December 2021 Newsletter

Saturday, December 11 - SGC Holiday Party at the Stonington COMO - 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. The COMO is a different venue for our party – a BIG space with lots of room to mingle and enjoy a festive glass of cheer. Beer, wine, and heavy hors-d’oeuvres will be served. Please bring several non-perishable goods to the party, such as cereal, pancake mix, syrup, granola bars, and canned fruit for the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center. The donation box will be at the entrance to the COMO. The party will be hosted by your Board of Directors. Your e-vite was sent on November 28th, so be sure to RSVP! Spouses, significant others, or a friend are welcome – just indicate the number attending when you respond to the e-vite. Don’t forget your festive attire (or that Ugly Christmas Sweater - see below) and enjoy a fun evening at the COMO!

Horticulture Pam Wright, Chair

Charter Oak Gavel Challenge: Good news! We have some oaks sprouting! We’ve been given permission to use our own white oak acorns. If you have found some, plant them and join us on our quest to grow a mighty oak. Please refer to Doug Tallamy’s The Nature of Oaks for more information on planting and the benefits of oaks.

Integrated Pest Management: Trap cropping is a simple way to reduce squash vine borers and squash bugs in your cucurbits. I have Blue Hubbard Squash seeds saved from my crop. Email or call if you would like a few seeds—the plants are huge! Click here for a great article on the effectiveness of adding Blue Hubbard Squash to your vegetable garden.

We have an excellent opportunity to show off our horticulture! The Connecticut Flower Show, Rhythm and Blooms, will take place February 24-27, 2022, in Hartford. They are looking for cacti, succulents, forced bulbs, container-grown plants, evergreens, and arboreal branches. It’s easy to sign up – see page 5 of the show schedule for the online registration link under Horticulture Rules. 

Review the rules, see what you might have growing, and sign up. I can help you select your best specimen and provide any grooming and showing tips. This show is a great way to break up the winter doldrums and is a chance to meet other growers from all over Connecticut. Don’t be intimidated! The Connecticut Flower Show Committee is a friendly group of garden club members who are very welcoming and happy to answer questions. 

Deck the Walls

Laura Metzger and Mary Suter, Co-Chairs

Stonington Historical Society’s (SHS) annual Deck the Walls fundraising event will be Thursday, December 2 through Saturday, December 4. Since 2007, our club has decorated live wreaths and boxwood trees and donated them to SHS for their online auction. On this past Monday, we held our decorating workshop and created twelve wreaths and eight boxwood trees. For photos of our efforts, check out the DTW photo album (photos by Laura Metzger, Dodie Bump, and Jill Corr)!

We will also provide some light appetizers to be passed around during the “Preview Party” on Thursday, December 2, 4-8 pm. If you would like to volunteer to make or serve appetizers, please contact Laura Metzger at (860) 287-6274 or lauraellynmetzger@gmail.com.

For more information about Deck the Walls and to buy tickets for the Preview Party, click here.

COMO Children’s Garden

Wanda Sullivan, Chair

The final harvest of the Children’s Garden is the loofah sponges, which will be dried, peeled, and made into sponges by the COMO children. This was a learning experience for me as I thought they were cultivated from the ocean!

All the beds are prepared for a dormant period this winter with Azomite and Espoma Garden Tone spread to enrich the soil and covered with seaweed from duBois Beach and Kathy Conger’s beach. We now await the brilliantly colored tulip bulbs to burst into bloom next spring. 

Photo by Wanda Sullivan

On Thursday, December 16th, we will return for a holiday visit to Newport, this year with a private guided tour of The Elms. Our group will then have lunch at Pasta Beach Restaurant (where we also went during our Blue Garden visit earlier this year). For more info, click here.

In January and February, artist/educator Frances Topping will teach botanical sketching and drawing classes to SGC members for four consecutive Fridays. For Frances, a key component of drawing from nature is learning how to observe. Becoming a more skilled observer will undoubtedly deepen our overall experience when viewing plants, nature, landscapes, and gardens. For more info, click here.

Please stay tuned in January for updates regarding our Communal Jigsaw mocktail/cocktail Zoom party and our community read.

