St. John, Kansas Tree Board
- Always dedicated to the planting and care of trees -

Our Brown Park Landscaping plans
Developed by K-State's Horticulture Department

About the plans:
A few years ago, our St. John City Council approved these beautiful landscaping plans of our Brown Park! These plans, developed by Kansas State's Horticulture Department under the direction of Gus A van der Hoeven, give a vision of what our little park will look like in the years ahead! K-State student Mark Caney was the person who drew up the plans!

The donations came in!
In 1997, our tree board received donations of over ten thousand dollars towards the purchase of sixty-five good-sized trees! In 1998, we received and planted over six thousand dollars' worth of donated trees from Delp's Christmas Tree And Nursery!

This is in addition to the twelve donated antique Victorian lights and nine tree identification markers! The lights were paid for by the St. John Odd Fellows Lodge, the St. John Women's League, the Cornwell memorial fund and from a National Trails grant! The markers were paid for by the Cornwell memorial fund!

The St. John National Bank paid $1,879 towards the cost of our shrub and flower display that's located on the northwestern edge of our main park area!(see "more plants for our flower and shrub display" ) We have purchased and planted many shrubs and ornamental grasses for this display. Omar Norton, the chairman of our St. John Beautification Committee, has given us one hundred sixty-eight day lily plants and four clumps of white ornamental grass!  St. John's Shade Tree Lawn & Nursery has allowed us to purchase all of our plants and planting material at wholesale!

St. John's First National Bank gave us five hundred dollars towards our landscaping project! This money was used to purchase four Victorian benches that were placed along our new walking trail.

We received a National Trails Grant!
Our city council council was notified by the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Department that St. John would receive up to sixteen thousand dollars in Federal Trails grant money! For its share of the cost, the city of St. John provided four thousand dollars coming from the Bertrude Bowden estate and the Cornwell Memorial fund! The total cost of this trails project was around twenty thousand dollars!

About our walking trail!
Our completed walking and bicycling trail is a five feet wide, 1/5 mile concrete trail winding through our main park area and Brown Park hill! There are three Victorian benches placed along the trail in our main park area and one Victorian bench next to the trail on Brown Park hill! Eight Victorian lights have already been placed along the trail in our main park area, two Victorian lights on Brown Park hill, and two Victorian lights just north of the swimming pool

About our children's play areas!
With the recent notification that we will be receiving two additional federal grants, we constructed two new children's play areas to go along with the the large children's play area we already have. In one of the new areas, we installed a new 12 foot tall spiral slide for the older children. We placed some of our existing play equipment in the other new play area. In the older play area, we installed a new merry-go-round for the younger children.

All three play areas will a foot deep layer of oak shavings along with a new outer border.

Other work done by our city!
Our city work crews shingled all four of our picnic shelters! They replaced the two basketball goals by our larger basketball court with new ones! They mixed topsoil with compost and used that mixture for grading our main park area and building up our new raised flower and shrub display!  Our city electricians removed all of the wooden utility poles and overhead wires in our main park and placed the overhead transformer into the pad mount casing located on the western edge of our flower and shrub display! They finished installing twelve Victorian lights in our park and two tall metal light poles next to our large basketball court!  The old basketball court was torn out and replaced by a new one.

We enlarged our parking area by grading the eastern side of Brown Park hill and making the entrance to our park almost twice as large as it was before!

Additional work!
Due to our receiving another $14,000 federal grant along with our city's matching share of $14,000, we now have an new underground sprinkling system in the main park area and on Brown Park hill!

We received a Federal Recreation Grant in 2001!
We were notified by the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Department that we were approved to receive a Recreational Grant totaling $33,304! This matching grant provided funds for a new picnic shelter between our city swimming pool and baseball park, an extension to our walking path from Brown Park hill westward to the new picnic shelter, a new $38,000 skate board park located just east of our city's tennis courts, ten new metal picnic tables, and five new charcoal grills.

Additional tree identification markers installed in 2007!
Our city staff has installed a number of tree identification markers in recent months to our Brown Park Hill, its Main Area and to our downtown square. Our tree identification marker project will be completed later this spring after our city work crews extend a fence along the west side of our city's swimming pool. A red bud tree(from our city nursery) will be planted inside the fence and its identification marker will be installed next to it. Two more trees will be transplanted from our city nursery to Brown Park - a Shumard oak and a red maple.

Also, please notice the additional plans for paving our park's parking area!

Note: The letter "E" represents existing and "P" proposed.

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Last updated: 3/20/05 Webmaster