VERGENNES — The Ferrisburgh-based Vermont Nursery & Landscape Association last fall launched the Vermont Blooms Initiative, a planting program meant to improve and enhance public outdoor spaces across our towns and throughout Vermont. VNLA members choose small projects they identify and then the association and its members help secure the plants, materials and labor needed to complete these projects.

These projects are intended to be relatively simple and easy to implement.

This Saturday, July 31, a project will be worked on in Vergennes from 8 a.m. to noon. Member Ashley Robinson and Gabe Bushey (both residents of Vergennes) were approached by Dawn Wagner, business owner of The Daily Chocolate, to collaborate on a volunteer planting project in a newly established “bump out” planting space located at the corners of Main and Green streets, which will serve to enhance and beautify this public space. The Daily Chocolate and other volunteers Dawn will be organizing will be maintaining the planting. Money for the plants, materials, and labor have been donated by the following VNLA members and it is expected that a few more will help with the installation on Saturday:

Ashley Robinson, Landscape Designer, Vergennes; City of Vergennes; Crafted Landscapes LLC, Gabe Bushey, Vergennes; Greenhaven Gardens & Nursery, New Haven; Horsford Gardens & Nursery, Charlotte; Red Wagon Plants, Hinesburg; Rocky Dale Gardens, Bristol; Daily Chocolate.

Last fall VNLA completed Vermont Blooms projects at Jeffersonville Family House at Mann’s Meadow, Vergennes Union Elementary School, and the Platt Memorial Library in Shoreham. Read more about those projects and see photos online at vnlavt.org/2021/01/14/vermont-blooms-initiative.