UPDATE (Tuesday, March 14, 2023): This feature has been updated to include the names of all Garden Club of Newtown members who collaborated on the blue ribbon and top Club Competition Award-winning Horticultural entry.

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HARTFORD — Members of The Garden Club of Newtown celebrated seven honors during the 41st Annual Connecticut Flower & Garden Show last month. Judges granted honors to seven entries from Newtown entered into “Gateway to Springtime.”

The National Garden Club Standard Show was presented by The Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut during the four-day event at Connecticut Convention Center. The flower and garden show was presented February 23-26, with 12,500 square feet dedicated to the FGC Standard Flower Show and its theme.

Garden clubs across the state submitted entries for design, horticulture, botanical arts, and photography divisions.

Representing Newtown, Peggy Townsend received multiple awards, including a Grower’s Choice Award for a dish garden in the show’s horticulture division. The container garden offered beautiful examples of Epipremnum aureum ‘Pearls and Jade Porthos,’ Soleirolia soleirolii ‘Baby Tears,’ Fittonia argyroneuro ‘Ruby Red,’ and Climacium Americanum (Tree Moss), Polytrichum commune (Haircap Moss), Hedwigia ciliate (Hedwig Moss), Laucobryum glaucum (Cushion Moss), and Hypnum imponens (Sheet Moss).

The club won the blue ribbon and the top Club Competition Award for its Horticultural Display of seven boxwood varieties on a weathered tree stump. Seven varieties of boxwood were then located and identified from the gardens of current club president Paula Toi and club members Vicki Boccuzzi, Joyce DeWolfe, Eileen Holleran, and Peg Townsend.

The display featured examples of Buxus sempervivrens ‘Fastigiata,’ Buxus sempervivrens ‘Suffruticosa,’ Buxus sempervivrens ‘Vardar Valley,’ Buxus microphylla ‘Winter Gem,’ Buxus microphylla ‘Tide Hill,’ Buxus microphylla ‘Little Leaf,’ and Buxus x ‘Green Mountain.’

Townsend’s Educational Display for The CT Flower Show School won a blue ribbon and the Blue and Silver Rosette for the top Educational Division Award. Townsend picked up another blue ribbon for her ‘Tide Hill’ specimen, a beautiful broad-leaf evergreen celebrated for its shiny, tiny green foliage.

Townsend also won an honorable mention for her “Rising Moon,” a creative line-mass design in the show’s Section C, Class 9 (“Moonrise”) crafted with Aspidistra, Calla Lila, and a dried and painted Strelitzia leaf.

Judges praised her for “breathtakingly graceful placement of plant material,” but she lost points when the design did “not conform to line-mass requirements.”

Deb Osborne’s exhibition table entitled “A Time for Love” (Section D, Class 11) won an honorable mention. A call to all things northern New England and a celebration of lobster dinners, Osborne’s design featured Bayberry (myrica) and Rockweed (sargassum filipendula) within a lobster crate.

Judges said the display’s “striking colors and components create a whimsical design,” but added “competing rhythms cause confusion.”

Becky Osborne received an honorable mention for her Botanical Arts hat covered completely in multi-colored, dried flowers.

The 2023 CT Flower & Garden Show filled 150,000 square feet of the Connecticut Convention Center with 23 live gardens and landscape exhibits by professional landscape designers and nonprofit organizations, 80 hours of seminars and demonstrations, and hundreds of booths with displays, shopping, and activities, all included with show admission.

The dates for next year’s show have been announced as February 22-25, 2024.

The Garden Club of Newtown meets at C.H. Booth Library on the fourth Tuesday of every month and welcomes new members who are interested in horticulture, artistic design, conservation of natural resources, and the promotion of civic beauty. For additional information send email to info@gardenclubnewtownct.org or visit gardenclubnewtownct.org.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.