HAPPY VALENTINES DAY
Only 7 weeks until Spring!!!
Centennial Celebrations!
The Concord Garden Club was founded in 1924, therefore this year we are celebrating our centennial. We have planned several activities to celebrate 100 years of learning together, gathering together in appreciation of the natural world, creating friendships and volunteering in and around Concord. We kicked things off with a toast at the opening reception for Art & Bloom last weekend; I hope you were able to tour the wonderful exhibit and raise a glass with us.
For the rest of our centennial year, the Club has committed to educating ourselves and our community in sustainable gardening practices that will regenerate biodiversity and support life in our backyards and across the City. On April 18 we will be hosting, via video, Dr. Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology and respected author and lecturer on ecological landscaping, in a presentation we are opening to the public. This initiative is supported by the City of Concord, which will be offering follow up lectures on how to create sustainable gardens at your home, and by Black Forest Nursery, which has generously offered a raffle prize towards garden design and native plants to one attendee of our Tallamy event.
In September we will be gathering with significant others for a true celebration at the home of our Vice President, Tricia Wentworth. Keep reading these monthly newsletters for more details about this Centennial Celebration and more centennial events
Gena Cohen Moses,
CGC President
Click here to learn more about Dr. Doug Tallamy's April 18th presentation.There has already been a significant amount of interest in this event and spaces are very limited, so if you plan to attend and haven't signed up yet, be sure to RSVP now.
Art and Bloom recap
Thanks, everyone, for making Art and Bloom 2024 a huge success!
Our 25 design teams blew our minds with their creative, clever, stunning arrangements. The Board at Kimball Jenkins pulled a rabbit out of a hat to keep the show on track even in the midst of a major shakeup in leadership. Our CGC hosts provided a warm and enthusiastic welcome to the droves of visitors who arrived steadily despite the less-than stellar (downright miserable at times!) weather.
In all, we had 739 guests who enjoyed our exhibit. Almost 200 came on Thursday, including at least 75 to the reception, where we celebrated the beginning of our 100th Anniversary year with a toast and remarks by Gena Moses and the chairman of the board at Kimball Jenkins. Word of mouth was strong, and on Saturday alone almost 400 people came.
Speaking of rabbits, Lauren Savage was the overall favorite for our People’s Choice Award with her interpretation of Alice’s White Rabbit. Congratulations, Lauren!
Stephanie Krenn and Terry Sturke, who designed for the diptych of the pregnant mother and her newborn, were the top vote-getters among community members,
and Rick Talbot (of Cobblestone in Concord) won among professional designers for his piece interpreting the photo of the abandoned, overgrown stone arches. (His numbers might have been inflated by more than a few votes intended for the adjacent arrangement by our own Kim Arndt and Melissa Smart, but I think our instructions weren’t clear, and people loved both pieces. In fact they loved all of them!)
Regardless, the point of the voting was to encourage people to look closely at each piece, and that they did! Like last year, every single piece had its following, the best possible outcome.
Thanks to my wonderful committee, our sponsors, and to each of you for making this happen,
Millie LaFontaine
Art and Bloom 2024 chair
SWAG!
Show your Concord Garden Club pride and celebrate our centenary with some cool new gear! On offer are an Eddie Bauer softshell vest (modeled below by Melissa Smart), a Port Authority sunhat and gardening apron, Nike baseball cap, and a Carhartt bag with pockets for your gardening tools (shown above) -- all sporting our beautiful Concord Garden Club logo. They can be ordered directly from our special website here. The CGC will earn a small profit on each sale.
March Meeting
There will be no meeting in February, so please be sure to RSVP and put our March 14th meeting in your calendar.
