Providing finishing touches at Habitat homes
Garden clubs contribute experience, labor
to landscape properties
JEFF HUNTLEY Guillermina Castillo (l) and Robin Blair, co-presidents of the Shrewsbury Garden Club, plant shrubs outside a Habitat for Humanity home in Long Branch.
LONG BRANCH — The foundations have been laid, the walls are up and the families are now moved in.
The four houses built in the Long Branch Avenue area of the city by Habitat for Humanity are well on their way to becoming homes. And to help in that transition, a number of local garden clubs spent Saturday helping the new homeowners settle in by raking, mulching and planting in the new yards and gardens.
According to Robin Blair, co-president of the Shrewsbury Garden Club, very often the last thing considered in a new home is the landscaping, although it greatly enhances the aesthetic of the home as well as the surrounding community.
"This is a good, collaborative effort," Blair said.
About 50 members of five garden clubs and some students participated in landscaping the four homes, in keeping with the mission of the clubs.
"This is part of what we do," Blair explained. "This is part of our civic duties."
Dorris Bryan, president of the Garden Clubs of New Jersey, said this type of civic involvement is a hallmark of garden clubs not only in the state, but across the country.
Bryan described the organization’s mission as "providing education, resources and national networking opportunities for its members to promote the love of gardening, floral design, and civic and environmental responsibility."
"We’re a community-based organization," Bryan said. "We’re new to Habitat for Humanity, but we do a lot of charitable things."
The club members and students prepared the areas for the planting and then planted shrubs, bulbs, perennials and things like chrysanthemums, tulips, daffodils and azaleas. They also prepared the yards for growing grass.
"The most important thing for the homeowner to do is water, water, water," Blair said.
"This is a good time of year to plant," noted Sheryl Cole, vice president of the Long Branch chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
Habitat for Humanity International is an organization founded by Millard and Linda Fuller in 1976. The organization is based on concepts the couple worked out at Koinonia Farm, a small, interracial, Christian farming community founded in 1942 outside of Americus, Ga., by farmer and biblical scholar Clarence Jordan.
According to the history of the organization on its Web site at www.habitatforhumanity.org, at Koinonia, Jordan and Fuller developed the concept of "partnership housing" — where those in need of adequate shelter would work side by side with volunteers to build simple, decent houses.
The houses would be built with no profit added and no interest charged. Building would be financed by a revolving fund known as the Fund for Humanity, which would come from the new homeowners’ house payments, donations and no-interest loans provided by supporters and money earned by fund-raising activities."
Families purchasing the homes are required to qualify for a no-profit, interest-free loan from Habitat for Humanity. And those mortgage payments go into a revolving fund to help finance the construction of additional homes.
Homeowners are also required to dedicate several hundred hours of "sweat equity" on their houses and the houses of other families in need.
Since its inception, Habitat for Humanity has been involved in building and renovating houses in 1,500 communities in the United States and in more than 1,000 locations in 60 other countries.
"Words just don’t describe how it feels," said Gail Roundtree, one of the new homeowners. "It’s wonderful."
Roundtree, a social worker at a homeless shelter in Eatontown, is a first-time homeowner who just moved into her new house with two of her three children.
"People are giving up their Saturdays to do this when they could be doing other things," Roundtree said of the volunteer planters.
"It’s just beginning to sink in," Kwam Williams said of her new home on Witmer Avenue.
Williams, a mother of three, had moved in just the night before and was still adjusting.
"I haven’t slept that well in a long time," she said. "I’m a homeowner."
The garden clubs that participated in the planting were the Shrewsbury Garden Club, the Garden Club of Fair Haven, Navesink Garden Club and the Village Garden Club of Middletown. The clubs were assisted in the planting by students from Christian Brothers Academy, Lincroft.
The homeowners will be given instructions on how to care for the plants, and club members will return to follow up, according to Blair.
Many of the club members expressed their satisfaction in helping the new homeowners landscape their yards.
"Of course, we love to garden," added Val Forrest, chairwoman of the Village Garden Club.