News

2024 Giving Tree at Belfast Library

2024 Giving Tree at Belfast Library

The Belfast Garden Club, with support from the Belfast Library Staff, is sponsoring a Giving Tree again this year. We are helping to make this holiday season special for 15 children who are in need of clothing, boots, shoes, and toys. The children are from needy families living in Waldo County.  The list of children is provided by the Waldo Community Action Partners’ Neighbor For Neighbor Holiday Gifts program. You can help the children and their families by stopping by the Library and taking a gift tag(s) from the tree located in the front lobby.  Gift Cards are welcomed if you prefer not to purchase…

A Cornerstone For Our Biome

A Cornerstone For Our Biome

Contributed by Carol Herwig Chair, Tree Working (TWiG) Committee Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home has become a standard text for American gardeners, especially along the Atlantic Coast. One of the takeaways from it is the importance of the oak tree. Tallamy cites a 2003 study in Illinois that found that “a single white oak can provide food and shelter for as many as 22 species of tiny leaf-tying and leaf-folding caterpillars,” not to mention the butterflies, moths, birds, bugs and beetles that depend on it. The oak is a cornerstone for our biome. But as arborist and author William Bryant…

Got Deer?

Got Deer?

Contributed By Marcia Ladd-Spears, Co-Chair, BGC Book Donation Committee Deer-Resistant Native Plants for the Northeast by Ruth Rogers Clausen and Gregory D. Tepper is a great read for all who love native plants and contend with the deer who also love them. White-tailed deer, Odocoileus viriginianus, plentiful in the Northeast, are considered by many to be the number one obstacle to a successful garden. This book discusses how gardeners can have a successful garden and live in companionship with deer. Covering several states in the Northeast, the authors discuss annuals, perennials, grasses, and shrubs, giving each a deer-resistant rating as…

TWiG Dig (and Pull) At Wales Park

TWiG Dig (and Pull) At Wales Park

Members of the Belfast Garden Club TWiG Committee met this morning in Wales Park. Afterwards, many stayed behind to pull and dig out the invasive Norway maple seedlings that proliferate beneath the trees. This area of Wales Park has been targeted by TWiG, the City of Belfast, and a group of eager high school students and their teacher to become a patch forest. A patch forest is a wooded area, as small as 100 square feet, that is a complete biosphere, including understory or ground cover plants, perennials such as ferns, small trees and shrubs, and large shade trees, all…

Tree Planting at East Belfast Elementary School

Tree Planting at East Belfast Elementary School

Two trees, a magnolia and a red bud, purchased by the Belfast Garden Club education committee, have been planted in the front yard of East Belfast Elementary School. Two second-grade classes and their teachers helped to plant on October 18, joining Paula Smith and Sherri Hesse from the education committee, Lauren Glessing, the school district’s gardens coordinator, and TWiG committee members April Daly Cagnon, Alexa Clifford, Carol Herwig, and Brit Zeigler. A big thank you to Aubuchon Hardware in Belfast for supplying the trees with a generous discount. And thanks, too, to everyone who purchased plants at the May plant…

“Fly Rod” Crosby Debuts at the P.O.

“Fly Rod” Crosby Debuts at the P.O.

Cornilia “Fly Rod” Crosby once stated, “I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six feet in my stockings…I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven.” Crosby was born on November 10, 1854 in Philips, Maine. In 1897, she became the first registered guide in the state, and for many years wrote a popular newspaper column about the Maine outdoors that was nationally syndicated. Her stories of life in the wild were an inspiration to girls and women of the era, and had much to do with popularizing…