January 2022 Newsletter

Greetings from President Deb

We are incredibly blessed and lucky to have such a thoughtful and creative group of people in our club, and therefore we would like to say THANK YOU! The month of December is a whirlwind for our club: helping with the Stonington Historical Society’s Deck The Walls, the Evergreen Workshop for the local nursing homes, the Children’s Workshop at La Grua, and our holiday party at the COMO! So many people worked hard to make the holidays merrier for our club and our community.

For some, January can be a hunker down month, planning for the year’s flower or vegetable garden. There are a plethora of resources on the GCA website. Log on and wander over to the video page. While we hosted our Evergreen Workshop on December 8, the GCA also hosted an extraordinary Floral Design Conference. The sessions are now available online here – lose yourself in the fantastic floral designs with excellent tips to help you try something new.

With the days getting longer and the arrival of garden and seed catalogs in the mail every day, my mind is preoccupied with seed starting. I love planning what goes where, looking at my lists from the summer, and ordering what I can – hoping I am not too late!

With our social calendars somewhat limited these days, I’d like to recommend a great read to help occupy your time: The Reason For Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives, by Steven Buchmann. Read this book, and you’ll gain a greater knowledge of and appreciation for flowers.

We will Zoom for our January and February Membership Meetings. Please note that we are trying something new – our meetings will be in the early evening at 6:30 pm! Hopefully, this will allow more of our club members to attend.

Cheers to a fabulous 2022 for our club! Happy New Year!

Programs Carole Barnard, Chair

Our January Membership Meeting will be via Zoom at a new time of 6:30 PM. The meeting will feature a special presentation by noted Photo Organizer & Visual Storyteller, Isabelle Dervaux on How to Take Better Nature Photos with Your iPhone.

Using her background as an artist, she will teach us how to think like a pro, reduce visual clutter, and select our best shots. She will guide us through selecting our most meaningful photos and shaping them into beautiful printed albums that uniquely tell a story.

Isabelle is a regular speaker at The Photo Managers and The National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals. She has also been featured in Real Simple, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. Originally from Valenciennes, France, she lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York. For more information about Isabelle, visit her website www.isabelledervaux.com.

Last month, we had a “full house” at La Grua Center for our Evergreen Workshop, which produced 200 holiday arrangements for local nursing facilities and several beautiful wreaths for community buildings.

Click here for an album of photos from the meeting.

A fun time was had by all at the SGC Holiday Party on December 11th at the Stonington COMO.

Congrats to our winners of the Ugly Sweater Contest: Joe Williams and Michelle Kutz!

Click here for an album of photos (taken by Tom Sanford and Dodie Bump).

Four SGC volunteers (organized by Michelle Kutz) helped create some beautiful arrangements at the La Grua Children's Workshop on December 12th.

Click here for an album of fun photos taken by Lisa Szaro and Michelle Kutz.

SGC COVID POLICY REMINDER

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

Kudos & Thanks to...

Carole Barnard, Lori Dyer, Susan Alston, Jan Chamberlain, Kirby Williams, Laura Metzer, Carole Nossek, Deb Dodds, Dodie Bump, Susan Voorhees, and Sandy Murray (plus several husbands!) for transforming the COMO into a festive, holiday party venue! And to the board members who brought delicious food to enjoy!
Michelle Kutz (chair), Lisa Szaro, Allegra Griffiths, and Jojo Reindel. for volunteering at the La Grua Center Children’s Workshop!

Deck the Walls

Laura Metzger and Mary Suter, Co-Chairs

Every December, the Stonington Historical Society (SHS) has a fundraiser called Deck the Walls (DTW). This fundraiser helps defray the costs of maintaining SHS grounds and gardens at the Captain Nathaniel Palmer House and the Stonington Lighthouse. For over 10 years our Club has helped with portions of this event. This year’s DTW Planning Committee included Laura Metzger, Mary Suter, and three SHS staff members (Liz Wood, Maddie Mott, and Chelsea Mitchell). The DTW event was held on December 2, 3 & 4.

This year the Club was asked to decorate 12 wreaths and 8 boxwood centerpieces, donate appetizers, and provide servers for the Preview Party on December 2. Mary and Laura recruited members and managed the decorating workshop on November 29 as well as the Preview Party volunteers. Kirby Williams collected extra greens for the wreaths and boxwood trees. Mary Lynn McRee demonstrated how to add greens to the wreaths to make them more luxurious and how to make beautiful boxwood centerpieces. Dodie Bump took pictures of all items and uploaded the information to the DTW online auction website. It was a fun event for all involved. Liz Wood has happily reported that they met their fundraising goal!