Thursday March 14, 2024 -- 1:00 PM
NH Audubon
84 Silk Farm Rd, Concord
In 1947, Edwin Teale followed the progress of spring over four months from the Everglades to the summit of Mount Washington. His best selling book, North with the Spring, recounts the epic journey he and his wife, Nellie undertook. Author John Harris set out to retrace Teale’s route, stopping at unfamiliar wild places on the same calendar date on which Teale visited. Using Teale’s journal notes and photographs, Harris examined and compared changes in the flora, fauna, and lives of the people along the way. His account documents the losses, details the transformation, and celebrates the victories -- for surprisingly, a remarkable number of east coast refuges have grown wilder during the intervening years.
This event is presented by author John Harris and sponsored by the NH Humanities Council.
Questions? Please contact Linda Gilbert at lvgilbert@comcast.net.
April Meeting
In honor of our Centennial Year, Concord Garden Club is very proud to present a talk by Doug Tallamy -- author, renowned entomologist and wildlife ecologist, and
Co-Founder with Michelle Alfandari of HOMEGROWN NATIONAL PARK®. (HNP)
Learn more at HNPARK.org.
In this new presentation, Dr Tallamy will address questions about ecological landscaping including ecology and evolution, biodiversity, invasive species, insect declines, native and non-native plants, conservation and restoration, residential and city landscapes, urban issues, oak biology, keystone plants, monarchs, supporting wildlife at home, and more. His goal is to motivate people to help restore ecosystem function where they live, work, play, worship, and farm.
Dr. Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 97 research publications and has taught insect-related courses for 40 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. Doug is also the author of Bringing Nature Home, Nature’s Best Hope, and The Nature of Oaks.
As a 100th anniversary initiative, Concord Garden Club's goal is, with your help, to put Concord on the Homegrown National Park map in a meaningful way. HNP is an initiative our Club is enthusiastically supporting throughout 2024 as a way to help local gardens become sustainable, and to support wildlife and diverse ecosystems. Along with the City of Concord, we'll also be providing opportunities to learn gardening techniques that support wildlife and diversity, which we hope will help us reach our goal of enrolling 100 Concord gardens with HNP during our 100th year!
This event will be held on
Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 6:45pm.
Doors will open at 6:30.
This event is open to the public, and all attendees must pre-register online.
Seating is limited. Click here to rsvp.
Questions? Please contact Lauren Savage at lauren.Savage1971@gmail.com
May - Sanborn Mills Farm Tour
May 16, 2024, 10:00 AM
Sanborn Mills Farm, 7097 Sanborn Rd, Loudon, NH 03307, USA
Sanborn Mills Farm is a working farm with a mission to sustain and teach traditional farming and craft skills while stewarding its agricultural landscape for social, environmental, and economic benefits.
Their many gardens include the following: ornamental gardens, stream garden, meadow garden, sally (basket willow) garden, dye garden, teaching/ vegetable garden, kitchen garden, as well as annuals for cut flowers. They offer CSA programs for both produce and flowers.
Sanborn Mills Farm also has a grist mill and a saw mill, and they offer many wonderful workshops including Farm & Garden, Blacksmithing, Woodworking, Fiber Arts, and Historic Craft!
Their web site (https://www.sanbornmills.org) shows why our tour there should be very fun and interesting.
This tour will be held May 16th 2024 and rescheduled if inclement weather.
Members only, no guests
Registration closes May 10, 2024, 10:00 AM
Questions? Contact Ruth Perencevich at rperence@comcast.net.
June - CGC Annual Meeting
As a treat for our 100th Concord Garden Club Annual Meeting luncheon, Author and Humorist Neal Sanders will entertain us with his presentation “Garden is Murder”.
Neal speaks from a ‘husband’s point of view’ of gardening. His presentation is filled with humor and insight from someone who gardens less from an abiding love of horticulture than for the love of a spouse. Good horticultural advice is dispensed, bad advice is debunked. Our members will leave with a better appreciation of what is going on in the mind of their helpmates.
Neal will talk about….
