LEXINGTON FIELD & GARDEN CLUB
138 YEARS OF MAKING LEXINGTON
MORE BEAUTIFUL
Volume 5 Issue 7 April 2015
email [email protected]
President’s Message
Dear Fellow Members,
Along with the arrival of spring comes the busiest time of our club’s calendar.
Inside this newsletter can be found details for our end of year luncheon on May 13.
You will also find information on the potting dates and times for the plant sale. If you
are not sure what plants to donate, there is a list of what plants are desirable. Our biannual Garden Tour is June 6. There are many ways that you can help with this popular
event. Check out the list inside and be ready to add you name to the signup sheet at the
April meeting. Along with voting for the new club officers on April 8, we will be honoring our former Presidents who continue to inspire us with their dedication and giving
nature. Be sure to drop by the Carey Seed Library and see what it is all about. Dues
are payable by April 30. Contact Gail Harris if you have not received your dues envelope. In closing, I want to thank you for all you do to keep our club welcoming and vibrant. Sue
Wednesday April 8
New Technologies and Unique Set-ups for Container Gardening
and Rooftop Farming
With Jesse Banhazi (co-founder and owner of Somerville-based Green City Growers)
Jesse will offer solutions for gardeners hoping to grow their own food, utilizing the
porches, roofs and small yards that constitute “farms” for urban dwellers. She will also
talk about rooftop gardening, which has become popular in the last few years.
Dues envelopes have been mailed..Dues payable by April 30. Please fill in information requested
by end of April to ensure your being listed in the new yearbook. Write program suggestions on inside
envelope flap.
Open Evening Meeting
Monday, April 27, 7:30 PM
Keilty Hall, St. Brigids Church with Gretel Anspach,
Master Gardener speaks on Composting Simplified.
Gretel Anspach, a fun and clear-speaking presenter,
will talk on Simplifying Composting. Nothing is easier, cheaper, and more beneficial than composting for
your garden. She is a Trustee of Mass Hort, a Lifetime
Master Gardener, and past-president of the Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association. Gretel also
helped to establish and maintain a food production
garden at a corporate site. This has provided fresh produce to the Marlboro Food Pantry for over five years.
Lexington Field and Garden Club sponsors this Open
Evening Meeting which starts at 7:30 pm, Monday,
April 27th in Keilty Hall, St. Brigids Church, 2001
Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, MA with accessible
free parking and meeting venue.
Garden Tour, June 6, 2015
VOLUNTEERS WANTED FOR LIMITED TASKS, Garden Tour, Saturday,
June 6, 2015
1 Driver with 1 Local Navigator for 4 hours, any time May 21-May 24
1 Driver with 1 Local Navigator for 4 hours, June 6th after 4 pm or June 7
1 Driver/walker to distribute Flyers around towns, 2-3 hours, May 1 on
1 Hospitality Captain to plan Refreshments prior to June 6
1 Hospitality Captain to organize Refreshments and manage team on June 6
1 Captain to help with Garden Tour Ticket – you name your area of interest
2 Captains of Greeters on June 6. Process is organized. MS Word and Email
ability.
1 Captain to Recruit Greeters, Attend LFGC Meetings in April with clipboards,
prepared
Name your interest, passion, skill, and time to work with fun folks at LFGC.
1 Graphics Artist to help prepare materials
1 Writer/editor for Garden Tour Ticket
1 Master Gardener to edit Garden Tour Ticket
Friday, April 24 – Monday, April 27
Art in Bloom, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Lexington Field and Garden Club generously
sponsors a floral interpretation of Spencer Finch’s
contemporary “Shield of Archilles” at Art in
Bloom, at The Museum of Fine Arts. The floral
arrangement by LFGC’s members Ellan Siegel
and Barbara Shafer can be viewed in the contemporary wing of the MFA from Friday, April 24th
through Monday, April 27th. The original Achilles
Shield, as smithed by Hephaestus in Homer’s The
Illiad, is festooned with scenes of a pastoral idyllic
life. What is the irony? Cary Memorial Library may have MFA tickets available
for that weekend.
