When the Friends of the Dunbar Free Library sent out a notice listing all the wonderful museums they offer passes to, I took advantage of the one for Billings Farm.  I had taken my children and my grandchildren there many times when they were young.  This was my first time going without kids in tow. 
 
Although I enjoyed seeing the cows, chickens, and quilts; I was most impressed by the flowers and the plants. Their large garden plot is made up of multiple gardens including herb, pollinator, heirloom, pizza, and permaculture gardens.  The permaculture garden had a Hugelkultur mound made up of layers of hardwoods, leaves, turf, compost, and soil and is where they grow perennial fruits and vegetables.  The mound provides nutrition and lengthens the growing season. 
 
The sun flower maze is quite an attraction. As expected, most everyone in the maze was looking up at the towering sunflowers.  The surprising plants were the very odd looking ones thriving in their shadow.  The plants such as red amaranth, cockscomb, and purple millet looked like Dr. Seuss inventions.  I learned that most of these plants have been used as food and medicine since antiquity. More recently, the Abenaki people grew many of them there.  
 
There’s also another great garden just a short walk away at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.  So many gardens, so little time….

Twenty people from the garden club had the privilege of touring Cobb Hill Cohousing with Helen Prussian, one of the 50 residents and an enthusiastic proponent of the sustainable lifestyle there.
 
We learned from Helen that living in the community requires a lot of work.  Residents take turns with chores like  gathering wood and feeding the garn (incinerator),  hauling manure, and collecting eggs from their 48 chickens. In addition to those chores, once a month Cobb Hill holds a 'work day' where all the residents join in to take care of the common areas. The 'work days' are open to the public and a nice way for prospective buyers to chip in and get a feel for the people and their way of life.  Helen's nickname in the community is "The Nudger" for her diplomatic way of getting people going.  Helen and other residents we chatted with are justifiably proud of what they have accomplished together.  
 
Helen guided us all around the farm and even led us through her home to see the beautiful view and check out her composting toilet.  We learned why everything grows so well there with all the composting steps over multiple years before becoming the loam that is spread in the flower  gardens. 
 
Helen is a co-owner of Hillside Herbs & Flowers and gave us the opportunity to pick flowers from her gardens full of gorgeous flowers she had grown from seeds.  Helen showed us which should be picked as buds and which after they  bloom.  She taught little tricks like shaking the zinnias and only picking those that have stiff stems.

Some of us met for lunch just down the road and brought our jars of flowers to learn more from Helen on how to keep the cut flowers fresh. Helen explained how to stop bacterial growth by cutting all the greens that will touch the water and by adding lemon juice and bleach.  She recommended adding sugar to the water to feed the flowers, changing the water every day or two, and cutting a bit off the bottom (at a slant) each time. Our flower festooned table was the envy of the Harpoon Brewery beer garden customers!
 
The pictures below show more of the tour. Go to www.cobbhill.org  to learn even more about Cobb Hill.  I know you'll be impressed.  
 
Thank you Helen for a great tour! 

The history of the plant sale continues with the transition to purchasing the plants from Jolly Farmer in New Brunswick, Canada.  Luck and timing played a major role.  Plant Sale Chair Claire Vogel was shopping in Kristina Cole’s store Remembrance Fine Lingerie one day while Kristina was looking through the Jolly Farmer catalog.  Kristina had been ordering plants for the Lebanon Garden Club for years. Claire looked over the catalog, was impressed, and started ordering from their nursery in addition to Pleasant View.  Claire continued to order from both Pleasant View and Jolly Farmer for three years before deciding to purchase exclusively from Jolly Farmer starting in 2008.   
 
The next multi-year lead was Kristina Burgard.  Kristina wasn't even a member when, at the urging of a friend,  she came to a garden club meeting to check it out.  At that very first meeting, Kristina not only joined the club but also agreed to take over the helm of the plant sale. Amazing! Kristina ran the plant sale from 2012 to the 2017 making adjustments each year including adding a pre-buy option for members, posting cards with information on all the plants, using colored sticks to indicate prices, purchasing lots of signs to promote the sale on “Saturday at 9 at Town Hall” and arranging for the donation of large scaffolds to display hanging baskets.  Kristina was a real mover and shaker in the club for many years including being the vice president in 2015 and 2017 and president in 2016 and 2018.
 
Nancy Crocker was the next person to step up to the plate and was the plant sale chair for the 2018 and 2019 sales. Everything was running smoothly until the 2020 pandemic came crashing down.  Nancy, plus GGC president Elise Kendall, and the Steering Committee made the difficult decision to cancel the public sale but felt that people needed flowers more than ever so members were given the opportunity to order flats of Jolly Farmer plants.  On a brutally hot day in May, the Jolly Farmer truck arrived. A group of masked volunteers spread out at the Town Hall parking lot to sort and then deliver the flowers.  Imagine how that must have been for folks who had been stuck at home for months to receive those hanging baskets and flowers to plant in their own gardens—a place of serenity in a world turned upside down.
 
When the pandemic was over, the smooth transition and all the moving parts that made up the sale were lost and there was no plant sale in 2021, Ray Miner and Pete LePre missed the opportunity to buy wonderful Jolly Farmer plants and volunteered to run the member only plant sale in 2022.  The next year, the club started to cautiously get back into the public plant sale business with the sale being combined with the Grantham town wide yard sale.  While it was a financial success, keeping those plants alive for a few weeks after the Jolly Farmer delivery was time consuming for Ray and Pete so the yard sale/plant sale experiment was abandoned and the club decided to go back to the original plan of pre-buy for members and public plant sale. Ray and Pete took care of the pre-buy while Kristina Cole and previous plant sale chair Claire Vogel ordered the flowers for the public plant sale.  There weren’t nearly as many plants for sale as in the pre-covid sale years, and they sold out in 90 minutes.  The plan for 2025 is to combine the member buy and the public plant sale into one large sale.  A few days before the Saturday public sale, members will have the opportunity to purchase plants from a large selection plus  enjoy a 10% member discount. 
 
As times change; the club reacts, is willing to take some risks, and makes decision as to what would be best for the club, its members, and the town.