Month: February 2024

Longtime Driftwood Garden Club member Pal Bickford, along with Larry Simpson from Simpson Garden Design gave a wonderful Valentine’s Day presentation on the importance of trees in our fast changing landscapes. Led by Pal, she and Larry are members of our Town Trees and Urban Forestry, a working group of Sustainable Marblehead. They gave us a great update complete with maps on the Tree Replacement Project here in town. Larry is an accomplished garden designer and spoke to us at length about the importance of trees in our landscapes.

Of particular interest to all of us, was this list of trees native to our area and how much they do to support our local wildlife. Larry stressed that our native plants support our native insects and therefore all of our beautiful native birds. The common oak tree supports 473 species of insects and birds in our area- more than any other tree!

• Oak – Quercus (473)
• Beach plum, cherry, chokecherries – Prunus (411)
• Willow – Salix (399)
• Birch – Betula (393)
• Aspen, poplar, cottonwood – Populus (335)

Our hostesses provided deliciously festive treats, and many members pulled out all the stops to dress in all different shades of pink! As always, it was a great night.

    Designing and Building a

   Sustainable Container Garden

As always, we began the meeting with our social time. Welcoming refreshments provided by our hostesses are always a delight. We also welcomed some new members! 

Here is a stunning example of container gardening on a deck surrounded by native plants in a challenging environment near the ocean.

Our members enjoyed learning all of Molly’s tips for constructing beautiful containers using her technique: ”Fill” with carefully chosen planting materials and plants, make sure one plant will “Spill” over the sides, and, finally, with the plants chosen for color, texture, and flowering and even how they look when they’re done growing, to “Thrill” us with their beauty. We ended our meeting with one lucky member who won the lovely container!