Volunteering Spotlight: Park Improvements Help The Entire Community

***Guest blog by Davis Braun, Buckhead resident and Life Scout on his way to Eagle***

The Garden at 684 sits at the center of North Buckhead and is less than a mile from where Boy Scout Troup 370 meets each week. I have passed by the park thousands of times heading to school, training for cross-country, or just walking our dog. However, it was not until my father and I ran into Denise Starling, Livable Buckhead’s executive director, as she was working at the park one afternoon last spring that I realized it would be the perfect site for my Eagle Scout project.

An Eagle Scout Service Project is the opportunity for a Scout to demonstrate leadership while performing a project for the benefit of their community. Completing an Eagle Project is a requirement for Scouts to attain the Eagle Scout rank. For my project, the goals were to remove invasive species from along Little Nancy Creek, which runs next to the park, and to build pads for each of the six picnic tables painted by artist Wallace Kelly.

First, was the stream-side restoration, which involves the removal of invasive species from the riparian zone along the creek. Working with a dedicated group of volunteer Scouts, neighbors, friends, and teachers from my school, we removed the privet bushes, mimosa trees, and kudzu vine that had completely enveloped the area.

Next, we built the pads for the picnic tables and filled them with gravel to make the area easier to maintain and eliminate a possible hiding spot for snakes. These 6’x 8′ areas required 6″x 6″ x 8′ pressure-treated timbers and 10″ galvanized spikes to secure them as well as enough gravel to fill each space. The picnic tables and additional string lighting add an attractive place to spend time outdoors and define a place for community gatherings.

The Garden at 684 and adjacent Mountain Way Common are a tremendous asset to the community. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to make the park more accessible and excited to see how it will be used both now, and in the future, both by the neighborhood and those who will use PATH400 when it is completed.

Thank you to Arrow Waste for providing a roll-off dumpster, Atlanta Landscape Materials and Lowe’s for the materials, and most of all, Mrs. Starling and Livable Buckhead for giving me the chance to support our community greenspaces and helping make my goal of becoming an Eagle Scout a reality.

 

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The Garden at 684 is made possible by the Friends of Mountain Way Common and a generous donation by Mid Broadwell Partnership, which donated a 0.56-acre parcel at the corner of N. Ivy Rd. and Mountain Dr. The donation was initiated years ago when Dan Weede, the former executive director of Friends of Mountain Way Common, approached Robert Green about the possibility of purchasing the land. Green and the other members of Mid Broadwell Partnership — the estate of Jack Bradford and Gordon Mosley — decided to donate the land instead, and Livable Buckhead facilitated the process in the closing months of 2017.

This isn’t Troop 370’s first contribution to Mountain Way Common. In 2019, Friends of Mountain Way Common received a $3,000 Restoration and Resilience Grant from the National Environmental Education Foundation, with major funding support from Toyota Motor North America. These funds supported the reforestation effort for the Hornaday Project led by Matthew Keagle, Eagle Scout of Troop 370. Matthew and Mountain Way Common leaders have received a total of $12,000 for reforestation efforts at the park. With a grant from Trees Atlanta, Keagle has planted 43 native hardwood trees, and the additional grant allowed him to plant another 100 saplings, along with native flowers and woody shrubs.