Grand Rapids women Realtors revitalize lower-income neighborhoods through landscaping

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Last summer, Michelle Gordon, a realtor with Keller Williams Realty, and Jason Haywood of Signature Outdoor Concepts, landscaped the yards of three lower-income Grand Rapids homeowners--pro bono. Before long, a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effect inspired nearby neighbors to clean up their yards, plant flowers and haul away trash.

If that effect holds true again this year, the upcoming second annual landscaping effort will have an even greater impact on the city: the list of yards has grown to 11 and the number of landscapers is up to eight.

“The majority of my business is low- to moderate-income homeowners,” Gordon says. “After they move in I check in with them and I always heard, ‘I’ve moved in and cleaned up and I don’t have any money to do the yard.’ And after five years of hearing this I thought there has to be something we can do.”

The Grand Rapids chapter of the Women’s Council of Realtors adopted Gordon’s idea as its special community project, now called Friends Landscaping Our World, and organized it into a nonprofit. Participating landscapers, other sponsors, and volunteers provide free labor, plants and materials.

FLOW selected this year’s homeowners by lottery. A garden tour on Sept. 27 will feature the new yards and designs by the participating landscapers.

“It’s really turning into a community project,” Gordon says. “That’s like it used to be. Our neighborhoods were all taken care of by the community and not just one person.”

Gordon's goal is to make FLOW a national project for local WCR chapters, and will soon have a how-to guide available for the chapters to purchase.

A Garden Party fundraiser at Olive’s in East Grand Rapids follows the garden tour. For more information, click here.

Source: Michelle Gordon

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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].