Category Archives: Garden events

GROW NATIVE MA ANNUAL PLANT SALE – JOIN ME JUNE 1st!

Help Massachusetts communities and wildlife thrive by joining me at the annual Grow Native Massachusetts Plant Sale. You’ll find over 2,000 plants covering 120 varieties, and I (and other experts) can help you make smart selections for the particular conditions of your planting area. Just look for me in a blue volunteer apron from 8-11. Shop early for best selection.

From 9-2:30 at the UMass Waltham Field Station at 240 Beaver Street, Waltham 02452, you may find:

  • Perennials sorted by sun, shade and part-shade, and all types of soil conditions
  • A large selection of evergreen and deciduous ferns
  • Grasses and sedges, both cool and warm season
  • Trees and shrubs at small sizes so you can take home in your car. Native trees and shrubs do the most to increase biodiversity and to enhance the wildlife value of your landscapes.

AND new for this year: sweet goldenrod (Solidago odora), bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) and spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata)—custom grown just for this sale, as these are top native herbaceous plants for supporting the entire life cycles of our butterfly and moth pollinator friends, and a whole lot of bees’, too.

All plants are native to the eastern United States—the majority indigenous to New England

Learn more: https://www.grownativemass.org/programs/plantsale
Download a list of the species available at the 2019 Native Plant Sale

 

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David Epstein’s “Weather and Gardening” Talk in Easton April 11th

David Epstein to speak at Easton Garden Club meeting

Meteorologist and horticulturist David Epstein will present “Weather and Gardening” at the
Easton Garden Club’s April meeting.

The Easton Garden Club invites the public to attend a free program, “Weather and Gardening” featuring David Epstein, meteorologist & horticulturalist.

When: Thursday, April 11th, 2019; 6:30 pm refreshments, 7:00 pm program
Where: In the basement gymnasium of the Covenant Congregation Church, 204 Center Street, North Easton
Cost: FREE

David Epstein has been a professional meteorologist and horticulturalist for three decades. He spent sixteen years on-air at WCVB in Boston and currently is a meteorology professor at Framingham State University and Colby College.

Dave’s weather, climate and gardening content can be seen/heard/read regularly on the following media outlets: boston.com, Portland Press Herald, WBUR Boston, WBZ-TV, WGME CBS 13 Portland, and at www.growingwisdom.com.

The Easton Garden Club meets the second Thursday of most months (no meeting July, August, and December) at 6:30 pm at the CCC at 204 Center Street, North Easton. Members participate in workshops with natural plant material, listen to speakers on a variety of horticultural topics, and see demonstrations by professional designers and provide community service. New members are always welcome. Please visit www.eastongardenclub.org for more information.

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SHARON GARDEN CLUB PLANT SALE 5/29 – NEW LOCATION

Join me at the Sharon Garden Club’s Annual Plant Sale this Saturday, May 19th from 9-noon, at our new location at the First Congregational Church. Simultaneously there are three yard sales and the library book sale all adjacent to one another. The Club has a seedlings initiative this year, and I’ll be bringing jumbo Primrose Lady marigolds as well as tomatoes grown from organic seeds. Shop early for best selection!

Flyer for the Sharon Garden Club annual plant sale on Saturday, May 19, 2018

Sharon Garden Club Annual Plant Sale Saturday, May 19 at the First Congregational Church on Main Street, 9-noon

 

 

 

 

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THE BEAUTIFUL ADAPTATIONS OF NATIVE PLANTS EVENT FEB 7th

Eager to learn more about native plants? Join Grow Native Massachusetts‘ Evenings with Experts this winter! 

This free public lecture series is held at the Cambridge Public Library on the first Wednesday of each month, from February through May from 7:00 — 8:30 pm.

On February 7, Dan Segal, owner of The Plantsmen Nursery, will present The Beautiful Adaptations of Native Plants: Inviting the Wild into our Gardens.

Native plants have evolved a broad array of adaptations in the wild, yielding not only the ornamental features embraced in horticulture but many fascinating mechanisms for survival. Dan will take us beyond ‘pretty’ plant features to explore the origins of these adaptive traits, and the critical importance of regional variation. This insight helps us to select plants that are genuinely suited to our landscapes.  He will also compare and contrast large-scale nursery production that favors the cloning of cultivars, with small-scale nursery propagation that favors seed-grown straight species.  To know and source native plants effectively, understanding their propagation can be just as important as species selection.

As the owner of The Plantsmen Nursery, Dan Segal specializes in native plants, local seed collection, and natural landscaping. Dan has collected and propagated over 1,000 species of native plants in his three decades of work as a nurseryman, giving him great insight into the fascinating variety of adaptations that plants have evolved to survive. His nursery is in Ithaca, NY, where founded the Ithaca Native Plant Symposium in 2009.

