The Hopkinton Garden Club is a welcoming and inclusive club. We do not and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression or identity, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military status or political affiliations in any of its activities or operations. Join us!
Current Activities
Join us for an insightful presentation with Tia Pinney, Lead Naturalist at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm, as she explores the relationship between commonly encountered wildlife—like deer, coyotes, and raccoons—and the developed spaces we call home. Learn how thoughtful landscaping and gardening practices can support coexistence with local wildlife and enhance biodiversity in our own backyards.
This program will be held in person at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts, 98 Hayden Rowe, Hopkinton. No registration is necessary.
Tia Pinney brings a lifelong passion for nature and decades of experience in environmental education to her role at Drumlin Farm. A biologist who grew up on a dairy farm in Connecticut, Tia has been with Mass Audubon since 1994. In addition to leading hands-on programs like birding excursions, nature walks, and cheesemaking, she serves as the sanctuary’s ecological management coordinator—overseeing habitat stewardship across 206 acres. Tia is also deeply involved in teacher training, helping educators bring real-world, nature-based science into the classroom through authentic fieldwork. “To engage students with science is fascinating,” she says. “Teachers are taking students outdoors and they’re doing real science!”
Boston Marathon Runner
Town Beautification!
A lot of planting has taken place in June! Some newer plants are still working to look their best with lots of help from our Beautification team who has been watering, pruning, and fertilizing. Stop by and say hello if you see our members around town!.
Books In Bloom
In honor of our 100th anniversary, this year's Books in Bloom event represented books from each decade since the club's inception. This event is done in partnership with the Friends of Hopkinton Library who selected 10 adult and 10 children’s books. With classic books like "The Great Gatsby," "The Hobbit" and "Make Way for Ducklings," our members were able to stretch their imaginations and create magnificent arrangements. The arrangements were placed throughout the library along with the book they represented. Club members checked on the bouquets daily to water and keep them looking fresh so they could be enjoyed longer by visitors to the library. This was such a fun way to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Hopkinton Garden Club with the community.
Garden Therapy at the Hopkinton Senior Center
December’s seasonal greens program was enjoyed by 35 Senior Center participants, assisted by Joan and Ruth and members Ann Clark, Mary-Anne Guild, Ann Hogaboom, Jina Kessler, Liz Swenson and Lynn Taylor. Everyone went home with a beautiful greens-filled arrangement for their homes for the winter season.
Greens Workshop
In November, the Hopkinton Garden Club held their annual Greens Workshop, a fun get-together for members to come and create personal arrangements for the holidays. Some members created bouquets, wreaths and sprays. Members contributed fresh greens, pinecones and other natural materials to the event. Many enjoyed getting into the holiday spirit creating beautiful holiday decor, enjoying treats and listening to music with friends.
What We Do
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A Huge Thank You to Our 2024 Business Sponsors
Our Business Sponsors share our goal of beautifying Hopkinton for the betterment of our community. We are extremely grateful to each organization who continues to support our work through their generous contributions. We also want to express our deep appreciation to our Department of Public Works for providing a weekly watering for our planters and sites. This help is invaluable to keeping our plants looking their best! Please show everyone your support and recognize their caring contribution to our town!
Planter Sponsors:
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Kathy Williamson
Garden Talk
Native Plants
Native plants in home gardens are essential for providing pollinators safe habitat in which they can thrive. Climate change, overbuilding, invasive species and other factors have destroyed large areas previously home to our insect and bird populations. With so much land being "chopped up", putting native plants in your garden will add to those from your neighbors’ gardens creating larger spaces for pollinators to call home. Pollinators, who work hard to maintain the ecological systems we depend on (like food growth!), need your help! Here are links to articles, webinars and websites with information on native plants and why they're so important to pollinators, and to us. Articles: How and Why to Use Native Plants Choosing the Right Native Plants Webinars: Adventures with Oddities: Strange and Noteworthy Natives (courtesy of the Ecological Landscaping Alliance) with Dan Jaffe (formerly of the Native Plant Trust) Landscaping with a Purpose, What's Diversity Got to Do with It? with Randi Eckel Websites: Native Plant Trust Grow Native Massachusetts Ecological Landscape Alliance Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (Native plants by state)
Erigeron annuus, known as Annual fleabane or Daisy fleabane, is extremely common— and can quickly seed into open areas, particularly after they have been disturbed. It is a valuable source of nectar and pollen to small native bees, flies, and other insects; a larval host plant for 20 species of caterpillars; and prolific enough to compete with non-native weeds that don’t have much to offer ecologically-speaking. (Courtesy of Grow Native Massachusetts)
Co-founded by Doug Tallamey, Homegrown National Park® is a grassroots call-to-action to regenerate biodiversity and ecosystem function by planting native plants and creating new ecological networks.
“Our National Parks, no matter how grand in scale are too small and separated from one another to preserve species to the levels needed. Thus, the concept for Homegrown National Park, a bottom-up call-to-action to restore habitat where we live and work, and to a lesser extent where we farm and graze, extending national parks to our yards and communities.” The goal is to get to 20 million acres of native planting in the U.S
Listen to a short talk by Doug Tallamy highlighting why your help is needed.
Want to know more? Read about keystone plant species that support the most pollinators!
Invasives!
Invasive plants - What are they? Non-native species that have spread into native or minimally managed plant systems in Massachusetts. These plants cause economic or environmental harm by developing self-sustaining populations and becoming dominant and/or disruptive to those systems. As defined here, “species” includes all synonyms, subspecies, varieties, forms, and cultivars of that species unless proven otherwise by a process of scientific evaluation. (Massachusetts Invasive Plants Advisory Group)
General Resources:
Plants!
Invasive Plants in Hopkinton
Numerous stands of invasive plants have been identified in Hopkinton by our "Open Space Preservation Committee". Japanese knotweed, bittersweet, glossy buckthorn and barberry have been found in profusion in various locations. Ed Harrow, chair of the Open Space Preservation Committee, has led efforts to identify, and remove invasive plants in some areas. Read what he had to say when interviewed by the Hopkinton Independent in 2022.
https://hopkintonindependent.com/invasive-knotweed-plants-roots-in-hopkinton/
Insects!
Invasive Insects in Massachusetts!
The Spotted Lanternfly Arrives in Massachusetts!!
The MA Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) announced on 9/28/21 that a small, established, and breeding population of the invasive spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) was detected in Worcester County, in the city of Fitchburg. This finding was confirmed by state officials.
