Things are perking up at Rollins Park – trees old and new are budding, flowers are blooming, sounds of children and dogs barking echo across the greens.
But there’s one area that defies beautification; a shallow man-made pond straddled by a bridge near the Broadway Street entrance to the park. Choked with pine needles and tall grasses, the pond is more marsh than a water feature.
“It just gets full of mosquitos and debris that come in,” local Lesley Hobson said. “It’s been like that for 40 years.”
Hobson is looking to turn this park problem around. A gardener and Rollins Park lover, she’s gathering community support and pledges to take this former pond and turn it into something useful.
A garden perhaps, she said. A few 4-by-4 plots of land residents can rent out and garden if they lack green space of their own, or like Hobson, if they have used up all available gardening space. Or maybe just a community flower bed that anyone with a green thumb can tend.
But to do that, she needs the community’s help. Hobson said she’s looking for people to donate time, money and materials to the cause. So far, Swenson Granite has pledged to donate stone when the plan becomes more defined and Osborne’s Agway has offered six 30-inch rakes, according to Hobson.
She is also reaching out to community youth programs to find children looking to fill community service hours.
If the city can level, drain and till the pond, the community can do the rest, Hobson said.
There’s a long way to go before the project can get off the ground; Concord’s Park and Recreation director David Gill said a formal proposal will probably have to go to the city council and then be referred to the parks and recreation committee for study.
And then there’s the question of what the structure is, exactly. Hobson insists the stone-lined area is actually a wading pool and points to the metal spouts and granite lining as proof.
But history tells a slightly different story. In 1896, the city constructed an “artistic bridge,” in Rollins Park, planting shrubs and trees and building the rock wall lining the entrance on Broadway Street, according to “History of Concord New Hampshire” by James Lyford.
The next year, the city introduced a water fountain and a “man-made pond,” which appears to be in the same place that the city considered to build a new pond when reevaluating the Rollins Park master plan, according to a 2013 document.
To get involved, contact Hobson at lesley30@netzero.net.