Making The Town Beautiful —

Town And Country Garden Club Seeks To Restore Newtown’s Colors

By Jeff White

It’s that time of year again when the town’s flower islands begin to get their makeovers, bringing out showy patches of reds, yellows, and iris blues.

Maryanne Muskus cannot wait.

In the summer swelter that blanketed Newtown last summer, Mrs Muskus and her cohorts from the Newtown Town and Country Garden Club regularly tended to the town’s three flower islands around Queen Street and Glover Avenue with the patient affection only flower lovers could show. They culled trash, picked weeds, and drenched the beds’ annuals and perennials with much needed water. It is a labor of love for these women, and after the wintertime and the colder days of early spring, they are set once again to make the town more beautiful, starting next week.

“I have such a passion for this,” says Mrs Muskus. “I look forward to it. It is a pride and a sense of satisfaction that things are going so nicely through your efforts.”

The Town and Country Garden Club is set for its annual planting push next Thursday, April 18. It will only take a few hours, Mrs Muskus reckons, as the club’s thirty or so members will gather and divide themselves among the three flower islands.

Each flower island has a group of club members that takes care of it. Mrs Muskus oversees the island on Glover Avenue, at its intersection with Route 25. Each of the three islands has already been purged of trash and weeds during a cleaning effort staged three weeks ago.

Although it is up to each island committee as to what flowers to plant, and in what color combinations, there are usually staple arrangements that punctuate all three islands, from New Guinea impatiens to day lilies and mums.

Along with the usual assortment of perennials, Mrs Muskus plans to cover the Glover Street Island with blue salvia, yellow marigolds, and clumps of dusty miller.

The club will bring some changes to the major Queen Street flower island by Church Road. Due to a car accident in that vicinity last year, the fiery rhododendron that were the real head-turners of that island were damaged. New life will be breathed into those rhododendron beds this year, as the club says it will plant new bunches of lavender princess.    

Mrs Mukus’ arms already show a slight shade of brown, thanks to the hot summer-like sun that brightened the skies over last weekend. The work that the Town and Country Garden Club does on a yearly basis to maintain the town’s flower showcases is only intensified by drought conditions.

Last summer, the club stepped up its watering efforts thanks to a drought that left Newtown with approximately 50 percent less rainfall than it receives during a typical year. In the past, club members made the rounds watering the islands four times during a two-week period; last summer, that was increased to six times for the same time period. Moreover, help was provided by Newtown Hook & Ladder, who doused the flowerbeds with generous shots from their hoses on a weekly basis.

According to Gary Lessor of the Western Connecticut State University Weather Center, this summer promises to be just as dry as last summer. “We’re looking at a hot, dry summer,” he confesses, adding that rain levels will hover around where they did last year. Although reservoir levels are such that the area should get through another dry summer, the prognostication has Town and Country Garden Club members hoping that area fire companies will once again pitch in regular flower drenching.

During a long, hot summer, Carole Hoffman, the club’s president, says that the flower islands need constant attention. “They need a good watering at least two, three times a week.”

Although the club wants to make each island as showy as possible, to a point their hands are tied as to what they can plant. Some flowers, however beautiful, simply require too much water and attention to weather the dry months of summer. “You really need to put in the hardy annuals and perennials that do not require that much watering,” Mrs Hoffman comments.

“We’re just hoping to match our efforts that we had done last year,” she adds.

This Saturday, the club will be looking to raise funds to ensure just that.

From 9 am until 2 pm, the Town and Country Garden Club will hold its third annual flower sale at the Inn at Newtown. It is the club’s only fundraiser, and residents who make the annual pilgrimage to purchase flowers for their gardens can expect much of the same offerings as in recent years.

The highlights of the flower sale are what Mrs Hoffman refers to as the MGPs – Member Grown Perennials. Club members dig up the perennials that they have been nurturing in their own personal gardens over the year and sell them at reduced rates. Also on hand will be a large supply of flowering shrubs and baskets of annuals.

The money raised from the plant sale will go to support the club’s work throughout the summer, until they cease working on the islands in October.

As members prepare to head out once again, Maryanne Muskus squeezes the stiffness out of her gardening gloves. Although she has been a member of the club for only four years, she has high praise for “her girls,” the other members with whom she shares a floral love. “I would call them successful gardeners, all of them,” she says. “Everyone has a strong passion; that’s why they are in the club.”

For Mrs Muskus, it’s a passion that blooms with beautiful results around this time of year. “When you first plant something, it’s nothing. Then it grows into something. That makes me feel good.”

(The Newtown Town and Country Garden Club holds there regular meetings every second Wednesday of the month at the senior center in Sandy Hook. Various guest speakers join the club to give presentations and speak on numerous topics. The public is invited free of charge, and new members are always welcome.)