Planting goodwill on Wadmalaw Island
Garden Club of Charleston landscapes property for Sea Island Habitat for Humanity
Edward Fennell
The Post and Courier
Kennitha LaBoard and her children — Z'aire, 2, (right); Dominic, 5; and Tremayne, 10 months — check out a vegetable garden planted by the Garden Club of Charleston at their Habitat for Humanity home on Wadmalaw Island.
Edward Fennell
The Post and Courier
Ripening tomatoes hang from vines planted by the Garden Club of Charleston at the Habitat home of Kennitha LaBoard. She said the family will be grateful for the fresh fruits and vegetables the garden will provide all summer.
Edward Fennell
The Post and Courier
Two-year-old Z'aire LaBoard is ready to roll on his toy tractor and to continue the landscaping efforts the Garden Club of Charleston started at his Wadmalaw Island home.
Edward Fennell
The Post and Courier
Becky Greene (left) and Sue Lawley, both of the Garden Club of Charleston, show 2-year-old Z'aire LaBoard some of the flowering plants the club put in place beside the LaBoards' home.
Edward Fennell
The Post and Courier
Kennitha LaBoard (right) and her family — Tremayne (in stroller), Z'aire (next to LaBoard) and Dominic — on the steps of their Habitat for Humanity Home on Wadmalaw Island. Their acre of property was landscaped as part of a Garden Club of Charleston annual project.
Z'aire LaBoard is just 2, but after watching the Garden Club of Charleston put flowers, trees, bushes and fruit- and vegetable-bearing plants around his Wadmalaw Island home, the little lad was ready to do some more landscaping on his toy tractor.
The boy and his toy will have to wait a little longer for the chance. The garden club did a thorough job this spring landscaping the Sea Island Habitat for Humanity property.
The club considered some sites close by but settled on the LaBoard property for its annual spring landscaping project.
The site is 30 miles from Charleston, but in taking on the project, the club extended its outreach while fulfilling a commitment to the National Garden Club's Open Your Hearts and Hands Project, said outgoing Charleston club President Becky Greene.
"We are a working garden club," added club member Sue Lawley, who headed up the landscaping project. "This is one small project. We maintain five gardens in town."
Lawley got several businesses on James and Johns islands involved and organized the volunteer labor force.
For Kennitha LaBoard, who owns the three-bedroom home that was landscaped, the club planted more than just attractive and functional vegetation all around the property. The club planted a lot of goodwill, she said.
LaBoard is the mother of Z'aire, 5-year-old Dominic and 10-month-old Tremayne. Mom said she's grateful for the entire project.
The decorative plants will improve the exterior views, and the tomatoes, peppers, watermelons and other fruits and vegetables the family will harvest will make delicious salads and side dishes. The crops also will help keep down the family's grocery bill, she predicted.
"Tremayne and I eat a lot of spinach and a lot of tomatoes," LaBoard said.
A lifelong Wadmalaw Island resident, LaBoard works at Sea Island Habitat's ReStore. When she heard that the garden club had chosen a Sea Island home for a landscaping project, she at first was unaware that the site was her home.
Lawley said the club in the past has chosen Habitat of Charleston sites for its landscaping projects. "But they didn't have a home available for us to landscape in this time period," she said.
LaBoard, who moved with her children into the Richard McCloud Lane Habitat home this year, was at work at the ReStore when she learned in a discussion with Greene that her home was the one the club chose for its 2009 project.
Greene also didn't know at first that she was talking to the occupant of the home that was going to be landscaped. Greene recalled the conversation after telling LaBoard the project was for a Sea Island home.
"Is it on Wadmalaw?" LaBoard asked. "Is it at McCloud Lane?"
Yes and yes.
They put two and two together.
Greene and Lawley said the home sites for most of the previous landscaping projects usually were small. After choosing the Wadmalaw site, the club realized the lots there are much bigger than what they usually work on in Charleston.
Zoning at the Wadmalaw site requires that new single-family homes occupy a lot size of at least 1 acre, the women said. So the club faced a daunting task with a much larger project than usual, involving not only much more ground to work with but also a larger budget and more labor, they said.
"We had in the budget a tiny little yard, and we ended up with an acre," Greene said.
The club put in $1,500 for the Wadmalaw project, "And we spent it all," Greene noted.
Donors helped, including the Hyams Garden and Accent Store on Folly Road, which provided 26 plants valued at more than $500, and Sodbusters, which installed four pallets of St. Augustine grass.
All Seasons Mulch delivered 75 bales of pine straw to the site, and Lowe's on James Island and in West Ashley and Home Depot in West Ashley all provided discounted plants.
The actual planting took place in mid-April over a span of a little more than two days. But a lot more time than that went into planning, purchasing and transporting supplies and tools and organizing the volunteer labor force, the club members said.
"It was a gargantuan effort on everyone's part, and you came away feeling really good about doing something nice for someone else," said Barbara Heddinger, who handles public relations for the club.
For more about the garden club, see http://ocw.esiteasp.com/ gardenclubofcharleston/home.nxg. For more about Sea Island Habitat, see www.seaisland habitat.org/index.htm.
Reach Edward C. Fennell at efennell@postandcourier.com or 937-5560.
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