Preserving history in nature

Preserving history in nature
The San Marco Garden Circle worked with the City to repair the bench and lamps and update the historical plaque in Historic King’s Road Park. The plaque details part of the historical significance of the park and its location.

It’s a wedge-shaped stretch of green at the intersection of Kings Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard with the highway overpass looming beyond, but this small park packs a historical punch that the San Marco Garden Circle wanted to make sure was preserved and honored in a beautification/restoration project spanning the last two years.

The San Marco Garden Circle had already worked with the City to beautify and renovate the park in 1991 — then known as Fulton Green — and to change the name to Historic Kings Road Park, which the City did through a City Council Resolution. In the years following, however, the park once again fell into neglect and disrepair.

“It’s a memorial park to just allow people to see the historical significance of that area,” said then-Garden Circle co-president Sue Turner. “When the overpass was put in and with all the construction — there’s a pond that was put in — that park was kind of used as a dumping ground and with that, things were broken: Lamp posts were down; the flag pole was not being used, [there were] busted up benches, it was overgrown. It was just a mess.”

In 2020, Turner and her co-president Karen Hirshberg decided the Garden Circle needed to once again address the little park and reached out to the City for assistance in doing so. The City’s response, Turner said, was incredible.

“[City officials] have been overboard in helping us,” she said. “They were just so good to meet with us several times in the park. We put together a punch list of what needed to be repaired and restored.”

Some of that work, Director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services Daryl Joseph, explained, involved landscaping elements, restored irrigation and updated signs to match other signage in the community.

“It has been great to work with a volunteer group that has a vision for the park and provides historical knowledge of the park spaces,” said Joseph in an e-mail. “This group has had a connection to King’s Road Park for many decades and it shows: The old gas lights used to be lit by members of this garden club at Christmas time and the water source at the park dates to a time when the road was used by horses. These improvements are part of the many other exciting things taking place in San Marco.”

For their efforts, the San Marco Preservation Society awarded the San Marco Garden Circle with its Annual Beautification Award for the “park and sign restoration at the Historic Kings Road Park.”

According to the City’s webpage for Historic Kings Road Park, the park went through several names from its inaugural naming — Fulton Green — to its current historic dedication. Its unofficial names included Times Square Park from when the area surrounding it was known as Times Square and, later, Rocket Park, inspired by the mock spaceship People’s Gas Systems, Inc. installed there in the ‘60s.

In a historical context, the park’s location along King’s Avenue marks a portion of the original King’s Road, dating back to the 1700s, when the British built a 150-mile limestone road traveling from St. Mary’s, Ga. to New Smyrna Beach, Fla and aptly named it the King’s Road.

A historical plaque in the park goes on to state, “When the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819, almost four decades after the British withdrew from Florida at the end of the Revolution, the King’s Road became the area’s main highway. Its route generally followed that of U.S. Highway 1, although stretches ran through lands that are now forests, fields and pastures of Nassau, Duval, St. Johns, Flagler and Volusia counties.”

Founded on Feb. 15, 1932, the San Marco Garden Circle celebrated its 90th anniversary this year and is one of the longest-running Garden Circles under the umbrella of the Garden Club of Jacksonville. The Garden Club of Jacksonville was founded by noted philanthropist Ninah Cummer in 1922 and was one of four clubs to found the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs two years later.

“It’s a great group of ladies,” Turner said. “They don’t mind getting their hands dirty and pitching in, doing what needs to be done, not just for their own yards but for the parks in the area and anything that needs some sprucing up. We seem to not mind getting involved.”

The Garden Circle has worked extensively within its community over the years. Some of its work can be seen at Landon Park, where it recently replaced its rose garden with a butterfly garden following flooding caused by Hurricane Irma, along with placards posted along the garden’s border to educate visitors about butterflies and the importance of pollinators.

A wrought-iron picnic table in the park stands in memory of Wendy LaPrade, a Garden Circle member who passed away recently and who always spoke of installing a table there for families.

“I thought we were gonna have to use a lot of our treasury [to purchase the table],” Hirshberg said. “But the girls in our club…they all pitched in and we have this beautiful wrought-iron table. I see [families] sitting there with their children, the children looking at the signs. It’s just a great park.”

Landon Park’s Butterfly Garden also has plaques surrounding it bearing the names of Garden Circle members who have passed and Turner said she loves having a way to honor and remember friends who gave to their community.

“I love going to that garden and looking at those plaques and just thanking those past members and how they have contributed to our neighborhood, their personalities and the different things they’d done over the years when they were active,” she said. “It’s really is a close-knit group of ladies that love their community, that love their homes and they love to give.”

By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News

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