On Sunday, July 16th, 2023, a group of volunteers from Ruppert’s D.C. landscape construction branch donated their time to help clean up the landscape at Wangari Gardens, a vibrant community garden park located next to the Washington Hospital, Soldiers’ Home, McMillan Reservoir, and the Parkview and Pleasant Plains neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.
Pictured above from left to right: Sergio Lopez, Adrian Zavala, Benjamin Zavala, Josue Zavala, Brad Matthews
Wangari Gardens seeks to create a sustainable and inclusive community of local gardeners and volunteers, dedicated to promoting community enrichment to the surrounding community. This 2.7-acre community garden has a 50-fruit tree forest garden, public vegetable garden, herb garden, medicinal garden, berry garden, strawberry patch, outdoor classroom, and more. In exchange for the space to grow food, each plot holder at Wangari helps support community programs such as public gardens harvested by the local community, educational programming, and community development projects. The park is named after Professor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, an environmentalist and social justice peace activist who empowered mainly women to plant more than 47 million trees.
Ruppert Project Manager Brad Matthews said, “The individuals that run the park are such giving and incredible people, and they have very little funding so we wanted to help them out with a landscape cleanup.”
A representative from Wangari Gardens expressed, “A big thank you to the team at Ruppert Landscape for donating their time, resources and energy last week. They cleared the invasive vines and the overgrown areas and they took a truckload of garden debris, old wood and trash. They also provided the community with much needed compost and mulch. And all with the best smiles around, we are so grateful for their support!” (via Instagram @wangarigardens)
Special thanks to JK Enterprise for their generous donation of wood chips!