Thanks to all of the following club members who helped make Deck the Walls another successful fundraiser for the Stonington Historical Society: Ann Buffum, Deb Dodds, Jill Corr, Lisa Szaro, Pam Wright, Candy Sanford, Dodie Bump, Joyce Pandolfi, Lori Dyer, Sandy Murray, Carole Barnard, Evelynn Lyons, Kirby Williams, Mary Lynn McRee, Sheila Rock, Carole Nossek, Gail Hamsher, Laurie Paige, Mary Suter, Susan Alston, Carrie Powers, Helen DePersia, Linda Thacher Visscher, Melinda Mears, and Tom Taylor.

Click here for an album of photos taken at the workshop and Preview Party by Dodie Bump and Laura Metzger.

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

“Rhythm & Blues” is the theme of this year’s Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut’s annual Standard Flower Show. The show runs from February 24 to February 27. To see hours and the full schedule of events and to register, go to www.CTFlowerShow.com.

The show offers over 12,000 square feet of beautiful design, horticulture, botanical arts, and photography competitions with entries from members across the state – all themed “Rhythm & Blues.” As you step into the Exhibition Hall, you will be welcomed by more than a dozen live gardens in full bloom created by professional landscape designers and nonprofit organizations, including naturalistic, low maintenance, native, containers, epic tomatoes, vegetables, organic, herb, and pollinator gardens.

The show also offers a nonstop schedule (free with admission) of over 80 hours of seminars and demonstrations presented by horticulturalists, landscapers, and industry professionals. Always popular are the hundreds of booths of displays, activities, shopping: artisans, handcrafted gifts, fresh flowers, plants, garden ornaments, metalwork sculptures, herbs, bulbs, seeds, fertilizers, soils, gardening books, patio furniture, lawn and garden tools, equipment and more.

Horticulture Pam Wright, Chair

Don’t miss this 6-part webinar, Tending Nature: Native Plants and Every Gardener’s Role in Fostering Biodiversity, featuring a pure gold speaker lineup!. Click here to register (for free!) for the speaker series scheduled for Fridays from January 7 through February 11. Sponsored by the OSU Department of Entomology and The Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens. Register once to attend any/all sessions. The same link will allow you to join each webinar. Here is the schedule:

1/7 - Mary Gardiner: Beneficial Insect Biodiversity: What It Is and Why It Matters
1/14 - Doug Tallamy: Bringing Nature Home: The Importance of Native Plants
1/21 - Lisa Olsen: Cultivating a Community of Support for Native Plants
1/28 - Bryan Danforth: Host-plant Specialist Bees – Biology, Biodiversity, and Conserving Them in Your Backyard
2/4 - Heather Holm: Bumble Bee Banquet: Selecting Native Plants for Bumble Bees
2/11 - Debra Knapke: Native Plants in My Garden? Absolutely!

Stay tuned for follow-up discussions & activities based on this speaker series.

The Horticulture Committee has been sharing ideas for a winter or fall project, Native Plant Seedhead Wreaths. Check out this link for more info.

And don’t forget to send your amaryllis photos to Laura Frommer (see below)!

Visiting Gardens Linda Visscher, Chair

On December 16, Stonington Garden Club members were treated to a wonderful private tour of The Elms in Newport. Decorated in holiday finery, the house positively glowed with good cheer. If you missed our visit but would like to catch a glimpse of The Elms as we saw it, please click here to view a video produced by videographer, Christopher Putvinksi. For photos of the tour, please click here (photos by Jill Corr and Dodie Bump).

Our next event is on Tuesday, January 18 at 7 pm. Please join us for a Jigsaw Puzzle Zoom cocktail/mocktail party! What you may ask is a jigsaw puzzle Zoom party? Well, we all purchase the same puzzle and meet over Zoom to work on our puzzles together. It’s a fun way to connect with other SGC members, especially during our Covid winter. Click here to order the puzzle (it's not available locally).

In February/March, we will gather to explore our community read: The Roots of My Obsession, 30 Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden, edited by Thomas C. Cooper. This is a short book (only 162 pages) with vignettes exploring the ‘whys’ behind 30 gardeners’ reasons for gardening! Like our puzzle, the book is not available locally and can only be ordered online. Please visit Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or other online booksellers to purchase your copy.

Please contact Linda Thacher Visscher at (860) 608 -9898 or lvisscher@snet.net to register for either of these two Visiting Garden events or should you have any questions.

