​GGC members may remember the years when the club completely filled the Town Hall’s lower level with Jolly Farmer annual flowers to sell to support the club’s scholarships, grants, and programs.  At the last such sale in 2019, customers from Grantham and beyond flocked to the sale where a frenzy of buying ensued. 
 
This year, the club is running a more varied plant sale out doors in the Town Hall parking lot. Plants will include two tables of Jolly Farmer annuals, two tables of succulents, two tables of vegetable plants, one table of Van Berkum perennials, plus some Siberian Irises.
 
The Jolly Farmer flowers are being ably cared for by Ray Miner and Pete Lepre who ran the Jolly Farmer sale. They repurposed pallets from their recent solar panel delivery by putting them on wheels and covering the platters with flowers.  They roll out each of the pallets from their garage for ease of watering.
 
The club is also selling succulents nurtured by Tina Gleich who is ‘The Succulent Whisperer.” Tina can coax a tiny, sad looking succulent into a thriving plant with many adorable children.  Along with Tina; Elise Kendall, Amelia Lantz, and Kathy Houghton babysat succulent plants for over a year. Tina is generously donating all 75 succulents to the club to sell at the yard sale. They range from cute $1 minis, to potted groups of multiple types of succulents, to large jade plants.
 
In addition to running the Jolly Farmer sale, Ray and Pete are donating all these vegetable plants they have grown from seeds:
65 tomato plants--cherry and full size
50 pepper plants--sweet and jalapeno
18 four-packs of cucumbers
18 four-packs of summer squash
18 four-packs of zucchini
If you’re planning to buy vegetable plants soon, consider holding off until you can buy some of these healthy plants at great prices and also help out the club.
 
The club will also be selling some perennials from the Van Berkum perennial sale.  New club member Cheryl Wilson took up the reins from Nancy Crocker who ran the Van Berkum perennials, (and huge Jolly Farmer annuals sales for years.)  Nancy is happily busy with her grandchildren.  The perennials arrive on May 23rd. Those not ordered by members will be cared for by Cheryl until the June 10th yard sale.
 
The Siberian Irises that will be for sale used to grow in the Triangle Garden; and some of their relatives still do.  Kathy Hougton, who heads up the Triangle Garden team (giving former head Janie Clark more time to concentrate on her work as president of the Friends of the Library) is housing those iris plants for the sale.
 
I’ve watched these volunteers in action and am blown away by their hard work and dedication.  What I enjoy most is hearing their laughter when they work together toward a common goal.  The GGC is an amazing club.  

​​For the Grantham Garden Club’s May event, Program Director Emma Kalaidjian arranged for a field trip to visit Jenny Cooke’s exceptional garden in Lyme, NH. Jenny is a member of her local garden club with the adorable name Pardon My Garden. Her club holds no meetings, has no budget, and certainly needs no apologies. They simply visit one another’s gardens.  If the other members’ gardens are even a bit as beautiful as Jenny’s, they are very beautiful indeed. 
 
Twenty-four club members wandered around Jenny’s extensive gardens through delightful pathways and charming alcoves, and were amazed at the volume and variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees.  Jenny’s is a garden of lovely sights, smells, and sounds—the sight of the flowers, the smell of the spice bush blossoms, the sounds of 20 different species of birds singing their spring songs.*
 
Jenny patiently answered questions about gardening, her water feature, and the stones that crops up artfully throughout her garden.  I have no doubt that club members will take some of Jenny’s ideas into their own gardens.  When asked about a mushroom-like stone structure, Jenny had an unexpected answer.  Jenny explained that they were staddle stones, which were made and used in England and other European countries beginning in the 1500s.  Farmers supported their granaries with four staddles to protect the grain from hungry vermin.  I googled ‘staddles’ and learned from Wikipedia that today they are much sought after garden ornaments and found the picture below of a staddle-supported granary.    
 
The club wants to thank Jenny for inviting us into her fabulous garden and being such a delightful hostess.  She has inspired us all.
 
*Marty Gearhart used Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology free Merlin app and identified these 20 birds species in Jenny’s garden:  Bobolink, Tree Swallow, Robin, Crow, House Wren, Song Sparrow, Goldfinch, White-crowned Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Common Yellowthroat, Baltimore Oriole, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-eyed Vireo, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, Savannah Sparrow, Indigo Bunting, and Red-bellied Woodpecker.

Tulips, Speedwell, Daphne, Trilliums, Japanese Peony, Lentin Rose, European Larch, Hepatica, Summer Snowflake, Magnolia, 

Jenny Cooke with some of her stone art; Jenny's staddle; granary on staddles from Wikipedia

In 1904 Robert and Jennie Butchart moved to Vancouver Island to build a cement plant on a rich limestone deposit. Within eight years, most of the limestone had been removed which left a huge, ugly hole.  Jennie decided to transform that hideous space into a garden that evolved into the now famous Sunken Garden.
 
The Butchart Gardens have expanded to include a Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, Italian Garden, Bog Garden and a Mediterranean Garden.  Each is lovely but for me the view looking down on the Sunken Garden was the most jaw-dropping. 
 
On its 100th anniversary in 2004, the gardens were designated a National Historic Site of Canada.  Today, people come from all over the world.   If you haven’t seen visited yet, I recommend you add the Butchart Gardens to your bucket list.