Girl Scout helps beautify Medford Park
Over this past summer, Medford Girl Scout Sharon Pantano earned her Girl Scout Silver Award by improving Medford Park, located by Bunning Field off of Mill Street in Medford. Between park cleanups, plantings, and species identification signs, she has played a part in the beautification of Medford.
Through a series of park cleanups in which she cleared out branches, pulled weeds, raked leaves and cleaned up litter with her Girl Scout troop in both Tomlinson and Medford Park, Sharon earned a Medford Township Clean Communities Grant that helped fund her project. With the money, Sharon added plantings by the entrance to the pavilion in Medford Park. After taking soil samples to determine chemical and acid contents, she planted two Inkberry Holly shrubs and two High Bush Blueberry shrubs, which are both plants native to the New Jersey Pinelands. These, she hopes, will help brighten up the park.
Additionally, after researching and analyzing the trees in Medford Park, Sharon customized, purchased, and installed twenty species identification tags to identify the various trees in the park. Some of these include the Sweet Gum and Bitternut Hickory. Overall, her signs feature twelve different species of trees which she thinks, are very interesting to learn about.
Throughout her project, Sharon worked with Beth Portocalis from the Medford Township Department of Parks and Neighborhood Services who acted as her mentor, Judy Scherf from The Medford Clean Communities Program, Jeanette Johnson, the former president of The Pinelands Garden Club, and Amy Karpati, the Director for Conservation Science in the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. She also obtained help from those in her Girl Scout Troop №22323 including Maya Norton, Fabiana Ferraiolo, and Cassie Oleniacz, as well as from her friend, Autumn Keane.
“I really hope this brings more attention to the park,” Sharon said at the completion of her 50-hour Silver Award Take Action project. “Medford Park, like many other parks is underused but it really is a beautiful place.”
