Concord Garden Club wants to help you step up your planting game

By Tim Goodwin - Jun 3, 2014 | 0 comments

Scenes like this are not uncommon in the yards of garden club members. They are far less common in the Insider pod.

Judith Maloy loves gardening. That’s why she’s a member of the Concord Garden Club and has her lawn filled with all kinds of growy things.

Maloy does some digging. She’d make a good investigative reporter.

Judith Maloy eschews the green thumb for a pair of stylish red ones – along with eight other fingers – as she gets down on some work in her herb garden.

If you have a passion for digging in the dirt and planting beautiful flowers or tasty vegetables, then do we have a group for you.

The Concord Garden Club is just a group of local people who love to garden. They have been cultivating the spirit of gardening (their pun not ours) for just about 90 years, as well as the actual plants they put in the ground. It began with a group of women who shared a similar interest in weeding, trimming and nurturing the things that make your yard beautiful from the first signs of spring to the onset of cold and frosty nights in the fall. And it hasn’t changed a whole lot, except for the fact that a few men have joined over the last couple of years. (Yay for equality.)

“It’s really just a love of gardening,” said member Judith Maloy, who will serve as president for the next two years.

Over the years, the structure of the club has evolved, as have the requirements for entry. We envision that back in the early days, that prospective members had to weed and properly place a certain number of plants in a medium-sized garden while being timed under the watchful eye of the entire club. But we’re pretty sure that never happened – the only thing you really needed was a couple of recommendations and a love for gardening.

“It’s about people who really love gardening,” said member Trina Richardson, who joined the garden club in the late 1980s and works on the program committee. “If you love gardening, you can join. You meet like-minded people who are interested in gardening and you develop friendships . . . You learn so much from what the garden club has to offer.”

And while most new members are still introduced to the club by a fellow gardening enthusiast, it’s more about the love of the skill. The club really just wants people who enjoy spending a Saturday spreading around some soil.

“It’s pretty informal and people come when they can, but it’s great when we have everyone together,” Maloy said.

As of now, the club is made up of about 60 active gardeners and Maloy, as president for the next two years starting at Thursday’s annual meeting, has made it her goal to increase memberships. All you need is a love of gardening, a little bit of cash to pay for the yearly dues and some time to help with one of the club’s many boards.

“Getting some real active and engaged members to give the club some additional membership would be good,” Maloy said. “It’s an opportunity to connect with others in the community in a different way.”

What may be somewhat of a shock is that the garden club’s active schedule is from September to June. The year will wrap up with the annual meeting and then the group does not reconvene until the fall. Now we know what you must be thinking: why would a garden club take time off during most of the gardening season? Well, it’s because everybody is so busy being knee deep in soil and weeds that there isn’t a lot of time for members to get together. Plus meeting over the fall and winter helps people prepare for the next season and keep the gardening ideas flowing.

“I love taking time every month to think about gardening,” Maloy said. “It’s nice to have a splash of color in the dreary months,”

During the active year, the group will hold something every month. It could be a compost workshop, the annual Art in Bloom exhibit at McGowan Fine Art each January or tours of breathtaking gardens in New Hampshire and beyond.

“You really get to appreciate all aspects of gardening,” said Richardson, who helped create Art in Bloom.

And with having so many local garden centers, it’s not that hard to find exactly what you want that next addition to the garden to be.

“Having the local greenhouses that grow the plants locally is so important,” Maloy said. “I always have to get a couple new perennials each year.”

Plus don’t forget about the opportunity to see what the other members are doing at their homes.

“We share tips on different things,” Maloy said. “We love to visit other people’s gardens to get ideas.”

The club is also dedicated to community service projects. No, they won’t come to your house and make your garden look fantastic, but they do spend time sprucing up the Garden of Hope at Memorial Field and the flower beds at the Hospice House. They also make trips in the winter to Pleasant View Retirement Home and the Merrimack County Nursing Home to help bring a little holiday cheer, and make seasonal floral arrangements for the Friendly Kitchen.

“Community service is an important part of the club,” Richardson said. “We like to help community based organizations.”

But the greatest thing about the club is the sharing of knowledge (and plants), and the love of gardening. The membership ranges from master gardeners to novices, and if one member doesn’t know the best spot to put that rose bush, it’s almost a certainty that someone else will.

“It’s a great connection because we all love gardening and we all love flowers,” Maloy said.

For more info on the club, visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/pages/Concord-Garden-Club/170515166310401.

“Really it’s all about digging in the dirt and watching it grow,” Richardson said.