KENNETT SQUARE – Visitors to Kennett Square this season can #meetmebythetree in a holiday pocket park that has been created in the borough.
The pocket park, located behind the borough’s Christmas tree on State Street, has turned a once-empty alley into an outdoor living room through the holiday season.
“It’s really spectacular at night,” said Tara Dugan of Scout & Annie, a State Street business overlooking the tree and pocket park. She spearheaded the project, with the help of volunteers. “It’s really charming, and a great place to sit.”
It features handmade benches, a “fireplace” on a brick building façade, twinkling lights strung overhead … and, of course, the borough’s Christmas tree.
“I loved the idea of doing a little living room outdoors,” said Jenna Otto, a landscape architect student at Temple University and intern at Longwood Gardens who helped design the pocket park and the Christmas tree in her spare time. “We wanted a place where people could meet and gather.”
That place, now using the hashtag “meetmebythetree,” grew out of a conversation Tara Dugan had with another merchant on a dreary day in February.
“We were looking at the tree area and thought it should be a community-minded space,” she said.
Mary Hutchins, the executive director of the Historic Kennett Square main street organization, brought the plan up at a borough council meeting.
“The plan was to do something special around the tree,” said Leon Spencer, president of Kennett Square Borough Council. After hearing about the idea for benches, he suggested approaching the carpentry department of the Technical College High School’s Pennock’s Bridge campus, where he serves as the School to Careers specialist.
“Having the opportunity to build these benches feeds in to what we are all about,” Spencer said. “We are here as best we can to serve the community.”
Teacher Gary Schmaltz and his carpentry students created the benches in about a week and a half. Students from both the morning and afternoon sessions built them, according to Spencer.
In early fall, Otto, Dugan and Claire Murray from HKS met to start working on the pocket park and the tree. Otto, who is pursuing her master’s and who has a background in display design, drew the designs.
Otto and her husband Trevor built the fireplace and searched for mantels at antique stores. Otto’s mother, Elana Dabkowski, also helped her daughter with the project.
Hannah Kelleher, who works at Philter’s, helped with the A-frame chalkboard and fireplace as well, providing the “final touches,” according to Murray. Other volunteers included Joe and Sandra Mulry.
And the borough’s public works staff hung the lights that provide a twinkling ceiling for the pocket park.
Throughout the remainder of the holidays, the pocket park will continue to play host to story times by the library and mini-concerts by visiting musicians at The Flash, according to Dugan, as well as continue to provide a place for people to sit and relax.
It will remain until the tree is taken down in early January.
“If all goes well, we’ll set it up again next year,” Dugan said.
