This week former Rockdale County Superior Court Judge Clarence Vaughn awarded the Georgia Veterans Memorial Park Foundation with $35,000, the first of two payments to be received by the foundation for the creation of a botanical garden.

The Vaughn-Jordan Foundation – created by Lewis Vaughn, uncle of former Rockdale County Superior Court Judge Clarence R. Vaughn – is a foundation that benefits horticultural or botanical science. Judge Vaughn said C.M. “Bud” Sosebee applied for the $71,000 grant last summer.”This is for the botanical garden that will be the entrance to the Veterans Park,” Vaughn said. “We considered it a worthwhile project, it’s in the purview of our charter and we decided to fund it.”

The botanical garden will be at the entrance to the six acre memorial, which sits on the shores of the Black Shoals Lake. “This will give the public the chance to go to the park and meditate about what veterans have done,”Sosebee said. “I think this will be a very exciting place to go and remember how good things turned out.”

Sosebee said that the grant from the Vaughn-Jordan Foundation should be sufficient to complete the garden once they settle on a landscaping firm, work can begin at once.