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WANTED: DEAD NOT ALIVE Invasive Plants Exhibit Wins Educational Excellence Award

Invasive plants exhibit at Sharon Garden Club September Garden Medley

WANTED: DEAD NOT ALIVE received an Educational Excellence award at the Sharon Garden Club’s September Garden Medley on September 9, 2017. The exhibit featured potted exotic invasive plants and illustrated some of the environmental damage they cause. Left to right are Carol Lundeen of Easton and Brenda Minihan and Ellen Schoenfeld-Beeks of Sharon. The trio played roles as invasive plant sheriffs, engaging visitors in conversation and offering invasive plant checklists, images, and ideas for native plant alternatives. Photo by Carol Lundeen.

WANTED: DEAD NOT ALIVE received an Educational Excellence award at the Sharon Garden Club’s September Garden Medley on September 9, 2017. The exhibit featured potted exotic invasive plants and illustrated some of the environmental damage that invasives cause. Carol Lundeen of Easton and Brenda Minihan and Ellen Schoenfeld-Beeks of Sharon played roles as invasive plant sheriffs, engaging visitors in conversation and offering invasive plant checklists, images, and ideas for native plant alternatives.

Exotic invasive plants have no natural predators and diseases that would naturally control their growth. Some invasive plants have escaped from our home gardens and public plantings into natural areas and cause profound environmental and economic damage. Massachusetts has developed a list of problematic plants. Some are even illegal to sell, including Norway maple, Japanese maple, burning bush, all hollow-stemmed honeysuckles, garlic mustard, oriental bittersweet, and Japanese knotweed.

The exhibit also included a “Talking Tree,” a young pin oak tree that posed the question, “When I turn one hundred years old, what do you hope I will say?” Visitors then wrote their answers on a card and tied their card to the tree with yarn. The tree will be planted at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the center of Sharon.

The sheriffs urge folks to learn about the species considered invasive in the area, generate a list of those on your property or in your town, create a plan for eliminating them, and execute your plan. Contact the Sharon Garden Club or Carol Lundeen for further information.

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Sharon Garden Club Flyer for September Garden Medley event

Sharon Garden Club Fall Fair – Save the Date – Sept 9

Hints of fall are in the air, and the Sharon Garden Club is celebrating on September 9th with our September Garden Medley fundraiser. Join us from 11-4 to explore the learning and fun at our two locations :

  • a horticultural guided garden tour (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)
  • a Standard Flower Show (62 Bullard Street, Sharon)
  • an elegant boxed lunch in the garden (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)
  • a garden shoppe (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)
  • live folk music (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)
  • artists at work (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)
  • unique raffle items (70 Maskwonicut Street, Sharon)

TICKETS are $30 in advance, $35 the day of the event. Get tickets from me (617-327-9254 or carol@garden-911.com) or lizsiem@comcast.net.

You’ll probably find me in a stall at the barn at 70 Maskwonicut Street, the stall converted into an art exhibit for pollinator-friendly plants and a jail for nasty butterfly-killing invasive ones. WANTED: native pollinator plants, alive; WANTED: dead invasive plants.

 

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Best plants for honey bees include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme.

Sharon Garden Club Hosts Beekeeper Barbara MacPhee’s “Gardens for Honeybees”

Best plants for honey bees include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme.

Plant These For Bees, a display at the Sharon Garden Club by guest speaker and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee. Suggested flowers for pollinators include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme. [Photo by Dixie Buckland]

Beekeeper Barbara MacPhee

Sharon Garden Club presenter and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun honey bee facts from Sharon Garden Club presenter and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee, at our February meeting:

  • Among honey bees, it’s the worker bees (who are all females) that you see (and hear) collecting nectar and pollen. The males, called drones, maintain the hives.
  • It takes 1,152 honey bees flying a distance of 112,000 miles, harvesting from 4.5 million flowers, to produce one pound of honey. Now that is impressive, ladies!
  • In early spring, bees need early-flowering plants like snowdrops, Claytonia and dandelions to support their hives. Forsythia, while a traditional feel-good sign of spring for humans, has zero pollen and zero nectar. Consider replacing one with a pollinator-friendly native shrub like redbud or viburnum.
  • Later in the season, agastache, clover (yes, in your lawn!) and borage, plus winterberry and American holly, are some of the other plants that honey bees favor.

And my two cents: Think about it: just about everything you and I eat was once a plant, most likely a flowering plant. No pollinators, no food. Are you hungry to support pollinators now?

Visit the Sharon Garden Club online

 

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