Programs

From the smallest window box to multi-acre efforts, gardening is a magnificent obsession and a powerful creative act. Fulfilling our mission as a 501-(c) (3), BGC’s workshops help newbies, veterans, and garden watchers hone their skills and widen their understanding. Everyone is welcome.

These talks occur on the third Tuesday of each month, January to May, and October to November. Most of these convene at noon at the Belfast Free Library, 106 High Street in Belfast. Check our calendar for details about Zoom and in-person attendance. Browse past programs.

Topics for 2024:

January 16, 2024
Noon to 1:00 pm, in person and by Zoom
Belfast Free Library
Managing Belfast’s Legacy Trees

To see a video of this past program click here.

Speaker: Jan Ames Santerre, Project Canopy Director

Now’s the time to learn about protecting and sustaining the region’s legacy trees. Forestry science and practice, state policy, a healthy local economy, and community activism have set the stage to enable Belfast to manage its urban canopy as a natural resource, instead of giving human-built infrastructure a higher priority. 

Jan Ames Santerre is the project canopy director for the Maine Forest Service, a federally funded program aimed at protecting and improving urban canopies. A native of Dover-Foxcroft, with a BS in Forest Biology from the University of Vermont, Jan helps cities and towns all over Maine with grants for tree planting, technical assistance for tree management, and training in a full range of topics related to tree management and forestry in general for municipal staff, commissions, and volunteers. 

Jan also manages the state Big Tree registry, the Tree City USA program in Maine, the Community Forest and Open Space land-acquisition program, and several other DACF initiatives related to urban and community forest health.

January 23, 2024
6:30 to 8:00 pm
Encouraging Wildlife in Our Gardens 
Speaker: Gail Presley, Wildlife Biologist

To see a video of this past program click here.

Watching a male Cardinal tenderly feed his mate makes us aware that they must be nesting nearby. Seeing a fox hunt for small rodents makes us realize it depends on our property for food. Through planning and placement, we can enhance the habitat features wildlife need to thrive in our gardens. In this talk, we’ll explore habitat needs, how to design your landscape to provide habitat, how to  choose plants to add or remove, and other steps toward rewilding our landscapes. A resources guide is available here.

Gail Presley worked as a wildlife biologist who worked in landscape conservation planning for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for 22 years. Later she led the Georges River Land Trust for seven years. Her property in Rockland was a blank canvas that she began to fill with vegetable and flower gardens, fruit trees, and native plants. She has a BS from California Polytechnic State University in wildlife conservation. 

February 20, 2024
Belfast Free Library
Noon-1 pm in person and by Zoom

Waldo County Bounty 
Speaker: Mattie J. Bamman, Writer, Homesteader, Co-founder WCB

To see a video of this past program click here

Launched in response to the pandemic, Waldo County Bounty has responded to local food insecurity through the power of gardening. A countywide network of volunteers—gardeners, farmers, educators, and service providers—work to strengthen the Waldo County food system as a whole by ensuring everyone has access to fresh, locally-grown foods. 

In this presentation, you’ll learn about WCB’s programs—Farm-to-Pantry, Gleaning, and Gardening, as well WCB’s many partners (BGC is one!). A writer and homesteader, Mattie J. Bamman was raised in the back-to-the-land movement in Downeast Maine. For 15 years he worked as a culinary travel writer. In 2018, he and his wife established a homestead and large garden using the “lasagna gardening” method, which he documented through the Ravenous Farmer channel on YouTube. In 2020, he helped launch Waldo County Bounty.          

February 27, 2024
6:30-8 pm by Zoom
Resilient Garden Design
Speaker: Irene Barber, Adult Education and Horticultural Therapy Program Manager, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

To see a video of this past program click here.

Recently, dramatic, unpredictable seasons have been teaching us that we can’t keep using the same practices from 10 or 20 years ago and expect the same results. 

In this presentation, Irene Barber from Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will share how garden spaces can be high-performing resilient systems that play an active role in the grassroots effort towards mitigating climate change. She’ll address the challenges we experience, including fluctuating temperatures, water conditions, and infestations. 

Barber is a seasoned professional gardener, landscape designer, and horticulturist who is always learning and excited to share the lessons with students, fellow plant people, and designers. With an AS degree in plant and soil science and a BA in communications, human behavior, Irene has brought her love of plants and people to her practice in horticultural therapy. As the adult education and horticultural therapy program manager at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, she produces up to 90 annual classes. Irene also runs a side landscape consulting and design business called Greenscapes Design LLC. 

