Bridgeport Lions Club Reviving Community Flower Garden
By Julie Perine on June 09, 2019
For many years, Bridgeport Garden Club maintained a flower garden at the intersection of Johnson and Philadelphia avenues. As club 
members got up in years, they weren’t able to do the work needed for the upkeep.
After setting vacant in recent years, the flower garden has been revived. The Bridgeport Lions Club has adopted the project and Saturday, members were hard at work laying landscape fabric and mulching the garden. Some shrubberies and a small tree have already been planted. Soon, more plants will be added, including perennials, annuals and spring bulbs to bright forth bright blooms throughout the spring and summer seasons.
Lion Ben Sandy said he and his wife often walk by the abandoned garden and he decided on day to approach his fellow club members about possibly taking it over. They voted in favor of Sandy’s idea and a club representative 
contacted the City of Bridgeport to offer to take on the garden as a Lions Club project.
contacted the City of Bridgeport to offer to take on the garden as a Lions Club project.
“The city has been really great to work with,” Sandy said. “They hauled out the old dirt and there was also some clay and rock in there and they hauled it all out.”
The Lions Club then brought in a semi and two dump trucks loaded with top soil.
Club member Diana Bedell said the garden is a work in progress and that it will take some time to establish the symphony of blooms.
“We’ll have different plantings and it will be balanced out. It will be nice,” she said. “We’ll also have our Lions Club sign up and maybe – at some point down the road – some benches.”
Jim Harki, David Booth and Roger Murray were also working on the garden project Saturday and still others have been and will be involved as the project moves forward.
