April Newsletter

President Lauren Huyett with an assignment sheet for the club’s Concord 250th Pansy Project

Garden Club of Concord with Seeds & Weeds: Concord 250th Pansy Project

while it’s still a fresh memory! The newsletter recieved so many lovely photos of the morning. Here are a few:

Pansies galore! Delivered and all spread out for dispatch around town

Pansy Project Steering Committee: Lauren Huyett, Jennie Jenkinson, Kate Wharton, Paula Casey, Maryann Street, Pam Nelson

Rod Riedel and Maryann Street rationing out fresh potting soil into transport buckets

Members queuing up for their assignments

Finished planters around town

Concord Cheese Shop

The foot of the Concord Visitors’ Center sign

and finally: lunch at Paula Casey’s! 

April Program: April 16, 1:15 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 81 Elm Street

The programs committee invites you to join them in welcoming University of Connecticut Professor Emeritus Robert A Gross who will speak on the topic of the Horticultural History of Concord. Dennis Fiori reports that Bob Gross is a frequent speaker about town so is not likely a stranger to members who are also supporters of the library and/or the museum. On Wednesday, we will hear how Concord’s transcendental movement in Concord inspired an appreciation of nature manifested in spaces like Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and the growing popularity of gardening as an aesthetic practice. 

Professor Gross is the author of The Transcendentalists and Their World and The Minutemen and Their World.    

Quilts in Bloom

Lauren Huyett sent out a club-wide email so you’ve already seen these, but I am including these photos here for the record.  As she said: “Here are the spectacular arrangements at the “Quilts in Bloom” this Saturday made by Jeanne Hamilton, Pam Nelson, Ellen Whitney and Beth Kundert. They were amazing!! It was quite an event-packed with people.”

Jeanne Hamilton

Ellen Whitney & Beth Kundert

Pam Nelson

Club Trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

From left to right: Suzanne Broxson, Pat Lescalleet-Lashley, Maryrose Sykes, Sarah Paino, Kate Wharton, Pam Callahan, Nan Gustafson, Joan Campbell, Kelley Bothe, Pam Nelson, Amal Moamar

Maryrose Sykes and Nan Gustafson write: Spring has arrived at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, evidenced by the gorgeous hanging nasturtiums!  On April 3rd, a group of us enjoyed a private botanical tour led by our docent, Susan, discussing flowers and plants in the courtyard garden (including the design and history), and viewing several pieces of artwork with botanical features on the second floor.  We were lucky to see the notorious orange hued nasturtiums, cascading from the balconies in the impressive courtyard, always on view for Isabella’s birthday in April.  She was an artist as a gardener by considering colors, shapes and scents of the plants, while having a “hands on approach”.  

The courtyard is described as a “Venetian palace turned inside out” with the well-loved natural light provided by the glass paneled covered ceiling.  Today, the glass panels filter out ultraviolet light- good for the art work, but a challenge for horticulture.  Most of the sculpture in the garden is more than 2,000 years old, including the centrally located Egyptian falcon.  Isabella was inspired by her extensive travel, spending a year in Asia.  

On the second floor, the docent highlighted the regal, royal, red colored fabrics with floral designs and botanical influences in one room.  In another room, we viewed the large scaled tapestries made by guilds with designs that include plants, flowers and fruits, having three dimensional figures.  It took years to make such tapestries, using silk and metallic threads with dyes coming from plants and insects.  Our docent also highlighted the Japanese screens with chrysanthemums, ironwork with flower motifs, and mosaics with flowers.  So much to see in this impressive museum, created by a woman who was such a visionary!!