April 2022 Newsletter

Greetings from President Deb

“April Showers Do Bring Sweet Flowers” -- Thomas Tusser (1557)

The life cycle continues! It is time to take our rain boots, ponchos, and umbrellas out of storage and prepare to greet the rain that awaits us — the April rains that will nourish the grass and flowers and bring out the beauty of this season. April is also “showtime” for daffodils, one of my favorite bulbs, with more than 50 species and 25,000 hybrid varieties. These hardy flowers are faithful, yearly reminders that we’ve made it through another winter. And the bright, jovial spring blooms, in all shapes and sizes, are instant doses of happiness for me. There will soon be an explosion of thousands of daffodils and tulips! Remember to stop by the COMO Children’s Learning Garden and see the 400 tulips planted by the COMO children. Also, recall there was a Borough-wide effort that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of tulips planted on Wadawanuck Square.

Our official countdown is on for the tour 62 days! See more about the tour below.

I look forward to seeing you at our April Membership Meeting on April 13 at La Grua Center. We will have a Zoom feature for those unable to attend in person. Our topic is bugs! Bugs in our garden, what they are, what they do in your garden, and how to manage them.

I hope to see you next week at our April Meeting!

Kudos & Thanks to...

A huge shout-out to the Tour Committee Chairs! This group, headed up by Laura Metzger, Chair, has been working doggedly for months: Jill Corr and Dodie Bump, Marketing/Tour Guidebook; Carole Barnard and Laurie Paige, Preview Party; Alejandra Welch, Ticketing; Kirby Williams and Susan Alston-Millette, Logistics; Jan Chamberlain, Marketplace; Caroline Muller and Joanne Caldara, Artists in the Borough; Carole Barnard, Celebrity Speaker; and Deb Dodds, Gardens. This is a highly dedicated core group of motivated and talented members. Please say thank you to them for their hard work. They are putting in significant hours into creating a fabulous tour. When they reach out with a request for help in the next 62 days, please do all you can to support them!

Programs Carole Barnard, Chair

Our April Membership Meeting will be held at the La Grua Center on April 13 at 10:00 am. The meeting will feature a presentation by Robert Durgy, who will speak on “A Summer Tradition: Invasive Insects in the Kitchen Garden, and How to Control Them.”

Robert has been the Farm Supervisor for the CT Agricultural Experiment Station at the Griswold Research Center in Griswold, CT, since 2008. The farm is a field station for scientists to conduct experiments on agricultural, horticultural, and forestry crops. Previously Rob worked for 12 years for the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System, the last four managing the Plant Diagnostic Lab. Research studies have concentrated on corn and vegetable production, including pest and weed management, soil fertility, and organic production practices.

The meeting will also include the Horticulture “Show & Tell" (postponed from March). See more about the Bench Show below.

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SGC COVID POLICY REMINDER - NOTE MASK POLICY

We ask that anyone attending an in-person Stonington Garden Club-sponsored meeting, workshop, or civic activity be fully vaccinated. Face masks are optional for any indoor gathering. Our top priority is the safety and well-being of our members, and we will keep our membership informed of any updates relating to our in-person meetings.

Horticulture Pam Wright, Chair

Let’s try again!

Please bring your container-grown plants to our April membership meeting for Horticulture Show & Tell. A table will be available for placing your specimens. They will not be formally judged so no pressure! Please arrive by 9:45 am as the meeting will start at 10:00 am. You will have 1-2 minutes to answer the following questions:

Why I chose this plant

Botanical Name & Common Name

Growing Conditions

Thank you for participating.

Pam will be representing our club at the CT Federated Annual meeting on April 13th so we will take lots of photos so she can see what you bring in!

Upcoming Horticulture Dates:

April 12 at 11:30 am Tri-Club Small Standard Flower Show (SSFS()First Congregational Church, Angela Hubley Hall, 26 Meeting House Lane, Madison CT. For more information, click here.
April 21 at 2:00 pm Butterfly Garden Cleanup

LATE BREAKING NEWS - Pam Wright and Mary Lynn McRee have been asked to be judges at the Newport Flower Show June 17-19! Tickets are on sale now here and going fast, so if you intend to go, don't wait to order your tickets!

Floral Design Mary Lynn McRee & Kirby Williams, Co-Chairs

Have Fun with Flowers!!!

Our May membership meeting on May 11 will include a floral design demonstration by Mary Lynn McRee. She will share tips and tricks to turn a bouquet of supermarket flowers into a creative design. You will have the opportunity to create your own design along with Mary Lynn. If you want to join in, bring a minimum of 3 bunches of flowers from your favorite supermarket (i.e.., a bunch of roses, Hydrangea, tulips, and some greens from your garden ( it can be boxwood or other shrub clippings or even pachysandra). And bring some clippers and any container, ceramic, glass, or metal about 5 to 6 inches tall! Let’s have some fun together!

