Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back. Spring has sprung. Yes. Here in the studio currently in Quincy. Time to tell you about the Walliston Garden Club and their annual plant sale that is coming up this Saturday, May 16, 9 to noon at the former Wollaston Congregational Church. But we still call it that because we love it and the garden club's home. So. Ann Forsman, Kathy Kervills, Ladies. Happy spring.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Happy spring. I think it might actually be almost here finally.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Right. It seems like we've waited a long time this year. Spring has been kind of fits and starts.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: It's been a.
Because the ground just stayed frozen, you know, for our interests of pulling up plants from people's houses and getting them acclimated to a pot so then they can go home to your house and be put in your garden.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: So the timing is tight.
You know, we can't start in April if there's still snow on the ground and the ground's frozen and no plants are coming up.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: I hope it means that, you know, summer's gonna extend it to December this year.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I hope we don't have one of those non existent springs that go winter to summer. I don't think that's gonna happen. The good thing about the cool weather is you notice that the daffodils stayed in bloom longer.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: True. So look at you looking on the bright side.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: You know that cool weather kept all
[00:01:16] Speaker B: those flowers and all the lilacs this year are fabulous.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Yesterday was Lilac Sunday, actually.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yes. But you can go there now and not have the crowd.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: I like to go on Lilac Monday.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Lilac Monday, that's right.
Kathy, just real quick, for folks who might not, even though you've been around for over 100 years, what's the Wollaston Garden Club?
[00:01:37] Speaker B: The Walliston Garden Club has been around for a hundred. We're coming up on our 100th year anniversary, which is amazing. And every year we put out a book and they're all the pictures from our own members.
And it tells you everything that we're going to do all year. It's going to tell you who the speakers are, who we donate to. I mean, it's. It's chock.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Full, comprehensive.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yes. Very, very important. Every year it gets updated.
Right now we have 127 members.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: You're reading my mind.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: And we have quite a few gentlemen and they're lovely additions. We're really happy. And we don't.
You don't have to live in Quincy. We have people that live in Hingham, that live in Braintree, that, you know, that moved Away, but still come for our meetings.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: You can be a member of more than one garden club, too.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: We know people that are. And God love them.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Right?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Exactly. Yes. That's a lot of extra work, I think if you're going to get really involved, which not everybody can because of their age or, you know, something.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Time constraints.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Right. But they've done what they're doing to help the club. I mean, maybe they don't dig, maybe they don't, but they feed us. We eat really well between our meetings.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Very important.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: There'll be a food table at the plant sale for.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: We have priorities. Yeah.
We are known for really good spreads, you know.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Well, it's, you know, it's in the morning, so folks are looking for, you
[00:03:05] Speaker B: know, a donut, a kid wants a donut, or, you know, donut hole or whatever, you know. But yeah, we're. Everybody contributes in whatever way they can.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: I mentioned where you meet. The Wasten Congregational Church. When do you meet?
[00:03:18] Speaker B: We meet on the Thursdays starting in September, the third Thursday of the month, and we alternate. So if September is a day meeting, then the next month will be a night meeting so that we have members that are still working and can't get to the day meeting, so we alternate.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And how does one become a member?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Just very easy. It's only $30 for the whole year. And you can actually go onto our website, the Wallace and Garden Club, and there will be a link there for you to fill out a form and send it to our treasurer, Marnie, and we'll vote you in and we'll be happy to have you. Yes. We just voted in two new members in the past couple of weeks.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Oh, that's great.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Excellent.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: How did they find out about you?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: A lot of times it's because they're friends doing it and they mention it. How? You know, word of mouth, still the
[00:04:08] Speaker A: best form of advertising.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It really, really is. But then sometimes you just get a new member who came into the area, had been in a garden club in her own place and was looking and found us online. And that's happened, too.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: You know, knows nobody and just signs up. And I love that.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Good gardeners too.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Ann, it is. One of your signature events is the Walliston Garden Club's annual spring plant Sale. Right?
[00:04:34] Speaker C: We are. And I wanted to add that you could also join our garden club Saturday, right on site at the plant sale.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: We have a membership table. Of course, you can buy your gloves if you want to go home. And plant them.
As well as these. All plants that we have lovingly divided from our members gardens and from other donated area gardens.
We have a number of plants that were donated from the Thomas Crane Library garden.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Okay. Which is gorgeous.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Which is gorgeous. So if you. If you happen to be at the library in the next few days, you can see some of the plants that are in bloom out there. If you like them, there might be one on Saturday.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Take a picture, bring it with you.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: That's a fabulous.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: They're labeled.
