The Friends of the Aberdeen Library received a $35,000 grant from T-Mobile to jumpstart its community garden project. The garden will feature wide greenspaces and pathways from the future library on Exchange Street to High Street.
Plans include a pollinator garden, water feature, pergola, benches, and a large donated moving art piece by Mike Roig from Pittsboro.
Aberdeen’s Landscape Planner, Mike Gleason, designed Aberdeen Garden Park.
Aberdeen Garden Park is expected to be completed in May 2025.
T-Mobile’s hometown grants began in April 2021 and awarded $25 million to over 300 American communities, according to representative Tina Detre of Waxhaw, North Carolina.
The library celebrated with free ice cream, books, and live music on June 22. About 120 citizens enjoyed the afternoon.
“No way to thank everyone on this committee,” Mayor Robbie Ferrell said about the behind-the-scenes work to achieve the grant for the first-ever greenspace in Aberdeen.
“I was reviewing e-files and saw the town of Aberdeen applied for the grant and didn’t get it. The grant’s purpose was community investing, so we applied,” The Friends of the Aberdeen Library President Tom Cruce said about the natural annex “where people can check out a book, walk across the street, and read in the garden.”
The brick library building on Exchange Street was built in 1912, and the town donated it for the library in 2022.
Feature photo: Aberdeen Garden Park’s design plans rest on an easel at the grant celebration on June 22, 2024.
~Articles, photos, and video by Sandhills Sentinel journalist Stephanie M. Sellers. Stephanie is also an English instructor at Central Carolina Community College. She is the author of young adult fiction, including When the Yellow Slugs Sing and Sky’s River Stone, and a suspense, GUTTERSNIPE: Shakespearean English Stage Play with Translation.
