Get your greens

by Michael J. DeCicco

Springtime and beautiful gardens go hand-in-hand

That's especially true in greater New Bedford, where the city's Garden Club and the Rotch-DuffJones House are the two biggest reasons local flora shines so brightly this time of year.

The Greater New Bedford Garden Club has had a lot of experience stimulating the city's gardening priorities. It is celebrating its 100th anniversary. It formed on April 23, 1923 and joined the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts in 1928. Around this time of year, its very active Community Beautification Committee plants flower boxes and maintains gardens at the Acushnet Council On Aging, Fort Taber, the New Bedford Art Museum, and the New Bedford Historical Society headquarters.

Club president Lisa Borges said the group's biggest project this year will be at the Buttonwood Park Zoo. The club is hoping to plant a tree there and other new plantings this season. Borges said club members walked the grounds with zoo president Marion Wainer and considered where the club may soon add their own garden touches. Some of the plans include designing and creating pathways to habitats, pruning, weeding, and adding plants to existing gardens, and developing gardening programs and activities for children.

In the Buttonwood Park greenhouse, the club is currently growing geraniums, assorted annuals, and cuttings that it will sell, along with perennials donated by members, at its annual Plant Sale on May 13 from 9-11 at NBC Distribution, 145 Alden Road, Fairhaven. All sales and donations from the Annual Plant Sale help maintain the club's Community Beautification Program, fund club activities, and go to the club's two scholarships. Last year, the club awarded $1,500 to two high school students interested in horticultural-related studies. This year it will award two $2,000 scholarships. Scholarship applications are available to students attending Greater New Bedford Regional Technical High School, Bristol Aggie, New Bedford High School, Bishop Stang, Dartmouth High School, Wareham High School, Old Rochester Regional, and Old Colony.

Apart from the scholarships, the club's other public outreach is its Garden Therapy Program, where volunteers bring greens and flowers to residents of Sipppican Health Care and Our Lady's Haven to conduct hands-on workshops.

Borges is proudest to note that one of the scholarship's early recipients was the young Allen Haskell, who would go on to create the Allen C. Haskell Public Gardens in New Bedford. "He asked for $300 for equipment instead of a scholarship." At the age of 28, he was awarded the President's Cup at the Boston Flower Show. This honor was considered the most prestigious nationwide by horticulturists, she said.

The Greater New Bedford Garden Club meets on the first Wednesday of the month at 1 p.m. at the Acushnet Council on Aging. At every meeting, it conducts a business meeting followed by a program or hands-on workshop followed by refreshments organized by the hospitality committee.

Sweat of his brow

The Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum's Facility Manager and Lead Gardener Rick Finneran also gets very busy this time of year.

He is responsible for all the maintenance of the entire garden grounds, including 16 separate rose beds, three elm trees, the boxwood border around the walkways, a walkway lined with over 20 species of wild flowers, and an orchard with six Heirloom apple trees and a pear tree. On the County Street side of the grounds, there's a large 100-year-old apple tree and a large Copper Beech Tree that shades the front yard and entrance, giving him a total of eight fruit trees he must prune whenever necessary along with his other garden maintenance work.

The garden's design is in the service of the way the gardens appeared in 1880, the last year that a whaling merchant, Edwin Jones, lived there, Finneran said. "We try the best we can to keep it as it was then."

For instance, he said, the garden had a similar orchard back then. Now the orchard features Baldwin-Porter apple trees, "the popular kind in New England."

In the winter, his job is carpentry fix-ups and trimming the fruit trees. March finds him starting to prune all the rose bushes into an open vase style. In early April, he trims the boxwoods, cleans beds of weeds, sprays the roses with horticultural and dormant oils, then turns on irrigation and plants any new roses or plants.

During the rest of April, he'll keep cutting out the sick and bad rose flowers, then spray the roses with more horticultural and dormant oil. In May, he light-prunes the roses to keep centers open.

This spring, he'll also be tending to new plantings at the County Street side: Presidential Shanley roses (named after a noted past president of the American Rose Society) and an Evangeline Walsh Rambler. And he'll apply fertilizer and other plant-enriching agents to the flower beds: an oil to address blight and mildew, and Liquid Fish oil fertilizer to enrich the base of the soil.

In June, the roses will bloom and he will remove the “spent” blossoms. By July 1, he will get rid of dead roses in the bed. Then the rambling roses bloom in earlyto mid-July.

He said this is the time of year to prune roses because that's when cutting them at the knobby nodule section of the stems will re-invigorate them, get the sap flowing, and stimulate new growth and blossoms. In the winter, one should just leave one’s rose bushes alone to die out on their own. he said.

That's why in winter he catches up on carpentry work. "I don't prune the roses then. I just let them die naturally."

He says the best time to visit the garden is "between April and May, but it depends on what you want to see. April's a good time to see a lot of it. The roses are best in mid-June."

This advice dovetails well with his plan to offer a free garden tour on June 8 (during AHA night). "I will provide a tour and a history of the garden and the neighborhood," he is proud to note.

He is even prouder to add, "We want this space to be user-friendly and wellmaintained. That's my goal here."