MAY 2025 UPDATES & EVENTS Concord Garden Club
- Jenny Robson - Communications
- May 5
- 7 min read
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.... and there are so many buds!!
And just like that, the gardening season is back in full swing. Whether you're potting up dahlias, plotting your vegetable garden, or sitting back and enjoying the fruits of your labors, we hope you'll find information in this newsletter that entertains and informs you.
President's Message
You may have noticed that the RSVP button for the Club’s Annual Meeting on the website has been turned off. Instead, you should shortly receive a printed invitation to the meeting, which will be held on June 5 from 9:30 - 11:00 at the Woman’s Club. Please watch for it in your mailbox.
We will have a brief, but very important, business meeting to elect the new slate of officers and introduce committee chairs, and to review our finances and the work of our committees over the past year.
There will be time to catch up with friends and to explore our “Give and Get” swap table. For the swap, we are encouraging everyone to bring garden related items from home: cuttings, extra pots, seeds, books, and other gardening items you no longer need and would like to see go to a loving home.
I hope to see all of you as we wrap up the 2024/2025 Garden Club year and look forward to the year to come.
Gena
May Meeting
Author Jill Nooney
Bedrock - the making of a public garden
Saturday, May 10th, 2025
12:30pm
Gibson's Bookstore
45 S. Main Street, Concord
Gibson's Bookstore, in partnership with the Concord Garden Club, is pleased to welcome author Jill Nooney for her new book about Bedrock Gardens in Lee, NH, Bedrock: The Making of a Public Garden.
Bedrock: The Making of a Public Garden is a love letter from a woman to the 30 acre garden she spent 40 years creating in Lee, NH. Featuring over 300 photographs of the garden, sculptures, water features, and built structures, the book takes us from the garden’s private origin to a public garden.
The author's property, acquired from the original owners in 1980, was a 37-acre dairy farm that had been abandoned for about 40 years. The initial years were dedicated to clearing the land of poison ivy and pucker-brush. Work on the farm as a landscaped project started about 1987. Nearly all of the work has been carried out by the two creators, Jill and her husband Bob Munger. They cleared the scrub growth and overgrown fields, established access roads, and managed the woods with guidance from foresters and arborists. Gradually, gardens were created bed by bed. In 1991, a wildlife pond was added, and in 1999, a family room was appended to the original house. Despite these additions, the original house and outbuildings, including a three-hole outhouse, remain intact. Today, about two-thirds of the property is garden.
The garden features numerous structural elements such as paths, an espaliered fence, an arborvitae hedge, architecturally interesting rocks, pergolas, and garden art. The beds boast exceptional plant varieties, often started as seedlings, including many unusual specimens of perennials, trees, and shrubs.
Jill Nooney grew up in rural New Jersey. She attended Bennington College, Smith College School of Social Work, and the Radcliffe Seminars Program in Landscape Design. She has had a lifelong interest in plants, art, and healing the human spirit.
Program Chair - Ruth Perencevich
RSVP here please!
June -
Annual Meeting
Thursday, June 5, 2025
9:30-11:00am
Woman's Club of Concord
44 Pleasant Street
Watch your mail for an invitation (including a dues reminder for '25-'26 CGC membership) to attend our Annual Meeting to elect new officers and committee chairs and conduct the Club's business.
Coffee and pastries will be provided.
We will also have a plant and garden items exchange, so please bring garden related items from home: cuttings, extra pots, seeds, books, and other gardening items you no longer need - and be prepared to take a few "new to you" things home with you!
Program Chair: Gena Cohen Moses
Thank you!
Later in June --
Field Trip
to the Gardens of Laura Trowbridge
Thursday, June 26, 2025
11:00am
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE FOR THIS PROGRAM WHICH WAS PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED FOR JUNE 19th.
29 Cornish Road
Peterborough, NH
Carpooling at the Clinton Street Park & Ride, 10am
Laura Trowbridge is a garden designer who works primarily on the gardens of historic homes. Her own extensive gardens, developed over the past 35 years, have been featured on the Garden Conservancy Open Days tours. She has authored articles for Fine Gardening, and her work has been featured in Country Gardens, New Hampshire Home, and Living the Country Life.
She speaks regularly to garden clubs about garden design and how to incorporate more annuals and tropicals into your garden. Laura's passion for annuals leads her to change her gardens significantly from year to year. Every spring she drives to nurseries all over New England to buy new and exotic plants.
You can read more about Laura and her work at LauraTrowbridge.com
Program Chair -- Lauren Savage
RSVP here.
This program is for Members Only
Gardening in MAY
UNH Extension, our wonderful local gardening resource, has some useful workshops on their schedule --
May 13th - Growing Pollinators
June 14th - Tips for growing Tomatoes
For more information about these and other programs, and to register, visit the UNH Extension site.
