Archives: SP Testimonials

For nearly 30 years Sue Ihlo has been known as the flower lady in Margaretville. With husband Fred and community volunteers, she has raised funds to fill barrels along village streets with bright flowers that have cheered residents, businesspeople and visitors all summer and into the fall. In August 2020, Sue was recognized with a plaque and words of thanks from friends and village trustees in a new pocket park she helped create adjacent to the Binnekill stream on Bridge Street. The Ihlos (long time proprietors of the Cheese Barrel restaurant and gourmet shop), with the support of Nancy Blauer, the village crew and others, removed a dead tree and added a flowering tree, stone benches and perennials to establish a peaceful sitting area. Like the creators of pollinator gardens elsewhere in the village, Sue has contributed color and character to Margaretville.

The pollinator project reflects my life work — building beautiful gardens using stone, permaculture methods and compost, creating food for pollinators first and then humans second. I want people to know the value of compost (anything goes that can decompose!) and how to be responsible for their own waste stream. Also to understand the value of “weeds” — not only that they are food for our pollinators but valuable medicine for humans.

I would like to use this pollinator spiral garden as an outdoor classroom, a prototype design for homeowners, schools and communities to develop their own gardens. I will be offering classes once the plants have taken root and plan to have a Bee Green event with artists, musicians and speakers.

Thanks to Freshtown, Dade Allen, Deanna Kirk, Ruth Golobin, Linda and Harry McCartney, Picnic, Janet Cowan and the Arkville plant market guy for contributions of money, plants, rocks and compost.

Amaal Bahnas and Sydney Asher, incoming Juniors at Margaretville Central SchooI, are active volunteers with community organizations. Amaal is the student representative on the Fairview Public Library Board of Trustees, and when she was asked to help solicit support for a pollinator garden, she didn’t hesitate. “I don’t have a lot of experience with plants or gardens but it definitely sounded like something cool to try, and maybe attract more people to the library.”
Coordinated by board member Ingrid VanderLeeden, the project took two days of hard physical labor. Both Amaal and her friend Sydney helped, along with other volunteers. Now, says Amaal, “I am working on publicity to obtain donations to cover the costs of the work and materials, as well as future additions to the garden, like maybe a bench or a bike rack.”

We cleared the backyard of the Pine Hill Community Center, an unused empty lot with high weeds and uneven ground, used by no one. We will be building flower boxes, planting bee and butterfly-friendly flowers and shrubs and strewing wildflower seeds.

We are looking forward to using the space to teach kids about their fellow creatures and gardening, and also as a meeting space for our weekly “social circle,” a dynamic bunch of older community members. Many of them live alone and really look forward to this company and conversation.

We may well plant a tree in the “new” backyard to remind folks of the reason we established the Center 20 years ago, to celebrate growing and surviving all that’s come our way during the past two decades, and our plans to serve the community during this tough time and into the future.

My daughter, Katherine McConnell and fiancé Michael VanLeesten came on June 5 to help me celebrate my birthday and also helped gather rocks to expand my pollinator/rock garden, built by Kelley Edkins. They then exchanged vows in the garden on July 26, 2020. I propose a toast to them as being “pollinators of good projects in the world.”

This short film captures the installation of a new pollinator bed featuring a wide variety of native plants including  Baptisia (Baptisia australis),  a flowering perennial plant that is a member of the legume family (which includes peas and beans) and which is native to Eastern and Central North America.  As you walk along the length of the bed, which leads from the top of the driveway down to the Great White Spirit Totem, you can watch butterflies and bees in action as they flit around doing what nature intended.  It is all part of our ongoing work to make Brunel Sculpture Garden as beautiful and welcoming for pollinators as it is for people.

– Cynthia Nikitin
Brunel Sculpture Garden, Route 28, Boiceville