Garden Visit A New Experience For Moorestown FEP Families

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following column was submitted by Moorestown resident and Friends Enrichment Program (FEP) founder and chairperson Monique Begg:

MOORESTOWN, NJ — On a recent Sunday afternoon, the Friends Enrichment Program (FEP) of Moorestown Friends Meeting led a walk through the wooded path behind Moorestown Friends School, heading for the nearby property of Ken and Dianne Walker on Paul Drive.

Awaiting the participating children, parents, and FEP volunteers was a garden of wonders. It was alive with birds and beneficial insects and an array of trees, flowering plants and herbs in lush beds, with exotic plants growing alongside native plants.

Here, a patch of joe-pye-weed in full bloom, there a patch of milkweeds, the plants on which monarch butterflies almost exclusively deposit their eggs. Nearby stood a spectacular golden rain tree.

What makes that garden special is the Walkers landscaping skills and their devotion to gardening. Ken has acquired expertise in landscaping and Dianne is a Colorstone Gardens landscape designer. For them, gardening is not a chore; it’s a labor of love.

Because most FEP kids live in apartments or in modest houses with little or no space allotted for outdoor gardening, the trip to the Walkers’s garden was an eye-opener. It was a feast for the senses, with an abundance of things to see, to touch, to smell, to taste and, if you were attentive, you could hear the birds calling across the yard.

The visit to the Walker’s garden was more than an enjoyable educational experience. It had been planned as a special event — an opportunity for FEP families to join the Walkers in the celebration of their daughter Tatum’s 25th birthday. They also had a chance to say goodbye and good luck to Tatum, who, a few days later, flew to a job in Denver, Colorado, opening a new chapter of her life, away from home.

To make it even more significant, it was an opportunity for all participants to release milkweed seeds and wish them good luck, too. Hopefully, many of them will germinate and grow into plants whose leaves will feed the caterpillars of new generations of monarch butterflies.

As the FEP group returned to the meetinghouse, one of the kids said, “These people were so nice. I think they liked us. Are we going to see them again?”

Created in 1997 as a philanthropic project of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of Moorestown Friends Meeting, FEP reaches out to underserved, financially disadvantaged Moorestown children. Led by volunteers, it runs a program of Sunday afternoon activities and it offers scholarships for qualifying children to attend summer camp and enroll in art classes or sports clinics or take private music lessons at no cost to their parents. For more information, call Monique Begg at 856-235-3963.

Patch file photo