News : Community Youth Garden rising on site of flooded homes

Laura Chechette and other Oak 7 AmeriCorps team moves a post at Community Youth Garden Monday.

The clothesline post will be converted into a place to hang birdhouses in Community Youth Garden.

Dave Elwood and Will Morris dig the hole as the Oak 7 ladies roll the post.

AmeriCorps Oak 7 members work at the new Youth Garden in Vinton Monday.

Oak 7 member Emily Kentta works with VPRD employee Brian Elwick on Community Youth Garden.

With the help of many donors and volunteers, the Community Youth Garden is taking shape.

Oak 7 members place a post that will be used for birdhouses in the new community garden in Vinton.

These Oak 7 women were determined to move the post themselves...

...and they succeeded in getting it to its new location.

Soon the post set by Oak 7 members will be a place to hang birdhouses in community garden.

Just under two years ago, the area was flooded, covered with a few feet of muddy, messy waters that destroyed dozens of homes in Vinton.

But now, the corner of Second Street and Fourth Avenue is turning into a Community Youth Garden. The Vinton Parks and Recreation Department, the Benton County Extension and 4-H programs, and a variety of local donors and volunteers are turning the property into a place of beauty.

A variety of plants and flowers is growing again at the Garden. Hostas have been moved into the shaded area, and are thriving. A small sweet corn field has been plowed and soon will be planted.

On Monday, members of the AmeriCorps NCCC Oak 7 team took a break from another flood-related project — turning a flooded garage into a riverside pavilion — to help with the garden.

Team Leader Lindsay Ward and her grey-shirted team members helped build elevated garden beds. Several of them also moved a heavy clothesline post, still in its large concrete base, to a new hole, where the post will become a place to hang birdhouses.

The members of Oak 7 include Laura Chechette, Kara Hartnett, Judie Murphy Katya Muller, Will Morris and Dave Elwood. Oak 7 recently returned from a project in Mobile, Alabama, where they helped with a Habitat for Humanity house project.

The Oak 7 members are nearing the end of their service; graduation for the second class of AmeriCorps members at the North Central Region Campus in Vinton is set for Aug. 5.