Please note that we are in the process of creating a list of SGC members willing to open their gardens to visiting GCA members. Please consider adding your name as someone we can call when and if GCA visitors come to Stonington! Contact Linda Visscher for more info.

Dreaming about or planning any garden visits in the US? The Garden Club of America’s Visiting Gardens page has a list by state of places to visit. Please click here to see a list of states with links to all the gardens in each state. Enjoy!

Photography Laura Frommer, Chair

Our Photography Bench Show, “Celebrating Our Native Plants,” was presented at the November membership meeting. We had fourteen entries. We are grateful to Ann Franzen for serving as Photography Judge. Thank you to all the club members who submitted photographs.

Last year, Jill Corr created a fantastic slideshow with amaryllis photos. I want to do something similar this year, so please email me your photos of any of this season’s amaryllises.

The GCA Annual Meeting Flower Show Schedule has been posted to the GCA website. The photography division is juried and open to all GCA members – 4 classes, 16 images each, 6 finalists. Registration opened on November 27 – links to register are in the schedule, pg. 17. If you tried to enter but were told classes are full, try again. The GCA website has fixed a glitch where classes were showing as full when they weren't.

Voting ends December 1 (that’s TODAY!) for the GCA Focus Magazine This Land Is Your Land Photography Contest. One of our members is a finalist, so please vote! The finalists’ photographs are on display in the current issue of Focus Magazine.

Be sure to take a look at this new Photography Resource Block on the GCA Website. “What’s Clicking Around the Zones” showcases inspiring photography projects from GCA Clubs across the country. New features are added every month.  

Photo by Laura Frommer

Membership Update Kirby Williams, Chair

We are pleased to welcome the following new members, whose applications for membership were unanimously approved by our active members. Welcome, David, Anne, Sheila, and Tom!

For their contact information, please click here.

David Brown has been a Stonington resident for the past 7 years, David, now retired, spent his career owning a landscape design company in California after graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in Landscape Horticulture. David wrote in his application that he has “always enjoyed sharing knowledge and my passion for gardens with others. Being part of the garden club will allow me to participate in activities that will benefit the community such as conservation, education, and beautification.”

Anne Page has been a Stonington resident for over 20 years and was a founding board member of the Stonington Land Trust. Interested in SGC’s Conservation Committee, Anne stated in her application that she is "worried about our planet for our children and grandchildren.” She has volunteered for other non-profit organizations including the Mystic Museum of Art and the Ohio Wesleyan Alumni Association. Anne’s professional career was centered in San Francisco and New York City where she owned a corporate film and video production communications company.

Sheila Rock, a professional photographer, describes herself as an “enthusiastic amateur gardener” who looks forward to learning more about caring for the historic garden at her home in Stonington Borough. Sheila writes in her application that she “would like to be more involved in the Stonington Community where I have lived for the past 4 years.” This past summer, she volunteered in the garden at the Lighthouse Museum. She wrote, “as an artist, I believe that creativity should be expressed in all ways, and gardening allows one to create through natural forms.”

Tom Taylor currently works full-time as an architect and also an adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Hartford. His work has provided him with extensive experience using native plants to restore coastal landscapes. A board member of the Stonington Cemetary since 2009, Tom has researched the history of that landscape and worked on the team that placed it on the National Register of Historic Places.

Current Membership (as of 12-1-21)

Actives                      57

Friends                      26

New Members            5

Secondary Members    2

Lifetime Members       1

Honorary Members    1

    TOTAL                92

Gardens by the Sea Needs You!

It’s not too early to sign up for a shift to help with the Gardens by the Sea Tour on June 10th & 11th, 2022. All club members are expected to volunteer for at least one four-hour shift on either Friday or Saturday.

Gardens by the Sea is our biggest fundraiser, which is held every three years. We expect a big crowd since we had to postpone twice due to Covid. It’s a lot of fun, so please sign up now!

Please contact Kathy Conger for more information and to sign up (congerk@comcast.net). 

This newsletter is a publication of the Stonington Garden Club, Inc., Dodie Bump, Editor