Cleveland Volunteer Recognized For Their Work Helping Health Care Heroes
Project Evergreen and Weed Man Team Up to Provide Free Lawn Services for Pandemic Front Line Workers
“The lawn care and landscape industry have a deep history of acknowledging the sacrifices our military and other first responders have made,” says Phil Fogarty of Weed Man in Cleveland and a long time GreenCare for Troops volunteer. “It has time and time again shown it is willing to let its actions speak louder than its words.”
Article originally appeared and is courtesy of WKYC.com
A national nonprofit, based in northeast Ohio that works to help deployed military members, is adding a new focus during this pandemic to help those working on the front line.
“You can’t go by without looking at the yard and saying, ‘Wow, that’s a nice looking yard,” says Logan Gillen.
To some, a beautiful lawn is a sense a pride, but to healthcare workers putting in long hours fighting the Coronavirus, it can be an overwhelming chore.
Gillen is a nurse at University Hospitals and has been working long hours since the pandemic started. He’s also been spending limited time with his wife Jenny and twin boys, Cole and Carson.
Gillen says, “My family was away, they were staying with my in-laws because we didn’t want to expose them. I was planning for the surge, to take care of people, and putting my home duties on the back burner.”
All the time that Logan spent at work and all the time away from family, putting time into having a nice lawn to play on with kids was pretty far down on the list of priorities. However, Project Evergreen and Weed Man stepped in to make sure Logan, Jenny, Cole and Carson had a lush, green lawn to play on when they had time together.
“These services are provided, free of charge, by professional lawn and landscape contractors that want to give back to their communities,” says Cindy Code, Executive Director of Project Evergreen.
Project Evergreen is a national nonprofit that works to renovate green spaces. They’ve also been teaming up with companies to provide lawn care and basic landscaping for deployed troops. However, during this unusual time, they decided to pitch in elsewhere.
“We see these healthcare workers giving it their all, working 24/7 just to take care of us, so we wanted to help,” says Code.
Now, partnering with companies like Weed Man, Project Evergreen is hoping to help as many families as they can this summer. They’re mowing, pruning and fertilizing for first responders and healthcare workers until October.
