Vision for trail starts to blossom

Volunteers beautify Union Twp. entrance

By MARY GRZEBIENIAK

news@vindy.com

NEW CASTLE, Pa.

Because of one local woman’s vision, the trailhead at the Stavich Bicycle Trail will one day bloom with color — maybe as soon as next spring.

Diane Jerich-Domin, of Mount Jackson, devotes hours every week — she estimates 200 so far combined with at least 200 more from about 10 other volunteers — to planting flowers, bushes and trees along the entrance to the trail on West Washington Street in Union Township.

Jerich-Domin retired two years ago after 34 years as a postal clerk at the Aliquippa post office. While she worked, she wasn’t able to “give back” to the community by volunteering, she said. But now she finally has that time and has devoted herself to beautifying the entrance to the trail with thousands of flowers.

A Penn State master gardener, Jerich-Domin presented her plan to Lawrence County Master Gardeners, a nonprofit group that is associated with the Penn State Cooperative Extension office in New Castle. The other members approved the plan and are working alongside Jerich-Domin, chairwoman of the project.

Two local greenhouses, Maple Grove Nursery and Marvin Gardens, have donated plants to the project.

“We work on this every day,” she said of her fellow Master Gardeners and a few other volunteers.

For example, last week, volunteers were to plant 70 donated bearded irises. Since Lawrence County commissioners gave their permission in April, the group has planted baby-lilac bushes along 160 feet of the trail, as well as forsythias, small dogwood trees and native perennial flowers.

And this week, commissioners planned to sponsor a $2,000 grant application to Pittsburgh’s Trail Volunteer Fund to buy 5,250 trumpet-faffodil bulbs to be planted along the trail just south of Covert Road.

The county planning commission is helping with the grant application. If the money is awarded, Jerich-Domin hopes to gather enough volunteers to plant the bulbs the first two weekends in October.

Many of the plants are small and hardly noticeable now. But Jerich-Domin estimates that in about three years, they will be breathtaking. Her dream is that the tiny lilacs, little dogwoods, daylilies, forsythias, irises, other flowers, bushes and, hopefully, 5,250 daffodils, will burst forth in a symphony of color each year.

Her ultimate purpose is to surround trail users with a multisensory experience of nature and to encourage more people to use the trail.

Jerich-Domin, a bicyclist who considers the Stavich Trail “a hidden gem,” says her vision is that the planting efforts will result in “a spectacular thing for Lawrence County.”

To volunteer with the daffodil planting, call the Penn Staate Cooperative Extension at 724-654-8370.