[SVDC 464] Congrats to the Village Gardeners

[Brian Berg]

Congratulations to our Village Gardeners in making this week's *Saratoga
News* (with a B+W photo) as well as yesterday's *San Jose Mercury News* (p.
E5, with a color photo).  The story is online at

http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14494654?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
and is reproduced below.

SVDCers amongst the nine VGers pictured include Jill Hunter, Laurel Perusa
and Loren Cook.

p.s. I have heard nothing more about the US Bank robbery on Friday, so I
don't know if anyone was apprehended or not.

Saratoga, how does your garden grow? Very well, thanks to Village Gardeners

By Brian Babcock

bbabcock at community-newspapers.com
Posted: 02/28/2010 11:00:00 PM PST
Updated: 03/01/2010 07:31:40 PM PST

Each Tuesday a small group of Saratoga residents collect along Big Basin Way
and quietly go about their business. This group—mostly women—is unassuming
and would probably go unnoticed if not for the watering cans, brooms and
fresh flowers in each one's hands.

The mission: Keep the few blocks of Big Basin Way from Blaney Plaza to Sixth
Street as clean and attractive as possible. And watering the trees, planting
new flowers and picking up discarded cigarette butts are all a part of the
bigger picture.

The group's name is the Village Gardeners and it is celebrating its fifth
anniversary this month.

"I kept reading about how ugly the Village was," founding member and
Saratoga City Councilwoman Jill Hunter remembered. "And a lady told me that
there was a group in San Jose called The Gardening Guerillas that would
garden somewhere in San Jose every week." Hunter said that her time on the
elementary school board had taught her that there were plenty of people
willing to volunteer for various activities. They just needed to be asked.

So Hunter adopted the name The Gardening Guerillas for the fledgling group
and a few people met at the International Coffee Exchange on the first
Tuesday in March of 2005 to begin beautifying the street.

"It's been five years and we're still going strong, and we'll continue to go
strong," Hunter said. "I've been doing volunteer work for 45 years, and I've
enjoyed the Village Gardeners more than anything. It's far exceeded what I
thought it would."

What keeps the group going strong is the dedication and devotion that the
volunteers have for keeping the Village a clean and vibrant-looking part of
the city.

One of those volunteers is Laurel Perusa, who signed on with the group in
May 2005.

"I feel the concept of community gardeners is not a new concept but is an
important concept," Perusa said. "It can truly create a lovely ambiance and
it also creates a sense of community."

She added that any city could use village gardeners in some type of
capacity. As cities find it harder to pay to keep up their parks and other
areas, there are plenty of people willing to volunteer to keep an area clean
and lively, she said.

Loren Cook, who is one of the original members of the group, is one of those
people in Saratoga. Cook signed up to help with the group's effort after
seeing a homemade sign by Hunter on a window at Curves, where both Cook and
Hunter were members.

The group started small but gradually grew, Cook said, "kind of like the
garden." Whether from Saratoga residents or tourists, Cook said the members
are always receiving compliments for their hard work. Merchants have also
started to chip in by watering plants and cleaning their area on the street.

"People tend to maintain it because when something's pretty they don't want
to mess it up. Beauty begets more beauty. And that's really what we're
striving to do," Cook said.

One of the group's newest members, Paula Cappello, an avid gardener with her
own flower and vegetable gardens in her yard, didn't even know the group
existed until last year.

"It's terrible because I didn't know anything about them. I worked outside
of Saratoga and would just get in my car every day and drive to work. I
didn't spend much time in the Village except for the weekends," she said.

But when she heard about it she thought, "That's a worthwhile project, and
it was of my interest. There was no downside." Most of the volunteers agree.

"We just really like each other, we like working together. We all believe in
the same things. We all love to garden. And we all want the Village to look
beautiful," Hunter said.

Copyright © 2010 - San Jose Mercury News
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