NOTE: It’s not too soon to start collecting vases and planting flower seeds for the SGC Floral Sales booth at the COMO fair on August 6, 2022!

Visiting Gardens Linda Visscher, Chair

Visiting Gardens has had a busy few weeks. Frances Topping’s Botanical Drawing classes were a big success. We learned about sketching, drawing, and using watercolors. We also learned to hone our observation skills. Many thanks to Pam Wright for hosting all the classes at her lovely home on the Pawcatuck River.

A small “puzzling” group met on March 7 for our 2nd Jigsaw Puzzle Cocktail/Mocktail Zoom party. We had a great discussion while tackling the puzzle, which was a little more challenging than the last one!

An enthusiastic group met on March 16 at the New Britain Museum of American Art for a private tour of The Poetry of Nature exhibition of Hudson School landscapes from the New York Historical Society. Don't miss this wonderful exhibition - it ends on May 22.

Evelynn Lyons kindly hosted the discussion of our community read book, The Roots of My Obsession, on Thursday, March 24. Garden club members Rita Nason, Joanne Caldara, Carole Nossek, Pam Wright, Anna Bell McLanahan, Evelynn Lyons, and Linda Thacher Visscher enjoyed tea while offering their own delightful and meaningful stories to share with the group.

Our next event is the play “Native Gardens” at the Ivoryton Playhouse on May 25 at 2pm. This comedy play, by Karen Zacarias, explores the very different gardens and cultures of two families living next door to each other. Tickets for the Stonington Garden Club are $45 each. Please sign up by April 24th with Linda Thacher Visscher ([email protected] or 860-608-9898). She will purchase tickets for the group, so it's important that you reserve your spot(s) with her directly.

Photography Laura Frommer, Chair

Thank you to GCA emeritus judge Arabella Dane for presenting another informative photography workshop with great tips for cell phone photography and photographing seaside scenes. The workshop also covered helpful advice for our upcoming bench show, “Beyond the Sea.” To view the workshop recording, click here. Please do not share the recording link as it is meant for SGC members only.

The “Beyond the Sea” Bench Show will be held during our May membership meeting. The schedule and guidelines can be found on our website here. The deadline for submission is April 20.

The Photography Committee voted to submit a photo by Laura Frommer as our club entry in Class 5: “Parks and Rec - People enjoying a park with trees or a forest” for the Zone II Flower Show in June. Jill Corr, GCA Zone II Photography Representative, was also invited to submit an entry for Class 4: “Nature's Bounty - A creatively manipulated image of deciduous trees to include blossoms, leaves, fruit. and/or buds.”

Zone Photography Reps were invited to submit photographs for a video shown during a break to all attendees at the GCA Photography Conference on March 31. Photos were paired with various inspirational quotes, also submitted by GCA photographers. The full video (which includes all featured photos) has been posted to the GCA website. Jill submitted the following beautiful photos/quotes.

“Photography for me is not looking; it’s feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”

-- Don McCullin

“Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.”

--Edward Abbey

COMO Children's Learning Garden Wanda Sullivan, Chair

Please join us in the COMO Children’s Learning Garden (CG) on Thursday, April 21 at 2:00 PM for our spring clean-up. The rain date is Friday, April 22 at 2:00 PM.

We need help in getting the CG ready for spring planting as well as for the Gardens by the Sea Tour in June. Tasks include blowing leaves, picking up twigs and branches, and pulling weeds. We may also place wood chips in the raised bed area if we can coordinate it.

We hope to get at least ten volunteers. So please get in touch with Wanda Sullivan at [email protected] or Pam Wright at [email protected] if you are able to spare a few hours to ensure that the CG looks terrific for the spring and the tour. Hope to see you there!

Monday Mornings in the Garden

Starting May 2 and continuing until the fall, there will be a group working in the Children's garden each Monday at 8:00 am. Everyone is welcome to come help! And in June, “Clip and Sip” will return - so watch for updates.

Calling All Photographers!

Have you taken some beautiful photos of the COMO Children’s Learning Garden? We want to create a photo album for the tour – our guests will see the garden in June, in its infancy. We want them to understand its glory in the months of July to October.

If you have a photo(s) you would like to be included in the album, please upload it to the link below. We will print out the color photos and display them in an album in the garden.

