2023 Wreath Decorating

The holiday season has started and the Garden Club members gathered at the Newbury Church community room on a sunny Thursday morning to decorate wreaths for various buildings in town as well as to make and decorate the large wreath that is displayed over the entrance to Town Hall. As usual we had a great time. Wreaths are destined for the Historical Museum, Williams Park Memorial, the Library, the Senior Center, Parks and Rec, Public Works, the Ambulance Station, Police Station, and Fire Departments, as well as Newbury Church, Saint Paul’s Church and Brooks Quarry Housing.

The club would like to extend its thanks to Girl Scout Troop 50227 for helping with the painting of the pinecones we collected to use on the wreaths. Thank you Addie, Emily, Gigi, Isabel, Kaiti, Lily, Nicole, Nicole, Riley, Ruth and Sammi. We appreciate you taking on the task for us.

Happy Holidays!

2023 November Garden Therapy

The Garden Club of Brookfield held a seasonal session at the Brookfield Senior Center on Tuesday, November 14. The theme was “Holiday Hanging”. Participants made wall hanging from a wood shingle base and adorned it with material found in our winter gardens and added festive ribbons and bows. Thank you to this hard-working team for putting together another creative session. Looking forward to what’s in store for 2024.

2023 October Annual Meeting

On Thursday, October 19, the Garden Club was pleased to welcome Karin Pyskaty, current president of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut, to its annual meeting to preside at its installation of officers. The membership had voted in May to re-elect the current officers for another two-year term.  Joanne McKendry, Norma Jean Macauto, Sheila Stamboni and Dianne Mariano were installed as President, Vice-president, Treasurer and Secretary, respectively. Karin presented each officer with a symbolic key and words of wisdom for their roles.  The officers are looking forward to serving the membership in the coming year.  The Club awarded an outstanding service award to Laura Vogler-Marston and a certificate of lifetime achievement to Gail and Don Winkley. The meeting room was decked out in lovely autumn colors and the hostesses set out some very tasty treats.  Members showed great creativity in their pumpkin-themed artistic exhibits and some members still had beautiful dahlias, sedum, and mums from their gardens to display as horticultural exhibits.

2023 General Meeting

What a great meeting we had on Thursday, September 21.  Our presenter, Peg Townsend, who is a National Garden Clubs Accredited Flower Show Judge, a member of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut Board of Directors, and Chairman of the CT Flower Show School, led us in a dynamic and fun presentation titled “Understanding Flower Show Designs and Exhibits”.  The experience will certainly help us with our own personal flower designs and arrangement, but it will also help us to better understand all the beautiful flower entries that are on display at the annual Federation Flower Show in February. Peggy not only donated her designs to be raffled, but she graciously agreed to an impromptu judging of the club’s artistic exhibits. We were so pleased to welcome members from neighboring clubs as well as residents of the town, and with delicious autumn-themed treats provided by our hostesses to munch on the gathering was able to be both informative and social.

2023 Member Garden Visits

Being a member of the Garden Club of Brookfield isn’t just about attending meetings and presentations, submitting artistic and horticultural exhibits, and working in our civic gardens.   Sometimes its about just having fun – and on Thursday, July 20, with the weather cooperating, we did just that. Members gathered at Newbury Church and car-pooled to visit six member gardens.  Beautiful. Unique. And very much fitting the personality of its gardener.  And we ended the morning with a true garden-party with a dessert cake that looked too pretty to eat.

2023 National Garden Week

It is National Garden Week (June 4 to June 10) and the garden club kicked off the celebration with a table at our town’s Spring into Summer Block Party.  NGW was front and center with a displayed flyer and on seed packet tags.  The team made beautiful bouquets to sell they went like hotcakes. Thank you to all who attended, to the Friends of the Library who shared their spot with us, and to the great volunteers who made the day happen. 

2022 Annual Wreath Decorating

The holiday season is around the corner and once again the Garden Club gathered at the Newbury Church community room to decorate wreaths for various buildings in town as well as to make and decorate the large wreath that is displayed over the entrance to Town Hall.  It was a very, very busy morning and we were happy to once again meet in person for this fun event.

Ready for delivery and hanging!
A job well done.

Be sure to keep an eye for these beauties around town. Happy Holidays!

2022 FGCCT Awards

We are pleased to share that the Garden Club of Brookfield received two certificates of merit in public relations and communications (small club) for its work in improving membership awareness and for promoting national garden week. The awards were accepted by Joanne McKendry (President) and Norma Jean Macauto (Corresponding Secretary) at the annual awards meeting of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut.

Norma Jean and Joanne

60th Anniversary Garden Tour Day – July 2022

What a wonderful day Saturday turned out to be! We had over one hundred visitors come to our event who helped us celebrate 60 wonderful years of gardening in Brookfield.

GARDEN TOURS were a big hit and the main event of our day. Six neighbors in town (3 members of the club and 3 non-members) opened their gardens for self-guided tours. Lots of questions. Lots of oohs and aahs. Lots of photo taking. Thank you to our garden hosts!

GARDEN 1

GARDEN 2

GARDEN 3

GARDEN 4

GARDEN 5

GARDEN 6

==============================

We also had a lot of activity going on at our Museum Garden in town. This garden is the largest civic garden that club maintains. On Saturday it was host to a Plant Show-off event and a Garden Boutique.

PLANT SHOW-OFF – Members and friends submitted favorite specimens from their gardens which were voted for by a people’s choice balloting. Congratulations to our winners.

And here is a selection of other show-off submissions along with our trusty volunteers.

GARDEN BOUTIQUE – Shoppers came by to support our sale of new and gently used garden themed items. Puzzles, artwork, vases, planters, dishes, baskets. Something for every collector and gardener!

Thank you to all our visitors and supporters. We truly appreciate that you spent this special day with us.