· Why it is impossible to do just one thing in the garden
· Why so much gardening information on the internet is awful
· Why you should never compute the value of your labor in gardening
· Evidence that the wildlife in your garden have never seen a Disney film
· Why it requires digging three holes to plant something
· And much more…
Neal is also an author of 15 mystery themed books, a number of them centered around the bond of members of the Garden Club Gang but also another, stronger bond: each book centers on strong, independent women. Some of those women solve crimes. Some of them commit them. Some did both. Neal will be bringing copies of his books to the luncheon to sell. To review titles and synopsis of the titles, go to: The Hardington Press – The home of mystery writer Neal Sanders
Thursday, June 6 2024
11:30am-2:00pm
Kimball Jenkins Estate
Members Only -- RSVP here
Registration Closes May 10th
In Memoriam
Concord Garden Club Member Catherine Lillios Pappas died on January 5, 2024, at the age of 90. She had a passion for gardening and was a member of our Club for over 50 years. Additionally, she was a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and volunteered at the Boston Flower Show. Her ready smile and enthusiasm for life was a delight for everyone she touched.
Handbook
As you know, in the interest of "going green", the Board elected not to have our Concord Garden Club handbook printed as it is easily available online, on the Members Only page of our website. For those members who prefer a hard copy of the handbook, posted below is a .pdf for you to download and print. If anyone needs assistance with that process, please contact Gena Cohen Moses at bgjam@comcast.net, or Jenny Robson at jenrobson@mac.com.
Winter Garden Arrangements
For those of us who just can't wait for spring, yet don't want to buy hothouse grown blooms from the supermarket, consider foraging in your own backyard for natural elements that can be used for beautiful indoor displays.
Spring flowering trees and shrubs can be forced indoors for a wonderful breath of spring, accompanied by accents of other natural elements whose beauty are often overlooked in our winter landscapes.
Suggestions for forcing:
White star magnolia
Pussywillow
Forsythia
Dogwood
Viburnum
Witch Hazel
To accompany:
Hellebore leaves or flowers
Dried hydrangeas
Dried grasses
Moss
Lichen branches
Echinacea seed heads
Community Information and
Volunteer Corner
CAPITOL CENTER FOR THE ARTS
You get to see shows for free! We're looking for more ushers to greet patrons with a smile and show them to their seats! As an usher, you may work at both venues: the Chubb Theatre at the CCA and the BNH Stage. Please contact Dawn Coutu with questions at dcoutu@ccanh.com or get started at https://www.ccanh.com/volunteer
GIBSON'S BOOKSTORE SPEAKER EVENT
Tuesday, March 12th, 2024, 6:30 pm at
Gibson's Bookstore,
45 South Main Street, Concord, NH.
No registration required.
Gardeners, spring is coming, and so is the planting season! If you haven't already planned your garden out for the growing season, now is the time to do your prep work. Author and gardener Jane Hawley Stevens comes to share her new book, The Celestial Garden, Growing Herbs, Vegetables, and Flowers According to the Moon and the Zodiac, full of insight, ideas, and inspiration in a highly practical guide to growing successfully in harmony with the moon, the Earth, and other planetary influences.
Planting by the moon is an age-old gardening tradition, but did you know that the cycles of the moon and the zodiac can be a powerful tool to improve your success with all kinds of gardening tasks? In The Celestial Garden, longtime gardener and herbalist Jane Hawley Stevens explains how the movement of the moon through the constellations of the zodiac provides a detailed calendar of optimal times for planting seeds, roots, and transplants, as well as for pruning, weeding, propagation, harvesting, and even starting new garden projects or throwing garden parties. While herbs are Stevens’s specialty, she loves growing all kinds of plants, and The Celestial Garden provides excellent gardening tips for every gardener, whether their passion is for vegetables, fruits, herbs, or flowers. At a deeper level, Stevens believes that gardening by the moon and learning about astrological cycles can help restore our elemental interconnection with Nature and the Earth.
Can't make this event? Order the book through Gibson's website, and leave your personalization/signing request in the order notes!
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