Lastly, a couple of spots are still available for the drawing classes with Frances Topping. Please contact Linda as soon as possible if you are interested. Classes are scheduled to begin on Friday, January 14, and run for 4 weeks. Per SGC guidelines, all participants must be fully vaccinated (including boosters) and masks will be required to be worn during the class.

Photography Laura Frommer, Chair

Congratulations to Jill Corr, whose beautiful beach landscape photograph (seen here) won first place in Class V of the GCA Focus Contest: This Land is Your Land! The Class 5 description was “To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts: A landscape that includes sand - either beach or desert.” Click here to see all the winning images. Jill is among five Zone II photographers who are listed among the winners.

Middletown GC, Zone II, has posted their GCA Flower Show schedule to the GCA calendar, and it has 3 photography classes open.

Please send your Amaryllis photos for our slide show to lefrommer@gmail.com. The below photos are some of the images I’ve received.

Photo by Mary Suter

Photo by Jill Corr

Photo by Dodie Bump

Conservation Lisa Szaro, Chair

Alas! The Woolly Bear Caterpillar has been spotted around town! Showing off a few black bands near its head, a wide middle section of brown, and ending with black again. According to weather folklore, the more black on a woolly bear in the fall means a longer, colder, and possibly snowier winter to come. If there is more brown, that's a sign of a mild winter. The 13 bands typically found on an average-sized woolly bear coincide with the nearly 13 weeks of winter. So specifically, according to this little guy (or girl), this winter will start off cold and snowy for the first five weeks, followed by six weeks of mild weather, then two weeks of cold at the tail end.

On a more important note… From the time of its founding, The Garden Club of America has been an active force in the promotion of environmental awareness and the preservation of natural resources. The Conservation Committee, one of the earliest GCA committees, and club members worked together at the highest levels in Washington DC on behalf of parks, to promote wildflower and native plant preservation. In the 1960s as the environmental movement grew strongly in response to pollution and species loss in our country, the GCA’s legislative involvement grew with it. February 28 - March 2, 2022 marks the dates of the next NAL Conference! Lisa Szaro will attend in person as our club delegate and will share the information presented at the conference with SGC members. Plus our own Jill Corr and Dodie Bump will also be there as the conference photographers.

All club members will be able to virtually attend the NAL education day with registration expected to launch in January 2022 via an email sent to everyone or watch this page for the registration link.

Membership Update Kirby Williams, Chair

SGC opens the new year with 92 members as noted in the chart below.

Potential applicants will be considered for acceptance to the Club in April 2022. Completed applications must be submitted to the Membership Chair no later than March 10, 2022. If you would like to propose a prospective member, please contact Kirby Williams directly at

Kirbywilliams02@gmail.com or 203-536-7933.

Current Membership (as of 12-31-21)

Actives 57

Friends 26

New Members 5

Secondary Members 2

Lifetime Members 1

Honorary Members 1

TOTAL 92

Trivia Question for the Month!

Question:

How many years has the Stonington Garden Club cared for the Stonington Borough Post Office Garden?

Answer:

The Stonington Garden Club approved a project landscaping the Post Office garden at its annual meeting in June 1965. The project was completed in October 1965 under the guidance of Mrs. Donald C. Cottrell and Club President Mrs. Harriet C. Hughes. The Club’s August 1964 House and Garden Tour provided the funding for the project.

Check out two news articles about the garden from 1965!

Upcoming Conferences & Webinars of Interest

Hortulus (Greenwich, CT) has invited all Zone II Clubs to join them for a very special live webinar presentation on January 11 at 10:00 am EST to hear renowned landscape architect, Dr. Rosetta Elkin, speak on The Radical Act of Thinking Little. Dr. Elkin is the recipient of the 2018 prestigious GCA Rome Prize Fellowship. Learn how landscape architects are addressing climate change through new and innovative approaches. Become informed and inspired to make a difference with this 30-minute lecture followed by Q & A at the end. Click here to register in advance (required). Once registered, you will receive the login information to view the webinar. Please note that this presentation will not be recorded.

Wild Ones is presenting a webinar entitled America’s Public Gardens: A Resource for Native Plants by Matthew Ross, on Thursday, January 13 at 7:00 pm EST. Take a journey to several of the nation’s public gardens. From gardens that grow exclusively native plants to others that have worked them into their diverse collections, get an in-depth look into how public gardens can help inform and influence your design and maintenance practices. This webinar is free and open to the public. A recording will be available to view soon after the event. The speaker, Matthew Ross, is a horticulturist, Wild Ones National Board Member, and Director of Continuing Education at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. For more info on Matthew, see his board bio. Registration is open at: wildones.org/ross-public-gardens-registration.