Please save your file as follows:

FirstnameLastnameSubject.jpeg (example: DebDoddsbutterfly.jpeg)

Upload your photos of the COMO Children's Learning Garden here

Garden History and Design Gail Hamsher, Chair

Olmsted’s sixth principle of design of outdoor spaces for the public good: a comprehensive approach of connecting parks to surrounding areas. The Emerald Necklace, in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, is the perfect example of his sixth principle. It is a 1,100-acre chain of parks. It is over seven miles in length, and the six individual parks are connected by parkways. Go to their website for more details or better yet, join their conservancy.

Images below from the Emerald Necklace Conservancy website

Conservation Lisa Szaro, Chair

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

-- Native American Proverb

All about Earth Day April 22, 2022

The idea behind the day originated in the early 1960’s hippie era. That’s when Earth Day bloomed into a grassroots movement that resulted in the first official U.S. observance of Earth Day, celebrated in 1970.

The theme for Earth Day 2022 is “INVEST IN OUR PLANET,” focusing on the effects of climate change on the planet that we all share and what efforts are being made in the real world to mitigate it. In keeping with the theme, Earth Day 2022 will center on “accelerating solutions to combat our greatest threat, climate change, and to activate everyone — governments, citizens, and businesses — to do their part.”

What can we do to celebrate???

Invest in solar energy, even if it is just a few outdoor lights in the garden.
Perform a household energy audit. Focus on electronic devices like laptops that are left on 24/7.
Choose a good location for a compost pile in the backyard. Or invest in a rotating bin and a kitchen pail to create compost: 1 part moist greens (fruit &veggie peels, grinds, eggshells, brown paper, and grass clippings) and 2 parts browns (sawdust, twigs, brown leaves, and hay). Do not compost meats, dairy, weeds, or wood ashes. Rotate several times per week.
Join us for Wayland’s Wharf Rain Garden Clean-Up on April 22 at 10-11 am!

What is the Meaning and Symbolism of the Flag?

According to legend, it was created as a combination of the letters e and o, from the words “environment” and “organism.” This flag was also based on the Stars and Stripes of the US Flag. Green was substituted in place of blue and red. The colors represent “pure air and green land” and environmental action.

Membership Update Kirby Williams, Chair

A FRIENDLY REMINDER -- please don't forget to pay your SGC membership dues! Avoid a $20 late fee by mailing your $150 check today to P.O. Box 385, Stonington, CT 06378, or bring it to the April 13 Membership Meeting. Many thanks to those of you who have paid already!

SGC remains in a strong position with 92 members in 2021-22.

Current Membership (as of 4-1-22)

Actives 58

Friends 26

New Members 4

Secondary Members 2

Lifetime Members 1

Honorary Members 1

TOTAL 92

“Gardens by the Sea” will showcase eleven award-winning “Plein air” artists in the first juried “Artists in the Borough” event. As visitors stroll through the rarely seen gardens on the tour, they will be able to observe the featured artists create paintings that draw on the inspiration of Stonington’s unique seaside village atmosphere. This will not only be an opportunity for visitors to see artists at work, but also to purchase art that depicts New England gardens, botanicals, and landscapes in a variety of artistic styles. A collection of the artists’ works will be on exhibit and available for sale to visitors throughout the tour at the Artists in the Borough Pop-Up Gallery at the La Grua Center. Please click here for more information on the artists that will be painting in the gardens.

TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

Note: Every SGC member has already purchased a tour ticket, but other tickets are available (Preview Party, Celebrity Speaker).

Upcoming Tours, Conferences & Webinars of Interest

The 2022 Connecticut Daffodil Show sponsored by The Greenwich Daffodil Society will be held April 20-21 at Christ Church in Greenwich. The show is open to the public, and all may participate in the Horticulture, Floral Design, and Photography Divisions of this show. Click here for all the details.
Wild Ones Mountain Laurel Chapter (CT) is offering a free presentation on Saturday, April 16, 2022, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM, “Creating Bird-Friendly Habitats in Your Backyard,” with guest speaker: Joe Attwater, Conservation and Education Coordinator, CT Audubon Society’s Roger Tory Peterson (RTP) Estuary Center. Location: New London Hall, Room 101, Connecticut College, 270 Mohegan Avenue, New London, CT. For more info, click here.
North Stonington Garden Club’s Annual Plant Sale - The North Stonington Garden Club will hold its traditional annual plant sale from 9:00 am to Noon on Saturday, May 7, at Wheeler Elementary School. For more details, click here.
Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill - Thursday, May 19 - The annual Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill celebrates a long tradition of urban gardening. Since its first garden tour in 1928, when the club was founded, members have opened their gardens on the third Thursday of May. To buy tickets, click here.
Newport Flower Show - June 17-19. As mentioned above, tickets are going fast! Click here to order today.