By Lee Reinsch
Correspondent
DE PERE – If all goes well with the newly dedicated Community Gardens at Lions Trailside Park this summer, De Pere’s west side could be next in line for a garden project.
“The Lions Club, (UW) Extenstion and parks department talked and at the end of the summer, if all goes well with this pilot program, we’ll talk again about one possibly for the west side,” said Marty Kosobucki, director of De Pere parks and recreation. “That’s always been the goal, to have one on the east side and one on the west.”
So far, even though nothing’s growing there yet, it’s been a success, if numbers are anything to go by.
The plots went fast – before last week’s Community Garden grand opening, 76 percent of the garden plots were spoken for.
As for potential locations for a west-side garden?
The parks department has two south of Scheuring Road in mind:
• Samantha Park, 2245 Samantha St., in the southern portion of De Pere’s west side, midway between Lawrence Drive and American Boulevard.
• Patriot Park, 1101 Colleen Lane, between Bunker Hill Court and Lost Dauphin Road.
One issue with Samantha Park is that it lacks sufficient parking, Kosobucki said.
The parks department considered Southwest Park, between Interstate 41 and Lawrence Drive, north of Little Rapids Road and south of Southbridge Road, but discarded the idea due to its remoteness.
“With the guidelines that the UW-Extension has, they want to put the gardens in a populated area, and while Southwest Park has plenty of room, it’s not quite the location we want,” Kosobucki said.