Although the fairly new Welcome to Edgartown sign at the traffic island opposite the Square Rigger restaurant greets people heading into town, conditions at the nearby town-owned Dark Woods parking lot are anything but welcoming.

The small shelter adjacent to the shuttle bus stop is strewn with cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles, candy wrappers and other trash. The three planting beds are overgrown with weeds and long grass, and litter ranging from plastic bags and a jug to a Stop and Shop grocery cart. The bike rack is rusting. The lot is full of windblown sand. During winter it was used as a snow farm, storing enormous high piles of snow. Subsequently the sand picked up by the plows leached piles of sand out of the snow as it melted.

In an attempt to beautify the lot a number of years ago a wonderful and knowledgeable volunteer spent many hours establishing a wildflower garden

in a bed adjacent to the handicapped parking. The Dark Woods Homeowners Association donated a carved sign stating Please Do Not Pick the Wildflowers. When the lot was repaved the bed was obliterated and the sign disappeared.

Donorama’s Nursery contracts with the town to plant and maintain the Triangle traffic island, which has many annuals. How about replacing these native shrubs and plants, which likely cost less over time? The money saved could be applied to clean up and maintain the Dark Woods parking lot. It is heartening to see the Edgartown police actively ticketing abandoned vehicles there.

Lastly if the parking lot is to continue to be a thoroughfare into the rear of busy Donorama’s Nursery as nursery stock is received and delivered, there should be signs cautioning pedestrians and cyclists about the presence of large truck traffic traveling through the lot.

Combined with the enlarged Post Office Square parking lot (the trees to be “relocated” apparently cut down), Upper Main street now has all the ambiance of an off-Island parking mall with endless asphalt devoid of greenery.

Welcome to Edgartown!

Christina G. Miller
Edgartown