SAVE THE DATE:
NH Audubon Annual Native Plant Sale & Craft Fair
June 7, 10am-3pm at the McLane Center in Concord
Bagley Pond Perennials and Fassett Farms will be offering a wide selection of native plants and shrubs for purchase. Plus, local florist Erin Primiano of Wren and Raine will be selling sustainably grown and harvested fresh flower bouquets. At the craft fair, explore a wide variety of quality, handmade crafts by more than 15 local artisans. Visit our ambassador animals, explore the pollintor gardens, win raffle prizes, enjoy food from Greenhouse Pizza Truck, and more!
May Chores for Flower Gardens
SHOP IN YOUR OWN BEDS: Before things get too far along, practice "use what you've got" gardening, dividing mature plants and plucking out seedlings and other “extra goodies” from cracks and crevices, edges of beds, the driveway, and moving them into better homes where they will make more impact. Free!
TAKE ADVANTAGE of any bouts of cooler, moister weather to divide and move perennials. Water in well, and keep an eye out all season to watch that they don’t stress.
PREPARE NEW BEDS by smothering grass or weeds with layers of recycled corrugated cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, then put mulch on top.
ONCE EXISTING BEDS ARE CLEANED UP, topdress according to label directions with an all-natural organic fertilizer if needed (a soil test can tell you), but more important, a layer of finished compost.
WHEN WORKING IN BEDS and borders, be careful not to clean up too roughly: desirable emerging self-sown annuals and biennials (larkspur, nicotiana, clary sage, Verbena bonariensis, perilla, Angelica gigas, etc.) can be disturbed unless you pay attention.
PLANT ANNUAL VINES, which make hummingbirds and butterflies happy in high
summer-to-fall.
SPEAKING OF ANNUALS…Just as with many vegetables, a single sowing won’t take you from early season to late fall. Plan for succession plantings.
DEADHEAD SPRING BULBS as blooms fade, but leave foliage intact to wither and ripen the bulbs naturally. Deadhead spring-flowering perennials unless they have showy seedheads, or you want to collect seed later (non-hybrids only, unless you’re feeling daring and want to see what parental traits the offspring revert to).
TENDER BULBS started indoors last month for a headstart (like cannas) can go into the ground after frost danger passes. If you didn’t get dahlias, cannas, caladiums and such going indoors, plant now, inserting support stakes (if needed, as with dahlias) at planting time to avoid piercing bulbs later.
SOAK NASTURTIUM and morning glory seeds overnight, then sow. Zinnias and marigolds and other familiar summery annuals can be direct sown now, or start in cellpacks and set them out after a month to six weeks. Calendula is another good annual -- edible, beautiful, and popular with beneficial insects.
EDGE BEDS to make a clean line and define them. A clean edge makes a real difference, along with an inch and a half or two of good, fine- to medium-textured organic mulch.
And this helpful info from UNH Extension about garden cleanup and supporting pollinators:
Community Information & Volunteer Corner
Volunteer Opportunity at Kimball Jenkins
Kimball Jenkins is looking for help from CGC members in its annual spring garden cleanup. Most of you were able to enjoy the estate this winter during Art and Bloom. You probably see how great it is for Concord to have a venue like this so close to downtown. This spring, they would greatly appreciate our help giving a little love to their gardens outside.
The two days they have set aside for volunteers are Thursday May 15th and Thursday May 29th, with rain dates on the 16th and 30th. If you have an hour or two to spare on those dates between 10-2, you will be doing a wonderful service.
Here is a signup link, with more info to follow by email once you have signed up.
It would be terrific if our organization has a good showing. Please email me if you have any further questions about this.
Millie LaFontaine
Community Service
The Peace Pole Garden had a robust crew gather for Spring Cleanup on a day which coincidentally was the first beautiful day of the year! Many thanks to these gals who volunteered their time to beautify White Park instead of their own home gardens. We are working to include more native species and pollinators into the garden, so if you have any plants to donate, or would like to be added to the list of Peace Pole Garden maintainers, contact Jenny Robson (jenrobson@mac.com) or Melissa Smart (lisbeetea.ms@gmail.com).
If you love visiting beautiful gardens, The Garden Conservancy's Open Days are for you. The Open Days, which have already started for 2024, are held at private gardens all over the country and provide a rare opportunity to see spectacular gardens which are otherwise closed to the public.
To see the local schedule, visit The Garden Conservancy and select New Hew Hampshire from the "State" drop menu. A few wonderful NH gardens will be open on May 18th, one in Chesterfield and one in Gilsum.
