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Practical landscaping designed to inspire

The Town of Creston and Creston Museum are gardening beyond the decorative.
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The museum's garden has sunflowers and parsley.

The Town of Creston and Creston Museum are leading by example in demonstrating that landscaping doesn’t only have to be decorative.

Town Hall and the Museum both have small plantings of edibles in prominent locations, where traditional thinking would have shrubs and flowers of the decorative kind.

“We looked for three years before we were able to come up with the type of seeds we wanted,” museum manager Tammy Bradford said on Saturday. She was pointing out a rock-contained soil bed in a corner area, which is bursting with sunflowers, tomatoes and other plants traditionally found in home vegetable gardens.

“We wanted to use heritage seeds, of course, and they are doing quite well here.”

Bradford said that visitors, especially ones with children, enjoy an invitation to pick a ripe veggie.

“It enhances their experience here, and shows that the older varieties can still thrive and produce.”

At Town Hall, in what one expects to be flower beds along the sidewalk leading to the main entrance, small plantings of edibles prove that they can be just as attractive as traditional decorative plants.

“I’m really pleased with this small initiative,” Couns. Joanna Wilson said last week. “A Town Hall, like its elected representatives and staff, should lead by example, and planting food varieties shows that landscaping can serve more than one purpose.”

Wilson was disappointed earlier this year when her proposal to have solar electrical panels installed on Town Hall didn’t make the 2016 budget, but she plans to persist.

“Even small examples of environmentally responsible behavior can lead to a big impact,” she said.

Signs in the Town Hall plantings invite passers-by to help themselves, and the now ripening strawberries are sure to grab attention.