Our story

It started in a dining room. In 1959 Polly Logan, an avid gardener, gathered a group of friends interested in starting a community garden club at the Logan Estate on Jerusalem Road. They met at her table. They made pine cone wreaths in her barn. We have moved on from the wreaths, but members still spend the fall making things by hand for the Yuletide Marketplace, which is the same habit under a different name.

We federated in 1960 and incorporated in 1979. The membership reached a hundred quickly and has stayed there: gardeners and floral designers, horticulturists and master gardeners, crafters, photographers and people who simply like to be useful.

What the Club does has grown with it. Junior Gardeners in the elementary schools. Floral design each month for our neighbors at Willcutt Commons. Academic awards for graduating seniors. Gardens kept around town, the largest of them the Lightkeeper's Cottage Garden on Government Island, ours since 1993.

Every garden begins with someone willing to tend something beyond themselves. That is still the whole idea.

From the President

Say yes to one thing

A member told me last year that she had joined the Club to meet three people — and stayed for the other ninety. Thirty-some years on, much to her delight, she is still meeting someone new every season.

It is the thing I keep coming back to. Over the past year I listened to members across the Club, and one message came through clearly: we hold on to our traditions, and we are restless for new ways to learn, create and connect.

The programs that anchor us carry on — Junior Gardeners, senior floral design at Willcutt Commons, town beautification, the Speaker Series. Around them we keep adding. Workshops through the season. Books in Bloom at the Paul Pratt Library. Art in Bloom at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Longtime member or brand new, gardener of fifty years or someone who has never grown a thing: there is a place here, and it starts with one activity. A workshop. A committee. A morning at the Lightkeeper's. Say yes to one, and the rest follows.