Woman’s Club, Forest Association, Local Builder, And John Deere––

Gardening Angels Of The Holcombe Preserve

By Dottie Evans

Never tell a determined woman that she cannot plant flowers where she has decided she wants to plant flowers.

“I had this great idea for a project to do some plantings,” said Marion Thompson of the Newtown Woman’s Club (GFWC) Inc, “but I was told no, you can’t do that because the wall is falling down.”

The structure in question was a fieldstone retaining wall that had seen better days. It had been built a century ago alongside a magnificent old red barn at the entrance to the Holcombe Preserve, and was probably intended to provide access to the barn’s main floor by hay wagons and carriages. Since the barn was built in the English style, the livestock would have been housed below on the ground floor.

The barn and its fieldstone wall are part of the 62-acre Holcombe property off Birch Hill Road and Great Hill Road that was deeded in 1987 to the Newtown Forest Association (NFA) by Josephine Holcombe.

Marion Thompson is on the conservation department of the Newtown Woman’s Club, and her husband, Dave Thompson, is on the NFA board of directors. The two groups have taken stewardship over the Holcombe Preserve, and the woman’s club has initiated a number of beautification projects there. A nice planting of perennial grasses and shrubs along the top of that retaining wall was going to be their next project.

Needless to say, the planting project got pre-empted by a more urgent project that was completed July 25: the repair and reconstruction of the barn’s retaining wall followed by preparation of the surrounding area for planting.

Ongoing Beautification

Behind the old barn, which bears the date 1870 painted on an inside wall, there is a large meadow sloping down toward the woods. The preserve entrance and meadow have both benefited from the various projects undertaken by the club conservation department over the past four years.

In April, 3,000 daffodil bulbs bloomed near the entrance, and every Arbor Day, according to Mrs Thompson, “we plant another tree in the meadow.”

A quick glance at the sunny field shows several young trees –– crabapples, white pines, a white dogwood and a larch –– that are well on their way to becoming established.

“We’ve also put in benches,” said Betty Warner.

She and another Newtown Woman’s Club member, Nancy Brady, stood nearby Mrs Thompson, watching while the men finished cleaning up the site.

Mr Thompson and Bob Scolpino, a neighbor living next door to the preserve, wielded long-handled landscape rakes. Meanwhile, Newtown builder Michael Burton and his crew operated a backhoe outside the preserve entrance, cleaning up a few stumps and fallen stones. Mr Burton has been indispensable during the wall reconstruction project, Mr Thompson said.

“Michael has been very generous with his time and equipment,” he commented.

The local builder seems to have unofficially joined the ranks of those who take care of the Holcombe Preserve.

A Faithful Old Tractor Pulls Its Weight

While talking about ongoing maintenance at the preserve, David Thompson led a visitor over to a sturdy, 1947 John Deere tractor, two-cylinder model, standing idle nearby.

The tractor might have seen nearly six decades of hard use, but its coat of green paint was only slightly faded. A shovel and forklift rig attached to the front end looked fully capable of lifting and moving any fieldstones that might have escaped the attention of the other, much more modern John Deere machine on the site –– the yellow backhoe twice its size working at the front entrance.

Mr Thompson gave the old tractor an affectionate pat on its square engine hood, and explained that this was no ordinary machine. It had a number of attachments, he said, and his father had given it to him a long time ago, “because I wanted to be a farmer.”

“I’ve never had a thing wrong with it. It runs beautifully. It even makes that pop-pop sound when you turn it on,” he said reaching over and turning on the ignition key.

“We always called it a crow-scarer.”

He said the popping noise never failed to rouse a flock of crows from nearby cornfields. That was back in the days when Newtown was mostly farms, he added.

As a member of the NFA board of directors, Mr Thompson and his tractor have spent many hours on the Holcombe Preserve, clearing and mowing the meadow, and blazing the forest trails.

“Actually I made the trail twice,” he said of the 45-minute loop through the woods that includes four or five rustic bridges over streams and wet areas, and a view of a vernal pool.

“When I’m mowing in the meadow once a week, I see turkey in the mornings and deer in the afternoons. The turkeys take off into the woods, but the deer just stand there and look at me,” he noted.