School Street Sustainability Park

Sustainable Hanover’s Landscape Committee is pleased to announce that Hanover’s School Street Sustainability Park has grown into the inviting, open, natural green space that we had envisioned over six years ago! Heat, drought, monster weeds and then COVID made for challenging early years.  The Park is within a few minutes’ walk of shops, banks and about two dozen restaurants, food shops and cafes.  You will find it between #6 School Street and the parking lot behind Molly’s Restaurant and Town Hall. 

The Goals of the School Street Sustainability Park are to:

•    Contribute to Hanover’s resiliency to climate change;

•    Create a healthy habitat for people, plants, and wildlife including butterflies, bees, birds, insects and soil microorganisms;

•    Model sustainable landscape practices;

•    Demonstrate native plants suitable for residential properties;

•    Accommodate many different activities;

•    Require as little maintenance as possible.

The Sustainability Park is more than just an open space—it is an oasis surrounded by nature. For example, on one peaceful evening, I noticed a mother reading a book to her child while they both sat on the Park’s granite Eastern Box Turtle (which was created by Vermont sculptor Heather Milne Ritchie). For people of all ages, the Park is an excellent green space for sitting quietly or playing, swinging and taking a coffee or lunch break. We’ve observed many people working on their laptops while sitting on our Hanover-designed and handmade benches or picnic table. Hanover Parks and Recreation Department sponsors periodic activities for young families here as well.

The Park’s flowering shrub and tree collection introduces visitors to specific native woody plants that provide beauty, shelter and food—nectar, pollen, fruit and nuts for pollinators, insects and wildlife throughout the year. Descriptive plant labels identifying species with their special attributes will be coming soon.

To meet low maintenance requirements, the Park contains only a few herbaceous plants. However, daffodils in spring, flowering shrubs all summer, colorful fruit and leaves in autumn create a diverse and interesting sustaining landscape.  The park’s cheerful perennial plants include native Black-eyed Susans or Orange Coneflowers (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’) and Junior Walker Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii ‘Junior Walker’). These perennials are deer and rabbit resistant, attract bees and butterflies, and provide winter birds food.

I once heard an horticultural instructor declare that we should “feed the soil, not the plants!” In some ways, he was right. For instance, the use of natural, unadulterated woodchip mulch is a sustainable landscape practice worth learning about. In the Sustainability Park’s planting beds, Hanover wood chip mulch sustains and improves the soil’s structure and helps to create a beneficial environment for roots and the soil’s complex organisms. As the mulch decomposes, it improves the soil’s organic structure and reduces the release of carbon into the atmosphere. Mulch also maintains soil moisture levels, moderates soil temperatures, suppresses weeds, and prevents damage to tree trunks from mowers and string trimmers.

The park’s river-stone stream bed is a small model of sustainable drainage. Rain gardens and grassy rounded river stone swales (open channels that collect water from hard surfaces) help to collect stormwater coming from impermeable surfaces like roofs, pavement, sidewalks, driveways and lawns. They reduce the speed of the flow allowing some water to infiltrate or soak into the ground, supporting plant life and recharging groundwater. By slowing stormwater speed, the system filters out pollutants such as phosphorus, metals and oils and allows sediments to settle out of the water.

Come find Hanover’s  School Street Sustainability Park a mere half-block from Main Street!

The School Street Sustainable Park is a project of Sustainable Hanover’s Sustainable Landscape Committee. Park volunteers support Hanover’s climate resiliency efforts. Join us!

Contact Judy Reeve (judithreevelandscape@gmail.com) or John Sherman, Director of Hanover Parks and Recreation (john.sherman@hanovernh.org)