg.
Versaw said the club is always looking for new members. And you don’t need a green thumb to join.
“We’d love to help you learn. There’s a lot of people that have retired and wondered what to do, and they like to garden, so we’ve got a lot of new members,” he said.
“We’ve also gotten a lot of (new) younger members, which is really exciting.
“It says Mansfield Men’s Garden Club. But we have members from all over the county. You don’t have to be a resident of Mansfield. You can be from anywhere in the area.
“We’ve got a lot of good members. A lot of members who are involved in gardening,” Versaw said.
