When Carol Heyer was little, she never looked up at the sky or trees. With five brothers and a neighborhood full of kids, there never seemed a reason to. It wasn’t Waldoboro. It was Woburn, outside of Boston. When she and her husband Steve Heyer moved to Waldoboro 51 years ago, all that changed. Carol started a small garden and took in her surroundings. And some years later, in the 2000s, she also joined the Waldoboro Community Garden Club. At that time the club had about 25 members. It had been going strong since at least the 1960s. Like garden clubs around the country, it is and was a place to share a love of gardening and horticultural knowledge. Garden clubs have an important role in towns and cities, for they are the ones who take on civic planting projects that local government does not: planting flowers and trees, and caring for them throughout spring, summer and fall. In Waldoboro’s past, Claire Ralph, “The Tree Warden,” nurtured the newly planted shade trees so they would thrive. Martha Boggs worked to replace the elm trees felled by Dutch elm disease. Mildred Cloudman gave talks and slide shows about the art of drying flower and photography. These days, Waldoboro’s club only has about twelve active members. Most are older. Carol considers herself one of the younger ones, and she is 70. So, ambitions are smaller. But they are just as valuable. Each spring, annuals are tucked into the planters at the pocket park. Members ready Memorial Park on Pine Street for Memorial Day, nesting red, white and blue-purple petunias into the dirt. They make colorful mini-gardens inside the traffic islands. And every year they maintain and expand the planting of perennials in the river park across from Hannaford’s. Through summer and fall, they maintain all their plantings. And this year, too, the club is raising seedlings to sell on Waldoboro Day, funds which will go toward winterizing the Yankee Traveler Motel, where homeless families have been staying. New members are welcome, whether at meetings with speakers and slideshows (6PM, the 2nd Wednesday of the month at Broad Bay Congregational) or, most of all, for planting, watering and tending, to keep Waldoboro beautiful
My mother didn’t garden. I had no experience of any kind with gardens as a kid. So, when we came up here, I just started small. Somebody would give me a plant or something and I would stick it in the ground and see what it would do. I didn’t really know much about the soil or anything. Eventually, I found out about the Garden Club at some kind of event, and I just began to talk to someone and find out what they were doing.
I started out by doing the “Welcome to Waldoboro” box that is on Route 1 coming from Rockland. It was my job to plant that, and I planted geraniums and some vines and different things. But now we put impatiens in there. You can see them from the road, they don’t need much care, and they do pretty well. Then, for the past couple of years, I took over the south one, coming from Damariscotta.
In the beginning, I just did my box. I really didn’t get too involved with the people back out. Bob Gorman, who died quite a while ago, was a big one – he did the garden at the town office. He was one that had his set idea of what he wanted done. He didn’t want much input in terms of ideas. If you wanted to help, you were his assistant. But that garden he did in front of the Town Office was beautiful. It was sad to see that go when they put of the electronic sign. But at least we were able to take the plants and put them in other gardens.
Each member has their own spots, though there’s a lot of members that can’t do it anymore. I got into helping out with a few of the perennial gardens with Steve Warren. He really knew what he was doing. For quite a while, I was his helper, and I probably learned the most from him. He used to have a business selling perennials. And he was involved in the Farmer’s market. But this year, with caring for his wife and his own health, he’s not doing much now.
He was easy to work with, and he knew so much, including the Latin names which I don’t. We’d be working on a bed, and I’d say, “What’s this?” and he’d tell me what it was. He knew what worked where, and about the importance of preparing your bed, and how to weed it well, and getting the compost and mulch in there in and building up your soil. But he was more of an annual guy. Annual people like to plant things in pots, and they can be beautiful, but I’m more of a perennial person. I like to see plants in the ground. I like to see them come back every year and flower.
And I like to dig in the dirt. I’m good at weeding. It’s soothing. Calming. It’s repetitive. You get working on it, and you could go forever. And the things you find! You might find inside the weeds something really nice like lavender or lily of the valley. If you can help that plant come back to life, it’s very satisfying.
I think a lot of people don’t even know that there is a garden club. I don’t think people even know what we do. The town doesn’t do this planting. And they aren’t going to hire someone to do it, and then raise our taxes for that. The public works department barely has time to mow, especially since they are down two people. So forget about trimming.
But I don’t know how long we can do it either, with so many older members. I’ve noticed that a lot of members only come for the talks at the meetings. So, the club could change in this direction, to just having meetings. But I think it would be too bad to let our gardens go back to being grass and weeds.
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