Bringing More Than Green to Schnitzelburg
Susan Brunton has Schnitzelburg pride. A few years ago she and her husband, Brian Brunton, adorned two abandoned whiskey barrels, located on the corner of Texas and Burnett, with some small evergreen shrubs and surrounded them with flowers. People driving by honked their horns and shouted words of encouragement at the couple’s attempt to make their neighborhood a little brighter. The response was so positive it got the Schnitzelburg Area Community Council (SACC) member thinking about how she could both beautify the area and get a younger demographic interested in their community and the SACC.
“The people who attend the council meetings are mostly elderly, which there’s absolutely nothing wrong with,” said Brunton. “But they weren’t really concerned about trees.”
And trees are the centerpiece of Go Green Germantown, the initiative Brunton began in May 2010 under the non-profit umbrella of the SACC. The organization is devoted to picking up litter and planting shrubs, flowers and trees, specifically the redbud, all over the Schnitzelburg neighborhood.
Her big picture plan is to add 200 of the pink-bloomed trees to the Schnitzelburg and Germantown landscape over the next five years and make them the official tree of the neighborhood.
“When the trees get a little age on them, they will be a billboard for what we’re trying to do, ” said Brunton.
They have quite a good start, with 40 planted in their inaugural year, mainly by her husband, who she admits is the, “heavy digger.” They have added them to parks and businesses, but the real genius behind Go Green Germantown’s plan of action is the open call they put out to residents of Schnitzelburg to give a redbud a home. No charge. Being a non-profit they do, of course, accept and appreciate donations, which go back into the program.
“The idea of being known for a tree lends itself to intriguing things like a redbud festival,” said Brunton.
She dreams of a festival based around the arts, with family friendly activities to appeal to the growing number of young families in the area. Germantown and Schnitzelburg are known for their beer walks, which take place in the spring and fall. The redbuds bloom in early April and Brunton hopes to beat the beer walks out of the gate as the first neighborhood festival of the season.
Go Green Germantown utilizes Facebook as a way to organize volunteers and reach out to possible redbud candidates. The page has become a neighborhood bulletin board for everything from a call for volunteers to help an elderly woman move out of her home to an online neighborhood watch when a group of teens were caught breaking into local homes.
Brunton and her volunteers are often called upon to clean up and mow the lawns of foreclosed and abandoned houses that the city just hasn’t had time to get to. On a recent morning, Go Green Germantown posted a call for volunteers on their Facebook page to help get a particularly bad situation cleaned up at an abandoned home. The grass was so long a rodent problem had begun and there were some dead animals beginning to decay. “At that point,” said Brunton, “it was no longer just an eye sore, it was an issue of public health.”
By that evening she and a half-dozen volunteers had the yard mowed, cleaned up and under control. Go Green Germantown gets it done. So much so that they even get complaints about occupied homes. But that’s not the kind of neighborhood she wants to live in. “I don’t want to be the lawnmower police,” said Brunton.
She promotes checking to see what’s going on in the person’s life before chastising them for missing a few lawn-mowing sessions. “Let’s be a good neighbor first.”
Being a good neighbor seems to be at the crux of Brunton’s vision for Go Green Germantown, who also promotes Front Porch Wednesdays, which encourages people to take a walk around their neighborhood and visit with their neighbors. It all adds up to making Schnitzelburg and Germantown a great place to live.
To volunteer with Go Green Germantown or get on the list for a redbud tree contact Susan Brunton at gogreengermantown@hotmail.com and, of course, friend them on Facebook.
–Sara Jones Rust
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Sounds like a nice place to live. It has given me some ideas for my own neighborhood. Nice writing SJR.
Susan and her husband have done many beautification projects in the neighbhorhood. They have inspired many others to do likewise. It is a great place to live.