Volunteers needed for Monroeville cleanup, planting projects

As spring starts to bloom across the region, Monroeville residents with a mind toward civic improvement are looking for volunteers to help welcome the season and beautify the town.

For Joe Sedlak, tidying the municipality’s roads is an old habit. This year Sedlak will mark the 30th anniversary of the Jack Sedlak Cleanup Day, named in memory of his father.

“My father strong-armed some neighbors, grabbed some garbage bags and started Monroeville’s first cleanup day,” Sedlak joked in a promotional video for the event’s anniversary.

Today the program is affiliated with the Great American Cleanup, which provides gloves, bags and vests distributed through the state. Each year, 400 and 500 volunteers choose a section of local road and get to work. Over the past three years, the event has collected and disposed of more than 2,300 bags of trash, more than 70 tires and about a dozen televisions.

Sedlak’s group cleans a section of Monroeville Boulevard near the municipal building, but each group has its spots, he said.

“We have a husband and wife who are in their 80s now and just did their last year of cleaning Laurel Drive heading toward (the Garden City neighborhood),” said Sedlak, Monroeville’s director of human resources. “They’ve done that same stretch for three decades now. My brother always does the same section of Old William Penn Highway.”

New volunteers can choose a road to clean, but Sedlak has plenty of advice.

“We have places we can point people toward, places we know are really bad, or where the wind picks up litter and regularly drops it,” he said.

Registration forms for the April 26 cleanup are available at Monroeville.pa.us. The registration deadline is April 21. For more, call 412-856-1006.

Planting the park

After the roads are cleaned in April, the Monroeville Botanical Garden Committee will be looking for their own volunteers in May to help beautify Monroeville Community Park on Tilbrook Road.

“The municipality buys the plants, and we put them in after Mother’s Day,” said committee member Laraine Hlatky.

The all-volunteer group was established when park opened in 2007, Hlatky said.

“We water the beds, divide plants and do maintenance throughout the season,” she said. “We plant perennials everywhere except the gazebo, where we do annuals and add some more color.”

Hlatky credited horticulturist and former committee member Joe Burgess for setting the group on its current path.

“He helped plan how we were going to plant everything,” she said. “After Joe left we kept it up, and now when we need some advice we can call the Penn State Extension and the county master gardeners.”

Hlatky said the committee welcomes new volunteers to help with the planting in May as well as watering and cleanup maintenance in the summer and fall.

Those interested can email laraineh@verizon.net or call 412-373-6906.