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Volunteers beautifying Press Plaza in downtown Asbury got an early start Saturday morning to beat the heat, which reached 98 degrees by the afternoon.

Today’s tasks included weeding and mulching in the traffic island in the center of the plaza, according to Tom Pivinksi, chairman of the city’s environmental and shade tree commission. Volunteers will add more plantings next week, he said.

“This was the focal point of the downtown,” Pivinski said.

The commission had previously planted sixteen rose bushes in the traffic island. But last Christmas the city’s chamber of commerce removed four of those bushes to install a Christmas tree, said Pivinski, who is still a bit rankled by the episode.

Pivinksi said new chamber president Ray Wertz has donated six new rose bushes. After the weeding and mulching is completed, the commission and other volunteers will “add the rest of the rose bushes and then redesign (the plantings in the island) and hope the chamber doesn’t rip them out again,” he said.

Pivinksi said the commission chose “knockout roses” for Press Plaza because of their heartiness. “You don’t have to do anything to maintain them,” he said.

Participating in the landscaping activity today were five members of the environmental and shade tree commission and four other volunteers. Aside from Pivinski, the group included Gail and Roy Helfrich, Sheila Barry, Nancy Sabino, Jim Henry, Tom Kulesa and Amy Quinn. All are residents of Asbury Park, Pivinksi said.

The environmental and shade tree commission has embarked on other beautification projects including the new community garden outside city hall, the Asbury Park rain garden on Main Street near the James J. Howard Transportation Center and the plantings in the “trolley triangle” at Emory Street and Eighth Ave., which was the terminus of a trolley that once ran the length of the city.

 

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