New Haven Independent

City Point activist Kris Sainsbury (pictured, leading some volunteers on a neighborhood walk) was doing on Wednesday what she does best, bringing people together for a positive goal. The goal is to create a lovely space that the community can use “without fear, and with joy,” she says.

p(clear). Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative GreenSpace program provided the plants and the tools, and the labor came from neighborhood folks and a crew of 30 from Connecticut’s ten American Eagle Outfitters retail stores.

Laura Sherwood (pictured in the middle on the walk), the manager of the Waterbury store, made the connection through the Internet, looking for a volunteer project that was centrally located. When she found the Elm City Parks Conservancy, which oversees many neighborhood beautification projects, she stopped looking. “I liked what I saw because it mixed conservation efforts in an urban area, which I thought was fantastic.”

Two flowering cherry trees (like the ones in Wooster Square) will grace the entrance, growing to form a floral archway every spring, Sainsbury said.

Three girls (Cadi, Rosa and Darneshia, left to right) who live on the street were busy raking and preparing to plant flowers and bushes. Rosa (pictured in the middle), said, “I just come down here to get dirty… and to plant the flowers.” Then all three girls said they also came to help “Miss Kris,” because she has done so much for the neighborhood.

Eula Pendarvis, wielding clippers, lives close by the work site and was happy to be able to help. “If I had an ax, I could chop these things at the root and they wouldn’t come up next year,” she said. Pendarvis added that beautification efforts from a few years ago had been stymied by kids walking through “beating down the plants” and a lot of dogs doing their thing. She hopes the results of their current efforts will be more lasting, because she says she’s learned how to talk to kids so they listen. Click here to hear her thoughts.