Claire does a great job of labeling the plants that are there.
So use the Latin name when you can so that you get the exact plant.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: All right.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: That's asking a lot.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: That is.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: But if you take a picture of it, it's easy to just Google that she's got it.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Everything is. You can Google anything.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Great time of year too. We just come off cleaner, greener, so everything is just, you know, things.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Look, this is my favorite time of the year to drive around with the flowering trees in bloom.
I guess I'm not. The allergies don't bother me that much, so I don't suffer from a pollen problem. But I love to see our spring just rejuvenate and come back to life.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Sure. So tell me about the sale. What's gonna be happening on Saturday?
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Sale starts at 9:00'. Clock.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Okay. Get there early.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: Get there early. We always say get there early for best selection.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: The lines, four lines in the weather seems to be.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it looks really good for Saturday.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: We've done it in other kinds of weather.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: The plants don't mind if it rains. Well, the plants don't, the shoppers do.
But we will have a number of people there to help a shopper. So the line forms. People are peering down the driveway to see what plants they can see, eyeing
[00:06:38] Speaker A: the one that they're going to grab.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: And they do. I mean, they hightail it down there. And a number of our people come year after year. They know where we put the sun loving plants. They know where we put the shade loving plants. They know we'll have people there to answer questions for them if they don't know what to put in a certain spot.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Excellent. Yeah.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: I also.
We pride ourselves on clarity and visual. Nothing beats the visual.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: It's true.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: But if you have a dog, don't buy the monk's hood.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Oh, see, that's great. Yeah, hold that up just a little bit higher. There you go.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Don't buy the monk's hood.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: You don't have to eat plants if
[00:07:15] Speaker C: They're a plant eating dog.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:18] Speaker C: And we are focusing. We're doing our best as a world. We're doing our best to promote diversity in plants and native plants that thrive in our area and help to support the specialist bees and the migrating butterflies.
So if we know if something is a host plant, we will have some butterfly, like, we'll have some milkweed. Yeah, hold that up higher, things like that. So some of these will be labeled. All right. So if we know that we have something that supports mining bees, for example, which are specialist bees.
Not that we don't need the Eugenius generalized bees, but we do. We need all of them. But we will do our best to guide people toward some native plants as well if they want to add them to what they use in their landscape.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Hardy perennials.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: Mostly hardy perennials.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Some annuals.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: I'm guessing we do have some annuals,
[00:08:17] Speaker A: herbs, tomatoes and other vegetables.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: And some novelty gifts. Have you been in the wood shop again?
[00:08:23] Speaker C: I have been in the woodshop. I have been in the wood shop. I made a garden hod, which is kind of like a harvest basket, but it's really.
It's going to turn into a decor item.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: There's nothing wrong with that.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And actually we've been gifted some items that might turn up at, you know, like gardening tools and things that might be there. So look around. You never know what you'll find.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Kathy, you brought some examples.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: We did.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: To show off today.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: What have we got today?
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Well, you know, we have sweet woodruff right here and it's a very pretty spring blooming ground cover.
Can you see that?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Yep. A little bit higher. Oh, yep.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: And we also want everybody to know that we're not sending you home and having you try to remember what it was you bought.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: This is not a test. Right.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: We have tags that we have written out. So it's telling you that it's a sweet woodruff and it gets white flowers in the spring and that it likes pot to full sun.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: And that's very shade. Sorry. And it's ground cover.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: And these are gonna be in all the plants.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: They are. There is a. Yes.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Every one of them will have a taste.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: This is so unique that you brought. What is this down that you brought right there?
[00:09:28] Speaker B: This one here? This is a May apple and it is very unique. It's a very shade loving plant, believe it or not.
It feels like an umbrella.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: It's bloom this.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Can you see it?
[00:09:41] Speaker C: They can see it from the camera. It's right There showing. And that will open up into a beautiful little white flower. And then after that an edible fruit.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: And then in a month or so it'll be gone until next year. It just kind of has its showy time in the spring and that's it.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Is this native? I don't recall.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Did you put a native in it? I did, yeah. It is native.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Yeah. So you can see if you are looking to add a native will attempt. There may not be one in every individual pot, but there will be some in the pots near the front of the row.
Like if we've got 12 May apple pots, a few of them will have this in there. But if you look in that row,
[00:10:26] Speaker A: it says go native.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: It says go native. That was the big garden club initiative. That's what they called it a couple years ago.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: And then the showy one.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Oh my God. This is just.