COME ONE, COME ALL TO THE ANNUAL LUNCHEON
Following our regular May 13th meeting at the museum, the Annual Luncheon will
be held at the Adult Learning Center of Grace Chapel, located at 2 Militia Drive in
Lexington, from 12:30 until 3 p.m. This venue is handicapped accessible and has
plenty of parking. We are happy to announce that the luncheon will be catered by
Trisha Kennealy, owner of the Inn at Hastings Park. The menu includes curry lentil
soup, cucumber-mint riata & roasted cauliflower, a vegetarian quiche served with a
green salad, an apple tart with caramel sauce and ginger crème, ice tea, and coffee
and tea service. The cost is $28 and includes gratuity. Reservations and payments
will be taken at our Club's April 8th meeting. Please plan to join your Garden Club
friends for a delicious meal, good conversation and fun. For further information,
please contact either Janet Erickson or Sue Harris.
Arbor Day
We hope you will join us at our Arbor Day Celebration on Friday, April 24. Location
and other details will be announced. We are looking for volunteers to help with the
schools’ LFGC tree program. Volunteers are also needed to help plan the tree planting
ceremony which honors our recently deceased members. Please contact Peg Bradley
and Mary-Beth Whiteside to learn more.
LFGC Annual Plant Sale will be held May 20, 8 a.m. to 12 noon on the Scottish
Rite Masonic Museum and Library grounds
This year especially, as it continues to snow outside, we are all eagerly looking forward
to small signs of spring. As we make plans for our spring gardens, we are hopefully also
thinking about ways to support the club’s annual plant sale.
Our plant sale is so much more than just our largest fundraiser. It’s an opportunity to spend time
with fellow gardeners, meet old friends and make new ones, learn about plants we don’t have in our
gardens, and share gardening knowledge of all kinds. It also helps us promote gardening in the broader
community. New and seasoned gardeners get a chance to work together, benefit from each others’ collective expertise, and purchase healthy, locally grown plants.
The plant sale also provides us the opportunity to share our most prolific, and perhaps also our most
special plants for others to enjoy. What better way to assure that our gardens live on. So, please be
thinking about plants in your gardens that may need dividing, or that you would like to share with others. Perhaps ask your friends if they’d be willing to share some of their more unusual plants. They
might be flattered and pleased to donate to a good cause. The lists below identify the most desirable
plants.
Potting will again take place at the carriage house of the new Lexington Community Center on Marrett Road . Georgia Glick, Barbara Shafer and Cynthia Stanton will head up the potting days. Please
mark your calendars and plan to join us for as many potting sessions as you can. Please sign up at the
main club meeting on April 8, or contact Georgia or Barbara. Be sure to bring gloves, apron, clippers,
trowel and knife or small saw, if you have them.
Please plan to bring your plant donations to potting sessions, preferably on the day you dig them,
with both common and Latin name attached, if known, color, growing conditions (sun, part-shade, or
shade), your name, plus any other helpful information. It is helpful to have all this information written
with a permanent marker, preferably on the bags containing your plants. If you have choice plants you
would like to donate but are unable to dig them, please contact Leslie or Meg, who will provide experienced help with digging.
We are also collecting 5” to 8” plastic pots for re-use, especially pots from last year’s sale. Please
bring these with you to the sale, or drop them off at 12 Hayes Avenue or 20 Hancock Street.
Next month we’ll need lots of help setting up and taking down the sale site, loading, unloading and
transporting plants, helping customers on sale day, and spreading word of the sale. It takes over 100
people to cover all the tasks. We hope you volunteer to participate in as many ways as possible. The
following list describes the tasks and the time commitments involved in the sale. It is helpful but not
necessary that you sign up.
POTTING DAYS: Each date has two sessions - 10-12 & 1-3. The dates are: Monday April 27,
Wednesday April 29, Tuesday May 5, Thursday May 7, Friday May 8 and Monday May 11. Thursday
May 14 has been set aside as a rain date.
DIGGING: We need several folks to help dig plants; 1 to 2 hour commitment as needed.
PUBLICITY: May 13 - Two people for 3 hours to place signs at about 25 designated locations.
