Gardens blossom along Lewes-to-Georgetown Trail

The residents who live along the Lewes-to-Georgetown Trail between Jefferson and Monroe avenues in Lewes have transformed the area into showplace gardens.

And leading the effort is Bill Arvidson, an unlikely gardener who says he has no previous experience. Some might want to take him to task on that comment, because the garden along his property is a sight to behold.

Filled with colorful flowers, plants, grasses and trees, there is more than meets the eye to those passing by on the popular trail.

“I do have a love of gardening. Now it's become a passion,” he said.

Bill says his wife Patsy laid out the design and what to plant, and he got to work.

“I do the digging and weeding,” he says with a broad grin.

They also get some input from a family member who is a Master Gardener.

Scattered throughout the garden are what Bill calls Patsy's do-dads and hanging-downs. That includes a lot of old telephone pole insulators, pink flamingos and an assortment of signs.

Then there is Frankie the Gator, Bill's handmade wooden alligator he says guards against flamingos. “But he doesn’t do a very good job,” he says to a youngster in a carriage being pushed along the trail by his mother.

His inspiration for Frankie came during a visit to the Museum of Whimsy in Sarasota, Fla.

Work on Bill and Patsy's garden on the east side of the trail really blossomed during the spring of 2020. A year later, and thousands of hours of work, their garden is filled with hundreds of flowers, shrubs, grasses and even several planted and volunteer trees such as black cherries and holly trees.

Bill purchased topsoil and compost for the garden areas and allowed other areas of grass and weeds to grow naturally.

Their neighbors, Tom and Libby Owen, were inspired to plant their own garden connecting to the Arvidsons.

Trail users appreciate gardens

Something else happens when Bill is out working in the garden. Cyclists and walkers stop and tell him how beautiful the area is. And that can easily develop into a real conversation. “People really like what we are doing,” he said. “I really enjoy the interaction and love the trail.”

Bill had some cucumbers for a neighbor who had just finished a walk on the trail; several cyclists stopped to remark how much they loved the garden; and two recumbent cyclists asked Bill when the melons would be ready. And that just during a 15-minute time span early one morning.

His garden has become more than a place for birds, bees and butterflies. It's brought the neighborhood closer. Residents gather at the Railroad Cafe in the Arvidsons’ backyard where they sit under the shade for happy hours and get-togethers.

Many people who live along the trail, which runs from Gills Neck Road in Lewes to the intersection of Cool Spring Road and Route 9 between Lewes and Harbeson, have embraced the trail and provided their own touches of beauty and whimsy, to the delight of cyclists and pedestrians. The trail will eventually be 17 miles long. Construction of a new section is underway in Georgetown.

Trail work dates back to 2016

Bill and Patsy, who were living in Arlington, Va., built a new home along Jefferson Court in 2012 and spent a lot of weekends and vacation days there before retiring and moving to Lewes full time in December 2016.

Bill watched as the first one-mile phase of the trail linking Lewes and Georgetown began to take shape almost in his backyard. The trail was complete in 2016, but that wasn't nearly the end of the project. After the railroad was decommissioned in 2018, all of the rails and ties along the path were removed.

What was left behind was an unsightly railroad bed of dirt and stone or ballast.

Bill said a plan had been put in place between the City of Lewes and the Delaware Department of Transportation to remove the ballast and backfill it with topsoil. “It was included in DelDOT's 2019 budget, and in 2020 they decided they were not going to spend the money on the project,” he said. “They didn't complete the job. From that point, it was abandoned.”

Bill said it had been a traumatic experience for many residents who live along the trail, especially those on the western side where the DelDOT right of way bordered their properties. Because the right-of-way is 66 feet, residents on the other side of the trail where the tracks were located had more space between their properties and the trail.

But the old saying making lemonade from lemons had never been more true when residents united to spruce up the area in a major way.

Two of those efforts have been recognized by Lewes in Bloom as beauty spots.

Eight residents took on the task of beautifying a section of the west side of the trail starting at Jefferson Avenue. But the work didn't stop there, and is still ongoing. Residents near the Madison Avenue intersection of the trail planted their own gardens.

What's next? “Yes, I have a vision,” Bill says. That vision includes trees and grasses planted to fill in the gaps along the trail with a series of benches in what he calls a linear park.

“I'm also still hopeful they will remove the ballast,” he added.