From: "Barron County Historical Society" <museum1@chibardun.net> Subject: RE: How do you manage your grounds? Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:47:56 -0500 Message-ID: <005a01d4024b$9926da10$cb748e30$@chibardun.net>
Hello All,
The Barron County Historical Society has a large campus (I believe it is
about 30 acres), so grounds upkeep is quite a chore. The land is owned
by the county and we have a 99 year lease. The county keeps the streets
plowed. The volunteer maintenance crew (about 15 retired gentlemen)
take care of mowing, garbage removal, and about a million other things.
In the spring, many schools send students to help rake and clean up the
grounds for their service day. A local church comes one evening every
spring to finish the clean-up. This year, they brought their youth
group, so we had 63 people from that one church! There is another large
church in our area that asks their members to do a service day each
spring, and some years we have requested their help. Generally, they
paint a building.
Last year, a family decided that they wanted to do a service day while
the children, grandchildren, and spouses were home on vacation. There
were about 35 family members showed up to paint the inside of our church
and scrape the town hall in preparation of being painted.
The local boy scouts and girl scouts have also helped us with things.
They have helped with brushing out our woods, building displays, and
even provided bodies when we were short on volunteers for events. One
scout made a couple of rain barrels this spring. He even gave them a
wood-looking finish, so they wouldn’t look out of place if we
placed them in the Pioneer Village.
School Service hours have been wonderful. The first couple of schools
have been coming for years, but a couple of years ago, we put out
feelers to see if there were other schools that did this and that might
be interested in sending students to us. It turns out that pretty much
all of the schools do that kind of thing now. It sure wouldn’t
hurt to ask your local schools. We try to be very organized and have a
lot of adult supervision.
Many of our volunteers are also master gardeners, so the Master Gardener
Volunteers have taken our grounds on as a project. We have a rain
garden, heritage vegetable garden, a nostalgic flower garden, plantings
in front of some of the historical buildings in our 1880’s
village, a flower bed surrounding the Cultural Arts Building and picnic
area, and front of Jerome Hall. There is also a large flower bed
between two of the large display buildings. They also maintain pots of
flowers that are set around the grounds. This year, those pots are
filled with vegetables, in honor of the victory gardens that were
planted during the world wars.
We feel extremely lucky to have the Master Gardeners to help us. Our
grounds are beautiful, and we get lots of compliments on them. If your
county has a Master Gardener organization, I would encourage you to
reach out to them. Each volunteer donates a minimum of 25 hours per
year, in order to maintain their membership in that organization. Many
volunteer a lot more than that. We generally have 4 or 5 gardeners at
least half a day each week.
Tammy Schutz
Barron County Historical Society
From: localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu
[mailto:localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu] On Behalf Of Katie
Kirby
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 10:20 AM
To: localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
Subject: How do you manage your grounds?
Hi list serve! The board at my organization is looking into options for
managing our grounds.
Does your organization hire a grounds keeper? Does a local government
provide one for you? Do volunteers do all of the grounds keeping? If it
is some combination of the three, what are the percentages? What has
your experience been with how it works out for you?
Thank you!