By Adele Furdyna Photos by Garden Club Members
Spring! Gentle breezes, longer days, daffodils and tulips blooming. We gardeners have longed and waited patiently for this time all winter.
Spurred by the desire to be ready for spring, the Grantham Garden Club was started in 1999 by local gardeners, ranging in experience from accomplished to clueless. The desire to create beauty in their surroundings united them to form a garden club to learn about what and how to plant in our New England environment.
From its beginning, the club has educated and enthralled in many different ways. There are speakers at monthly programs, hands on experiences, trips and, of course, learning from fellow members. Programs have covered a full sweep of topics: container gardening, dahlias, floral arranging, herbs, invasive plants, landscaping, orchids, perennials, soil, vegetables, etc. Members also enjoy connecting to related areas. For example, we have had speakers from the Audubon Society, the Loon Preservation Committee (LPC) and the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS).
Over the years, we’ve enjoyed numerous field trips. Our trips in New Hampshire included visits to Saint-Gaudens National Historical Site in Cornish and Pickety Place in Mason. Some of our Vermont trips were to the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich and Cider Hill Gardens and Gallery in Windsor. We’ve traveled to Massachusetts to see the Art in Bloom show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and to visit the Garden in the Woods in Framingham. We’ve even gone to Canada to visit the Montreal Botanical Garden.
Each year we have a “Mystery Garden Tour” to admire gardens nearby. Some are formal, some are cottage and others, anyplace in between. Each is different and special in its own way. We always come away with ideas to try in our own gardens.
Civic beautification is an important part of our club’s activities. To create a more pleasing environment within our community, the club designs, plants and maintains various public areas in Grantham. Club members devote many hours of service to this project and funding comes out of our treasury. This year we are caring for areas at the library, the historical society, the fire station, the post office, the town hall and the intersection of Routes 114 and 10.
The club has an active scholarship program for students in the region pursuing education in various horticultural fields. Our annual plant sale, this year on May 18, helps fund the program. This is a great community activity held in the Grantham Town Hall. One of the favorite features is the perennial section of plants from the gardens of members and friends, dug up just for our sale. You know they have to be good because they have already thrived in our area!
The club began with about 30 members and now averages around 100. Meetings are on the second Friday of the month. We start with a social at 9:30 a.m., have a brief business meeting and then go right into our program. If you are interested in becoming a member, contact Membership Chair Deborah Chambers at 865-5308 or jennifermaine at hotmail.com. We’d love to have you join us!
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