Club works to make Springfield bloom

It was the hottest morning of the spring so far, but more than two dozen members of the Springfield Garden Club were out in force Wednesday, planting hundreds of flower seedlings they hope will grow big colorful dividends for the town.

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Photo by Len Emery Springfield Garden Club members weed, mulch and prune flowers and plants in front of Town Hall in Springfield on Wednesday. Published May 26, 2016 in the Rutland Herald Club works to make Springfield bloom By SUSAN SMALLHEER SPRINGFIELD — It was the hottest morning of the spring so far, but more than two dozen members of the Springfield Garden Club were out in force Wednesday, planting hundreds of flower seedlings they hope will grow big colorful dividends for the town of Springfield. The garden club donned their pale yellow T-shirts with the name of the garden club on the back, in case you couldn’t figure out who they were, and fanned out up and down Main Street armed with shovels, rakes and spades. These aren’t “ladies who lunch” — these are ladies who dig. They dug, divided, planted and watered, mulched, and fertilized, all under the eye of constant passing traffic. Gardens and planters and pots all along Main Street as well as the traffic island in front of the Springfield Shopping Plaza got the green treatment. Club President Deanna Dexter led a group at the head of The Square, digging up and reorganizing the Blue Star Memorial Garden, and adding new plants, mostly colorful annuals. The Blue Star Memorial, which includes a large memorial stone, was installed two years ago, and since then the plants have grown so big they hide the memorial stone, Dexter said. So under a hot sun, the women pulled out coreopsis, dug up Stella D’Oro daylilies and moved them in back of the memorial. Bright golden green creeping jenny, which had all but obscured the small stone walkway to the memorial stone, was trimmed back, by hand. The beautification effort attracted some help from three women from the Claremont Savings Bank, who were not hardcore gardeners like the mostly-female Springfield club. Dexter said the club gets most of its plants for the gardens, planters and pots from Sunshine Acres, a nursery in Chester, as well as the horticultural students at the River Valley Technical Center. “They grow them for us,” said Dexter. This is not a random one-geranium here, one petunia-there plant-a-thon. Dexter said the members were following detailed plans for each box, planter and garden, and they know exactly which plant should go where. Dexter took a shovel to a large clump of daylilies. “I have one artificial hip, and she has two artificial knees. We do it! We get it done!” she said, laughing with former club president Theresa Burton, she of the two new knees. The money for all the green beautification comes from the Garden Club’s big fundraiser in the fall, the Festival of Trees. Those gaily decorated Christmas trees last November are responsible for the wealth of humus and manure, mulch and plants, they said. Once the rearranging of the Blue Star Memorial perennials was done, the gardeners were ready to put in the plants that will provide color all summer long: coleus, white alyssum, orange Angel wing begonias, and “supertunias,” in yellow and blue. Up at the plaza, leader Lynn Likus said the crews had added 10 bags of humus and manure, put 165 annuals in place tucked among the garden’s perennials, and were about to tackle distributing a big mound of shredded bark mulch that will keep the summer weeding chores down. Likus, who studied horticulture in college, said she joined the garden club when she moved to the area 22 years ago. “It’s a wonderful group of women,” she said, forking mulch into a plastic trug. “We’re on mulch duty.” http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20160526/NEWS02/160529652