A dedicated group of civic minded Ceres residents took charge recently to clean up the Doyle Cummings Rose Garden inside of Smyrna Park.

The area had become overgrown with weeds through the landscaping bark and the roses had not been trimmed in quite a while.

Ceres resident Gin Turnbow organized the effort through social media to collect volunteers to clean up the rose garden over multiple days. Among those stepping up were Sam and Linda Ryno who used to help clean up Sam Ryno Park on Ceres’ west side.

“We had either five, six or seven each time we were out there, but, man, they worked hard, and what a difference,” said Linda Ryno, a former member of the Ceres City Council.

She said the city has to repair a broken water line because the garden was swamped with water to the point Ryno had to fetch boots from home.

At least eight dead rose plants had to be removed.

She hopes the city replaces the broken down bark with a more durable material like rock or pea gravel.

“Gin and I have talked and our hope is that there’s a service club or someone who’s willing to take that on because the city doesn’t have the money,” said Ryno. “They certainly don’t have the employees to do it, but whoever takes it on, it’s going to be it’s going to be costly and it’s going to be a big project.”

Ryno recalls a time when classes of students from neighboring Mae Hensley Jr. High School would go over there with a teacher who explained about rose care and they would do some pruning.

‘We’re hoping either there’s a class that Mae Hensley or at Ceres High that they can make it part of their curriculum and they can teach these kids how to deadhead, but then they also provide the service to the community by doing that because they have to be deadheaded. I mean, but we as volunteers can’t keep going out there and maintaining it.”

Turnbow even paid the price when she was stung by a wasp that was living in the bushes that she was deadheading. Deadheading is a gardening term of removing faded or dead flowers from a plant to encourage new blooms, prevent seed production and maintain a nice looking appearance.

Others who helped included Galen Guzman and women Susan, Janice, Jeanine and Maria whose last names were not available.

Ryno spoke at last week’s council meeting and drilled down into how the city planned to deal with park maintenance given how they “were already showing signs of neglect.” She noted that with 14 city parks – five of which have restrooms – the council eliminated a full-time parks worker, now leaving four to maintain all them while also cancelling the contract for right-of-way landscaping and eliminating two part-time code enforcement officers who gathered up homeless leftovers in parks.

Noting that the council canceled the contract for security at the parks which included locking park restrooms at night, she asked, “Were you thinking those four park workers could add that to their duties or did you want our right of way landscaping to look as bad as our city parks?”

“Hopefully, the council will find a way to make cuts somewhere else and do a budget amendment to get the help our city parks desperately need,” said Ryno, “and not let them continue to look like parks in third world countries, unless that’s the plan to get that one-cent tax passed in November.”

Interim City Manager Steve Williams said the city intends to seek out firms to maintain landscape and lighting district areas but park maintenance “will continue to fall on city staff.” Williams also said he was pursuing a schedule of activities “so we can know when each park is planned to be served, how often it’s going to be served, by how many staff members it will be served. So that way that will be a document that can be shared and everyone can be aware of what the expectation will be moving forward.”