May 20 - Two people for three hours after the sale is over to remove the same signs & return them to
12 Hayes Avenue.
SALE SET-UP: Move trestles, wood tabletops & other sale items from storage, May 19 12-2
Move plants from potting area to sale area, May 19 2-5
SALE DAY: Provide customer assistance with plant choices May 20 8-10 and 10-12
Help transport plants to holding area or cashier May 20 8-10 and 10-12
Holding area, check in plants so customers can continue shopping, 8-10, 10-12
Breakdown, clean-up of sale site, help transport equipment back to storage May 20 11-1
PLANT DONATIONS: If you have any plants that you would like to donate that are not listed below please contact Leslie or Meg.
Plants we love - Japanese anemone, aster, astilbe, astilboides, balloon flower, baptisia, betony, bloodroot, blue dune grass, brunnera, bugbane, clematis, coreopsis, corydalis, cotoneaster, darmera, interesting varieties of daylily (pictures will help) dicentra, epimedium, euphorbia, Japanese painted fern, ostrich ferns, gentian, geum, ginger, goats beard, hellebore, interesting varieties of hosta, heuchera,
bearded iris, Japanese iris, Jacob’s ladder, kalimeris, leucothoe, liriope, ligularia, malva, penstemon,
peony, persicaria, pulmonaria, rhubarb, rodgersia, rudbeckia, Russian sage, salvia, sedum, switchgrass,
thalictrum, toad lily, variegated Solomon’s seal.
Plants we like - butterfly bush, campanula, chrysanthemum, dianthus, doronicum, perennial geraniums, golden star, false Solomon’s seal, filipendula, lobelia, pachysandra, hops, white siberian iris,
lady’s mantle, monarda, nepeta, phlox, St. John’s wort. scabiosa. Shasta daisies. sweet woodruff, veronica, vinca, wintergrees, yarrow.
Examples of plants we do not sell - Invasives, such as bishop’s weed or gout weed, or very common
plants such as ribbon grass, orange day lilies, and purple Siberian Iris.
Questions, comments, suggestions: contact Plant Sale co-Chairs Leslie Masson ,Meg Himmel.
Please email one of the chairs, their emails are in the book.or [email protected]
,
Potting for the plant sale will take place at the Community Center Carriage House parking lot (same as last year). The plant SALE will be held at the Scottish Rite Masonic
Museum & Library on May 20 from 8 am to 12 noon.
Accepting plastic pots 4 inches or more, round or square. Can return pots from last
year’s purchases.
SEE YOU AT THE POTTING DAYS & AT THE PLANT SALE!
LEXINGTON LAUNCHES NEW SEED LIBRARY
Now is the time to start planting some seeds for your garden. Library patrons can fill
out a simple form and choose packets of locally-adapted vegetable and flowers to plant
and grow, all for free. If plants are grown successfully, gardeners will collect and save
some seeds to return to the library. This seed saving program is a collaborative effort of
Carey Memorial Library Foundation, Lexington Community Farm
(LexFarm), Lexington Field & Garden Club, and the Town of Lexington .The program's
inaugural talk by Julie Mcintosh Shapiro was generously underwritten by the
LFGC. The crowd funding website for this project is www.razoo.com/story/LexingtonSeed-Library/
Lexington Field & Garden Club Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 7, April, 2015
What’s Going On?
April 8---Main Club Meeting, Honoring Past Presidents of the LFGC, Election of new officers
April 9-10---Gardening Study School Course II, Tower Hill
April 13---Horticulture Morning 10 am, Tower Hill, “Backyard Foraging”
April 24---Arbor Day Observances in memory of LFGC deceased members
April 24-27---Art in Bloom at the Museum of Fine Arts
April 28---Middlesex District Annual Meeting
April 29 & 30--May 1---Flower Show School Course II, Milford, MA
May 4---Horticulture Morning 10 am, So. Shore/Cape Cod: venue TBD,
“Wake Up Little Garden” with C. L. Fornari
May 20---Plant Sale, 8-noon, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library
April 30th, Club dues are due. See inside for Potting Day Dates.
Lexington Field and Garden Club
P. O. Box 133
Lexington0, MA 0242
PLACE
STAMP
HERE