I know. Bleeding heart.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: The bleeding heart.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Another shade loving plant.
And it's blooming right now.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: And you can take it home even though it's in bloom, put it in the garden and then next spring it'll start showing up.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Okay. And how big will this get?
[00:10:54] Speaker B: It's about as tall as it's gonna get now, but it'll really fill out. Cause this is just one plant.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Is it like a bush?
[00:11:01] Speaker C: It can turn into a bush.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: I've had mine turn into bushes. And that means it's in the right spot.
And so half a trouble sometimes with plants when you put them in the ground is finding the right spot.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: And as Ian mentioned, there are going to be people there that will be able to help you, especially if you have master gardener.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: So can I fully know my gardening problems?
[00:11:24] Speaker C: That's a great idea.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: No, really. Again with the pictures. You know, take a picture.
I know it's a little late, but I always suggest to somebody who's trying something new, watch it for a week. Is it fully shade all the time? Is it fully sun? Is it kind of half and half. So then when you see a plant that likes partials shade, you have half a hope that you're putting half a hope that you're putting it in the right spot. Okay. You know, but you can always move it. We do that all the time.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: Go ahead, move around.
Try it. If it doesn't like it here, put it someplace else. But if you look at a tag and on the tag it says full sun.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: You should know that those need at least six hours a day of really
[00:12:06] Speaker B: good sun to be optimum, to show
[00:12:08] Speaker C: their best to do their best.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: See, the great thing about going to the plant sale and reading these, you get to ask questions. What does that actually mean?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Some people don't realize that they can't put a plant just anywhere.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. What we didn't bring in, we didn't have room in the studio. You've got a whole. Our kitchen looks like a greenhouse out there.
Different kinds of pots and plants.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: That's what our backyards look like right now.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: And others, too.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: So right now, I think we're over 800 plus more.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. I think we're going to have close to about 1,000 perennials available for sale on Saturday.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Typical.
[00:12:43] Speaker C: Well, that's our goal.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: We try. But again, what is it in your garden that you want to divide? And give us some dictates what we have. So we don't say we need 10 hosta, we say, oh, this lady gave us hosta. So now we have some hostas, you know, so that's.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: You're not going out and buying these things. This is really a grassroots.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: You will see there will be some plants there. Like, there are members who may not have a garden to divide but want to contribute. So they may bring a plant and that may be put up for sale, which.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Well, it could start a new tradition. Right?
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: But they leave them in a small apartment and they only have a little balcony.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Exactly. But they. That's. And I think that's the best part about our membership. Our membership have so many people that get involved.
We were talking earlier. Could I give a shout out? I'm afraid I'll miss people if I do, because we have such an active membership and we have members who really are invested, and they want to be a part of it.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: They want to help.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: So we thank them all for whatever contributions they provide.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. The funds raised from the plant sale go right back into the club. Right, Cathy?
[00:13:53] Speaker B: And we have, like I said, your
[00:13:56] Speaker A: guest speakers that you bring in, specialists
[00:13:58] Speaker B: that you bring in.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: And most of it is open to the public, and they can just come in and enjoy. We don't charge them anything or anything. And half the time they're like, oh, this is nice. I mean, we're just a friendly group. I have to say, a lot of people have told me that.
That when they first got in the group, they were just amazed that people were just talking to them. And of course, you're gonna talk about what you like.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: And it's plants, you know, and then you have a speaker. Like, we just had a speaker about Hydrangeas. Well, everybody wants to know a million answers to a million questions about hydrangeas
[00:14:31] Speaker A: for folks wearing the blue Wallston garments.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Not that I don't love to dress casually. However, this was planned so that this is what the members. Most of the members will be wearing
[00:14:43] Speaker B: if the weather's a great.
As long as they're not bundled up.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: But if you have a question, ask somebody in a blue T shirt that says Wollaston Garden Club. Okay, but I want to highlight some of the things real quick that we do. We offer three scholarships. One to a North Quincy High School student, one to a Quincy High student, and one to a Norfolk Aggie kid. That goes.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: And we upped.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: I think it's $1,000 and we're pretty close to it.
Studying in a related field.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: We also support youth and conservation committees. So we have youth projects that do some cleanups on Wollaston beach with the dcr. All kinds of things that we do.
The waste diversion program in the Quincy Public Schools. The food waste that started with us. We had interested members.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: We don't want to give away too much.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Well, I know.
Okay.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: The plant sale Saturday from 9 to noon. Cash checker.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Venmo.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Accept.
