Linda Barlock got more than she bargained for. The director of the Potomac Community Center, Barlock walks into a transformed building when she begins work each day.
In two days, the front of the Community Center was transformed from a ragweed-choked mess to a carefully landscaped riverbed scene that stretches along the front of the building, the final result of a beautification project by the Potomac Home and Garden Club.
“I think it’s fantastic. It just creates a whole different look when you walk in the front of the building,” Barlock said.
“First of all, it’s clean — there’s no raggedy old crabgrass or ragweed,” said Sally Reich of the Potomac Home and Garden Club.
Mike Lavin, a landscape designer with the Good Earth Garden Center, worked with assistant Sandra Stevenson and foreman Roy Ellison on the project. The landscaping team began the project on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 22, and finished laying the mulch two days later.
A dry stream bed is the centerpiece of the project, but there are bright annual flowers, as well as evergreens for color throughout the year. Earlier project designs called for improvements only on the left-hand side of the entrance, but Lavin opted to go along the entire front of the building.
“If we did just that one spot, it would have looked like a clean spot on the carpet,” Lavin said.
Lavin said such a project would ordinarily cost $15,000, but Good Earth’s landscape team completed the project for $5,000. The Potomac Home and Garden Club and the Potomac Community Center will split the costs.
The Garden Club welcomes contributions to the fund and has a donation jar at the front desk of the Community Center. It will also hold a bake sale to raise funds for the project on Family Fun Day at the Community Center, Saturday, Oct. 2.