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Flower patrol helps beautify Dover-Foxcroft downtown 

DOVER-FOXCROFT — Olivia Riitano admits she didn’t have much of a green thumb when she first joined Dover-Foxcroft’s summer maintenance crew.

 

But her efforts, as well as those of several crew mates, are making the shiretown’s Main Street and bridges noticeably more colorful with their steady care of a vibrant crop of flowers from baskets hanging from utility poles and plant boxes on the sidewalks.

 

“You can tell that it makes people happier,” Riitano said. “There’s always someone commenting about it. It’s nice to hear the compliments, too, so you don’t feel like you’re doing it for nothing.”

 

Bangor Daily News photo/Ernie Clark
FLOWER MAINTENANCE — Alex Speed, left, and Grace Riitano water a flower bed near the Dover-Foxcroft police station on East Main Street.

 

Riitano, cousin Grace Riitano and Alex Speed have been fixtures along Main Street throughout the summer, aided by a Ford Ranger with a 300-gallon tank — though it can only be filled with 150 gallons of Miracle-Gro at a time due to the fluid’s weight.

 

Water is drawn from the tank via a battery-operated pump with attachable wands so the maintenance workers — who help mow the town’s cemeteries when they’re not on flower patrol — can reach the baskets that hang from 6 to 8 feet above the sidewalk.

 

“We used to have a 55-gallon jug and then a couple of half-sized jugs but we went through water like crazy and we’d have to fill them multiple times a day,” Speed said. “Then we got this. It’s a lot easier, and we’ve got double heads on it so we can both use it at once.”

 

One or more of the group, most often Olivia Riitano, is charged with watering 13 flower boxes and approximately 20 of the new hanging baskets each weekday, along with more than 30 newly planted trees as well as some larger flower arrangements in Union Square and other plantings around town.

 

Even a rainstorm during this dry summer doesn’t mean a day off.

 

“We’re watering when it’s pouring,” Grace Riitano said. “Because the containers don’t have the [soil] to absorb nutrients they need extra water even when it’s raining. A lot of times Olivia will be out in the rain watering, not the plants in the ground but the ones in containers.”

 

The beautification effort has not gone unnoticed by the community, particularly the large number of walkers who frequent the downtown streets each day.

 

A recent Facebook post by Dover-Foxcroft resident Constance Poland reflected the general opinion echoed in nearly 50 comments and 180 likes during the next 24 hours.

 

“I would like to say thank you to the person(s) taking care of the flowers in Dover-Foxcroft this summer,” she wrote. “The flowers are gorgeous and healthy everywhere. Credit is certainly due for the work and dedication.”

 

Dover-Foxcroft Town Manager Jack Clukey said donated flower boxes were first put around town each spring about 15 years ago.

 

A few years later a group of townspeople planted the island in Union Square in front of the fire station full of flowers, but that garden eventually fell victim to the salt applied to the streets during the winter.

 

A three-piece box built at the Charleston Correctional Facility marked the next step in the effort, and more recently that same operation donated the flower boxes now situated on the town’s two major bridges on Main and Essex streets.

 

Whiskey barrel planters are located on the Union Square island, and hanging plants are the latest addition to the downtown this year, many placed just beneath American flags located on many of Main Street’s utility poles.

 

“I just think it adds a lot of life to the downtown,” Clukey said. “There’s a lot of pavement and concrete driving through, and I know we’ve talked for years about how to add some green, how to get some color. It’s tough where you don’t have a lot of wide open space as you’re going through town, you don’t have medians between the street and the sidewalk to do much with.

 

“So to be able to have flowers and plants and add color this way I think is very refreshing.”

 

Speed and Olivia Riitano were also part of a crew that planted five trees at Kiwanis Park this spring to replace trees that were lost during an April snowstorm.

 

Those were among 35 trees acquired through a Project Canopy grant and the Maine Department of Conservation, Agriculture and Forestry.

 

Other trees have been planted and are being maintained at Browns Mill Park along the Piscataquis River off Vaughn Street and in front of the Maine Highlands Federal Credit Union on West Main Street.

 

Olivia Riitano said that she, her cousin and Speed have benefitted in their efforts from the guidance of Tiffany Fowles, an experienced gardener who lends her expertise to the employees that help maintain the flowers.

 

“I didn’t have much knowledge about it before,” she said. “When we first started out before Tiffany really got involved we just watered the flowers in the morning and then she came and really started explaining stuff to us like how to plant them and maintain them.

 

“I have a lot more knowledge now.”

 

Riitano said the job has its other benefits.

 

“I think the hardest part is getting up in the morning and coming to work,” she said. “After you get here it’s pretty easy. You get to be outdoors all day.”

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