Green Up Day, Saturday

Green Up Day, an annual spring community event, takes place on Saturday, April 24.

The event is organized by Weston Kiwanis. The way it works is simple. At 10:00 am, volunteers meet at the Parish Hall behind Norfield Congregational Church, pick up lawn bags, and choose a road where litter that has accumulated over the winter months will be picked up.

Volunteers get a special reward this year. Weston Tree Warden Tom Failla will distribute about 100 white lilac shrubs and Kousa Dogwood saplings on a first-come first-served basis from 10:00 to noon, while supplies last. They are free.

The saplings were donated by Eversource. You will receive planting instructions and a list of eight invasive plants to keep an eye out for.

The Millie Best Award

Invasives are a speciality of Green Up Day organizer Bill McKinney, who is this year’s recipient of The Millie Best Environmental Award, which will be presented at the Kiwanis Zoom meeting at 9:30 am.

The award was first made in 2005 in honor of Millie Best, a Weston resident who started Weston’s Green Up Day in the early 1970s.

In 1995, it became a statewide event when the Connecticut General Assembly passed legislation declaring the last Saturday in April of each year as Green Up Day “to encourage citizens to clean up their communities, to plant trees and flowers and to otherwise enhance the physical beauty of the state's communities and countryside.”