Q. In Mary Beth Doyle Park there is a rain barrel that is not hooked up to anything—there is no way for water to go into it. And it is attached to a fence. Any idea what it does?
A. A memorial tree was planted in this park in June, explains Melissa Schacht, who coordinates the city’s memorial tree donations. The watering of a newly planted tree is very important during its first growing season to ensure it gets established well.
Mary Beth Doyle Park does not have a water spigot, or even a roof to harvest rainwater from, so some creativity was required. Staffers fill this barrel every two or three weeks from a truck-mounted 100-gallon tank, and a volunteer draws from it to water the tree (Schacht also runs the city’s Adopt-a-Park volunteer program).
“Of course there is the stream and pond in Mary Beth Doyle, but the water level can vary significantly and accessing it to fill a bucket would be challenging,” Schacht emails. “The barrel will be removed after this fall and might reappear for a short period in 2021.”
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Late last night in the dark my niece and I went looking for the tree. It is hard to tell which tree it is — none of the trees right by the rain barrel looks like a memorial tree. There were some trees across the parking lot that seemed like possibilities. None had a plaque, but in the dark it looked like one tree had a burlap sack over its roots and a rock with a word on it that we couldn’t read. So, we were not sure that we had found it, but — maybe!