Refurbished & Furnished: Langley Park
By Val Easton
Langley Park is freshly refurbished and newly furnished. The grass is green, the chairs are comfy, and hydrangeas, lavender and coneflowers are about to bloom. All of us who have been working for the past year to tidy up the languishing space on the corner of 2nd and Anthes want to invite you to come enjoy the park this summer.
Get together with friends or family for a picnic (we have a second picnic table on the way). Grab a coffee-to-go and hold an open-air meeting in the new Adirondack chairs you can shift around to suit your group. Walk your dog through, relax on the grass, or you might \ want to join in one of our weeding parties.
Langley Park is a treasure, gifted to the city by Nancy Nordhoff and built in 1998.
Thank you, Nancy, for your vision and generosity, as well as your wisdom in hiring Byron and Dana Moffett and Jay and Kathleen Davenny to co-design and plant the park. You will see many of Jay Davenny’s touches in the hardscapes—from the composting fence design and the altar area to the shelter design and more. The art installations were handled by Lynn Hays and troop. The design team was chosen by teams submitting their ideas. The design team of Dana and Byron Moffett and Jay and Kathleen Davenny were chosen. Cabin Fever (which Jay was a part of at the time) was used as general contractor and Cottage Garden (being Dana & Byron Moffett) was the plant contractor. Together, they created a space full of art, plants that change through the seasons, a shelter, pathways, and interesting nooks and crannies.
The city came up with the funds to restore the now-mature plantings, and for the past year horticulturist Emily Martin has been working to make the park a place where locals and visitors will enjoy hanging out. The plants have been thinned out for better visibility, trees pruned, stone walls repaired, shrubs rejuvenated, and irrigation installed.
Langley Main Street Association, with funds and cooperation from the City of Langley, has headed up the effort to restore our downtown park. Janet Ploof and Valerie Easton have planned and supervised the work, volunteers have contributed time, effort and expertise.
Thank you to Debra Campbell who consulted with us on new furniture, Bayview Farm & Garden who provided the Adirondack chairs at cost (and put them together for us), and Venture Out Nursery who gave us a generous discount on plants.
Now, after a year of effort to repair infrastructure and bring the plantings back to health, we hope you’ll all turn out and make good use of our little urban green space. If you’d like to help us in our maintenance efforts, please get in touch with Langley Main Street Association at mainstreet@whidbey.com or 360-929-9333.
See you at Langley Park!