Creating holiday decor with our seniors!
Holiday Decor at the Police Station
Creating holiday decor with our seniors!
What's Happening!
Meet our Marathon Runner - Dave Adelstein!
Please support his run on behalf of our club by clicking here!
I am so excited to be running in the 2023 Boston Marathon on behalf of the Hopkinton Garden Club. I have run the Boston Marathon one time before, in 2018, but this year is particularly special as I am running in honor of my grandfather, Murray Lubowitz. Murray owned a local floral business throughout my childhood, and I have fond memories watching him work in his home garden. My affiliation with the Hopkinton Garden Club helps me to carry on his love of all things flowers, plants, and natural beauty.
The Hopkinton Garden Club, affiliate of The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, is a 501c3 non-profit . Their mission is to promote and teach gardening, horticulture, and floral design; to develop and encourage community spirit through town beautification; and to assist, promote, and contribute to town conservation efforts.
Gardening is more than just the beautiful flowers that can be set in a bouquet on a kitchen counter or hung from a front porch. Plants are a sign of love, like in a wedding ceremony (my wife and I did this at our wedding!); hope, when delivered in a hospital; happiness, when gifted as a sign of congratulations; and overall appreciation for life when given for just about any other occasion.
My hope in supporting the Hopkinton Garden Club is that the members can continue to expand upon all the initiatives that bring happiness, beauty, and education to all those in the community to enjoy.
Thank you in advance for your contribution to this cause that means so much to my family and I. To learn more about the amazing benefits this non-profit organization brings to the Metrowest communities explore this website!
Scholarships!
Several horticultural organizations offer scholarships to those pursuing related fields in addition to our club. Don't miss out! Be sure to check out all the opportunities below.
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Hopkinton Garden Club Scholarship – deadline is April 22, 2023. Our club is excited to offer scholarships to those applicants who have maintained legal residence in Hopkinton, Massachusetts for at least one year, and are a high school or college student pursuing a career in the fields of Horticulture, Floriculture, Landscape Design, Forestry, Conservation, Environmental Sciences and related fields. The $1,000 scholarship is open to applicants maintaining legal residence in Hopkinton, MA for at least one year. Preference is given to graduating high school seniors pursuing the fields of Horticulture, Floriculture, Landscape Design, Forestry, Conservation, Environmental Sciences, and related fields. Applications may be obtained through the Hopkinton High School Guidance Department, the Joseph Keefe Technical School Guidance Office, or downloaded here.
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National Garden Club Scholarship deadline February 1, 2023 - The National Garden Club (NGC) gives 45 college scholarships to juniors, seniors and graduate students of$4500. If you know a deserving student, the details are available on the NGC website. Too often deserving students are unaware of these opportunities.
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Garden Club Federation Scholarship (GCFM) deadline is March 1, 2023. GCFM offers 13 Scholarships to college students. All information and applications are available on the GCFM website. These are for students who have completed their freshman semester year.
Scholarship Offers!
Speaker Series Tuesday, March 21st, 2023, 7:00 PM
"Your Beautiful Earth-friendly, Sustainable garden" with Rebecca Warner
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC VIA ZOOM OR IN-PERSON AT THE HOPKINTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS 98 HAYDEN ROWE STREET, HOPKINTON (upstairs room – handicap accessible with an elevator)!
NON-MEMBERS ONLY - REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED ONLY FOR ZOOM ATTENDANCE. SEE INFORMATION BELOW.
In this introduction to sustainable gardening, Rebecca Warner explains how home gardeners can put our environmental principles into practice with some easy adjustments to our approach. She describes how she transitioned from traditional practices to methods that support a healthy garden ecosystem. Examples covered in this slide talk include: Imitating natural processes by choosing native plants as the foundation of your garden’s food web, cycling materials by making compost and mulch from free ingredients you can find close to home, and avoiding energy use, waste, and pollution by tweaking your lawn care practices.
Images courtesy of Rebecca Warner
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Hopkinton Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Rebecca Warner is the author of The Sustainable-Enough Garden. This book was a labor of love for Rebecca, a home gardener in Newton, Massachusetts with thirty years’ experience working toward a sustainable garden. When she’s not gardening, she’s a geriatric psychiatrist. In the last five years she has overhauled her garden practices, from composting to mulching, lawn care to irrigation.
Non-members who wish to attend, please respond to register@hopkintongardenclub.org and state your interest in attending our March 21st online event. Instructions will be provided in a reply email before the event.
Our Speaker Series includes one more evening learning opportunity! Please mark your calendar for:
4/18/23 - Avian ecology with Frederick (Erik) C. Sechler, Jr.
March Table Arrangements for Our Veterans!
Centerpieces for this month's Veteran’s Breakfast at the Hopkinton Senior Center by Hopkinton Garden Club members. Many thanks to Nancy Stevenson for leading the effort with assistance by Merylyn Mezitt, Ann Clark and Judy Caplan.
Each month, September through June, club members provide floral arrangements to decorate the tables at the Senior Center for their Veteran's breakfast.
Thank you 2022 "Help Hopkinton Bloom" Sponsors!
Our Business Sponsors share our goal of beautifying Hopkinton for the enjoyment 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 contribution to our town!
Donors:
Site Sponsors:
Planter Sponsors:
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Unibank, Hopkinton Branch
Click here to view pictures of our town plantings!
What We Do!
Garden Talk
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)
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:
Webinars:
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Adventures with Oddities: Strange and Noteworthy Natives (courtesy of the Ecological Landscaping Alliance) with Dan Jaffe (formerly of the Native Plant Trust)
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Landscaping with a Purpose, What's Diversity Got to Do with It? with Randi Eckel
Websites:
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Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (Native plants by state)
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Native Plants Lookup (Audubon)
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? Here's a brochure describing the initiative and the key actions you can take in your yard!
Invasives! Be on the Lookout For....
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 then look below to see invasive plants taking hold in our town! If you want to help, join the Committee!
All images are courtesy of Ed Harrow.
https://hopkintonindependent.com/invasive-knotweed-plants-roots-in-hopkinton/
 Bittersweet behind the Woodville Fire Station |  Bittersweet, Hughes Property - Hayden Rowe 2015 |  Japanese Knotweed, Wood St. and Elm Street |
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 Japanese Knotweed, behind Respite Center |  Japanese Knotweed, Spring St. |  2022, Bittersweet, west on Wood St. before Rocky Woodseet past |
 Bittersweet - Whitehall Conservation Area 2022 |  Bittersweet - Whitehall Conservation Area 2022 |  Japanese Knotweed, Wood and Winter Streets |
Black and Pale Swallow-worts:
Toxic to Monarch Butterflies
Black Swallow-wort & Pale Swallow-wort
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.
