Home /

Roots for Wells (west installation)

- Here's a great feel-good Friday photo gallery for you. The Roots for Wells program on Wells Avenue is a City of Reno Department of Urban Forestry endorsed program to increase the amount of trees in the Wells Avenue neighborhood. We wanted more trees for our neighborhood, so we got them. 100 trees for east of wells, and 75 trees for west of Wells Avenue, all planted in parkways (the area between the sidewalk and the street) by volunteers. Between the east and west planting sessions, over 170 volunteers helped plant the trees, all residents of this quaint up-and-coming neighborhood. People of all ages and backgrounds had a great time making our neighborhood more beautiful.

It re-iterates the power of an active group. Many City of Reno folks, from Alex our code enforcement officer to Jessica Sferrazza, our council member, to our beat officers from the Reno Police Department, say that the Wells Avenue area has THE most active neighborhood group within the entire city. I'm not trying to brag, I am reinforcing the point that if you have an issue or problem with your neighborhood, reach out to your neighbors, form a group, and show local government you are serious about it.

Because of our power as a group, headed by NABster Barrie Schuster and Dagny Stapleton and Tom Stewart from the Wells Avenue Merchants Association, we've completely transformed this neighborhood, including a Wells Avenue makeover that included art and landscaped medians, new streetlights to light up darkened portions of Holcomb and its side streets to Wells Ave, a neighborhood plan which changed the zoning of Holcomb, Vassar and Wells to support and encourage adaptive-reuse offices from these old homes, a Conservation District plan of which inventorying of homes is now underway, over 170 new trees for our neighborhood, and I could go on and on. Nearly all of this would not have happened had we not approached local government officials as a group.

These great photos are by Susan Mantle, Wells Avenue neighborhood resident.

 

Comments:

Post your comments
Posted by: Jose - 6/23/2010 2:25:07 PM
Not all the volunteers were from the neighborhood. Some were owned rentals in the area and some (like me and my group) just wanted to help out.