March 19, 2024
Noon-1 pm in person and by Zoom
Belfast Free Library
Gardening Questions Answered

Speakers: Viña Lindley and Kate Garland, University of Maine Cooperative Extension

To see a video of this past program click here.

Our March meeting will be an opportunity to have your gardening questions answered by experts. Please submit your questions in advance to Hilary so that Lindley and Garland  can prepare their answers. We are hoping to cover a broad range of topics to solve our many challenges and puzzles.

Viña Lindley is based in Waldo County and works on a variety of youth and family food systems projects, including managing the state-wide FoodCorps program. FoodCorps is a nationwide team of AmeriCorps leaders who connect kids to real food to help them grow up healthy. Lindley also chairs the board of the Maine School Garden Network, serves in the Maine Farm to School work-group, and collaborates with a variety of networks and organizations in her work. 

Kate Garland helps gardeners improve efficiency and build skills through a number of educational avenues including workshops, newsletters, social media posts, and one-on-one support. Additionally, Garland works with school and community gardens to develop plans that will build sustainability and improve community impact and coordinates the Master Gardener Volunteer program, which offers  over 50 hours of in-depth training in the art and science of horticulture. In return, they volunteer their time and expertise towards educational or food security projects.

March 26, 2024
6:30-8 pm by Zoom
In Full Bloom: Container Gardens
Speaker: Rebecca Goldenthal

To see the video of this past program click here.

A container can hold so much more than you think: long-blooming beauty, variety, and visual surprises. Through this presentation, we’ll  learn how to add color and interest to our gardens with container plantings, including native plants.

Rebecca Goldenthal grew up with a passion for gardening, inherited from a long line of Maine gardeners. She is the founder of In Full Bloom, a Portland company.

April 16, 2024

Belfast Free Library
Noon to 1 pm by Zoom
Controlling Stormwater Runoff
Speaker: Fred Bowers, Soil Scientist

Click here to register for Zoom

Storm runoff can stoke soil erosion and damage plants. Luckily there are man-made solutions to erosion, which rely on fundamental natural soil processes. We’ll learn how to design rain gardens with consideration to natural soil and geologic processes, and about a possible demo rain garden for Belfast. Plus: other “green” options, such as eliminating impervious surfaces altogether, terracing, planting shrubs and trees in strategic places to soak up water or divert it, and other methods. 

Fred Bowers is a Ph.D. soil scientist. Soils, topography, and vegetation were his research interests at Rutgers and the University of Washington graduate schools. In his 27-year career at New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, he was a research scientist in charge of stormwater and groundwater programs. 

October 15, 2024
Noon to 1:00 pm, in person and by Zoom
Belfast Free Library
New! Conservation Landscapes Certification Programs
Speaker: Rebecca Jacobs, Program Manager, Knox-Lincoln SWCD

Rebecca Jacobs will present a newly developed certification program for conservation landscapes that is a collaboration involving Knox-Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District and the Waldo County SWCD. The program will help gardeners implement recommended practices in a systematic way, with guidance and ideas from SWCD staff and one-on-one help right at their property. It also offers property owners new ways to measure their progress and share ideas and practices with neighbors, friends, and family.

Jacobs is program manager at the Knox-Lincoln SWCD. She has worked as a staff horticulturist at the Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary in Western Massachusetts, where she honed her skills in native and invasive plants and ecological landscaping, and as the education coordinator for Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. She moved on in 2009 to start her own small design-, build-, and consultation-garden business and joined the SWCD. She holds a BS in environmental design and planning from the Univ

November 19, 2024
Noon to 1:00 pm, in person and by Zoom
Belfast Free Library
Our Changing Garden
Speaker: Tom Atwell, Gardening Columnist

Tom Atwell’s talk will focus on how his home garden, planted in 1975, has changed over the years.

Atwell is a lifelong Mainer who retired after 37 years reporting and working as a copy editor and assistant city editor on the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. He kept the fun part of his job, writing a weekly gardening column. https://www.pressherald.com/author/tom-atwell/

He was raised in Farmington and holds a BA in journalism from the University of Maine. After graduation, he was drafted into the Army and trained as an infantryman, but when sent to Vietnam was put to work for a division newspaper. Back home, he worked two years for the Lewiston Sun before moving to the Portland newspapers. He and his wife, Nancy, have two grown children and four grandchildren.