Gardeners enjoy fun times while helping at Jewel Box

Submitted on September 24, 2010

Joseph Kenny | jkenny@stlouisreview.com

Plants don’t talk back, but they do require attention, Diane Heuvelman and other members of the St. Louis Water Gardening Society have discovered. Heuvelman, a member of St. Justin Martyr Parish in Sunset Hills, tended to one of the gardens in front of the Jewel Box earlier this month. Members of the group enjoy the camaraderie and accomplishment they get from volunteering to tend the water gardens. For more on the story, see Page 3 of Senior Living.

Rebecca Venegoni Tower

The work starts each spring in the shadow of a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. The dozen or so volunteers outside the Jewel Box in Forest Park no doubt appreciate the saint’s concern for nature. Each week they come to the lily ponds out in front of the greenhouse to tend to the water lilies, lotus, umbrella palms, papyrus, water cannas and other aquatic plants.