When an environmental education and advocacy group moved into new space a year ago, it decided to take a stake in the surrounding area, applying for — and winning — a grant to landscape an overgrown pocket park.
What the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters didn’t know — until a few months ago — was about the existence of a separate plan to move a monument to the same park that celebrates Hartford’s sister city ties with a town in Ireland.
“We kind of got to learn what was going on with this monument moving,” Mike Urgo, CTLCV’s president, said. “We’re just trying to be a helpful neighbor. They have a lot vested in this whole thing, which is awesome.”
The 5-foot, granite monument was moved by the city in July from its original location in Heaven Skatepark across Main Street to the pocket park on an Interstate 84 overpass. A dozen volunteers recently dug into tree stump removal, rototilling and the planting of 2,000 perennials that will form a new, urban pollinator garden surrounding the monument.
Volunteer Kevin Reilly uses a rototiller to turn the soil as others plant more than 2,000 pollinator plants around the refurbished monument honoring Hartford’s sister city, New Ross, Ireland. The monument will be unveiled Oct. 9.(Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
The monument was erected in 1995 after a visit to Ireland by then-Mayor Mike Peters and members of the city council. The trip blossomed into a sister city relationship with New Ross on Ireland’s southern coast, one that remains intact three decades later. The relationship is marked by an annual golf tournament, with the Hartford area and New Ross alternating as the location. Peters died in 2009
The refurbished monument, now tightly wrapped in plastic, will be unveiled in a ceremony Oct. 9, beginning at 5 p.m.
Urgo said CTLCV learned of the nearly three-year effort to move the monument when one of his staff happened to meet Mike McGarry, the former city councilman and community activist, who was leading the relocation project.
“It was just a coincidental occurrence and then they got to talking and then I connected with him,” said Urgo, the former first selectman of North Stonington, who was among the volunteers.
CTLCV, a nonprofit, moved into co-working space in the nearby 20 Church St. tower — the “Stilts Building” — in August of last year.
Volunteer Gracie Meehan, with the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, left, and Jason Chan, an intern with the Bushnell Park Conservancy, help plant more than 2,000 pollinator plants around the refurbished monument honoring Hartford’s sister city, New Ross, Ireland, during a re-landscaping project. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
CTLCV’s $15,000 grant was from the “Love Your Block” program, sponsored by the city of Hartford and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. The grant is helping to pay for the roughly $50,000 to move the monument, build a new base, create a brass inset explaining the significance of the sister city ties and re-landscaping the entire park. The balance is being picked up by the city.
Over the years, the monument — part of an area designated as Wexford Park after the county in Ireland where New Ross in located — came to be overshadowed by the skatepark that was established afterward. The skatepark gives street artists a place to legally engage in their creations.
But the monument suffered from being defaced, sometimes spray-painted with obscenities and, at one point, a phallic symbol. In early 2023, the disrespect so infuriated McGarry, now the Republican registrar of voters, that he began pushing to relocate the monument.
The revitalized park across the street will form a stronger connection between the heart of downtown and the redevelopment in the North Crossing area around Dunkin’ Park, the city’s minor league ballpark.
Ali Kelso, a horticulturist who designed the garden, sorted through dozens of boxes Thursday containing the seedlings of grasses, coneflowers — including black-eyed Susans — milkweed and one of her favorites, silvery rattlesnake master, with its thistle-like flower heads.
Longtime Hartford community activist Mike McGarry moves a tree stump with a wheelbarrow as part of a project he started to relocate a refurbished monument honoring Hartford’s sister city, New Ross, Ireland.(Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“Once they are established they are very low maintenance, which is a great argument for choosing pollinator plants,” Kelso said. “A lot of meadow plants, grasses do very well — just because they are very resistant to wind, drought — all this open space, all this intense sun.”
Once established, the plants will come to resemble a meadow, an oasis in an urban setting to attract bees and Monarch butterflies, the latter seeking out milkweed on which lay its eggs, Kelso said.
The volunteers turning out to work represented CTLCV; KNOX, Inc., a Hartford-based nonprofit that seeks to preserve greenspace and promote community gardening; the city; and other supporters of McGarry’s project.
Hartford’s sister city, New Ross, is not necessarily a household name in Connecticut. But the town is steeped in history, including being the birthplace of President John F. Kennedy’s great grandfather.
That connection will be memorialized on the brass plaque, along with making note of the JFK statue in New Ross. The plaque also will chronicle the building of a replica of the three-masted schooner Dunbrody, now a tourist attraction. The vessel carried desperate passengers in steerage to North America, escaping the horrors of Irish famine in the late 1840s. But conditions were so bleak on the ship that more than half died before reaching their destination.
The new park is expected to be christened the “Dan Carey Pavilion at Wexford Park,” after the former clerk of the city of Hartford. Carey was instrumental in establishing the sister city connection with New Ross and the golf tournament.
Horticulturist Ali Kelso places pollinator plants as volunteers re-landscape a pocket park in downtown Hartford that will now be the site of a monument honoring Hartford’s sister city, New Ross, Ireland. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Carey, who lived in Hartford for four decades and had deep Irish roots, died unexpectedly in 2009 at the age of 51. He passed away while serving as town and city clerk, a post he held for 16 years.
McGarry, 81, jumped right into the recent landscaping work, at one point, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with a tree stump.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of things,” McGarry said. “As a member of the city council, we reduced taxes, made sure we had enough cops to do the job. I did stuff for KNOX, helped them get their property. But this is the top of line, part of it is the Irish heritage, plus you’re taking an abandoned park that had never been used for anything, and we’re going to make it into something people can be proud of.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.
