Help us identify significant trees in Holliston!

Holliston Garden Club (HGC) Treespotters Committee and Friends of Trees are working to identify “Significant” trees on public land. This new project will list and identify our Town’s largest living creatures, our trees, in order to document them as part of our town’s history and preserve them. We would love the public’s help in nominating individual trees or groups of trees for special recognition! A tree may be nominated as “Significant” for its age, history, beauty, rarity, size, form or function. Some categories will allow the Town to apply for “Legacy Tree” status with the Mass Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Regardless of State recognition, the HGC is interested in providing an inventory of “Significant” trees to our Tree Warden, Conservation Commission, and other stakeholders for preservation and conservation purposes. Know of a significant tree in town? Click here to nominate a tree: Significant Tree Form.

We appreciate the public’s help in identifying these trees!

Want to know more about trees in Holliston? This page has a list of some of the trees that Holliston Garden Club has planted in town over the years.

Save the date! After a hiatus, we are excited to be holding our Annual Floral Design Event once again! On Friday, November 3, Stacey Alleva Lee will be presenting A Century of Flowers, showcasing some of their lovely designs.

It is sure to be a festive evening, with hors d’oeuvres and a number of raffle prizes!
Click here to purchase tickets.

Ninety years ago, in July of 1933, the Holliston Garden Club was started when Annie Cutler invited 12 friends who enjoyed gardening and flower arranging to her home to discuss the formation of a garden club.

This year we are celebrating 90 years of gardening, flower arranging, making connections, and working to beautify and improve our community as a club! We started our celebration in June with a garden tour, opening up eight different gardens to the public. It was a chilly day, but the gardens looked beautiful.

Then in July, to commemorate ninety years since that very first meeting in July of 1933, the Garden Club held a Garden Tea Party. A light lunch was served, and members brought floral arrangements held in tea cups to decorate the tables. A lovely time was had!

What more shall we do this year, as we celebrate our 90th? Stay tuned! And if you are interested in joining our club, please contact us – the more the merrier!

Arbor Day was on Friday, April 28, this year. A small celebration was held on Saturday the 29th at Blair Square. It included the planting of a native Sugar Maple tree, which was dedicated to Carol Merritt, a late garden club member, and included the reading of the winning poems from our poetry contest with the 5th grade classes at the Miller Elementary School.

Report on our Arbor Day Celebration
by Sharon Thornton

Holliston Garden Club Treespotters had their Arbor Day event on Saturday 4/29 at Blair Square. It is not open yet to the public; Carol Holly and I got special permission from the Police Chief, Select Board, and the Park and Recreation Department.

We had about 30 people in attendance. Tina Hein read the town’s proclamation which is a requirement of becoming a Tree City. We had some special visitors: our Representative James Arena-DeRosa, along with Matt Zeddick and members of the Select Board Tina Hein and John Cronin. We also had our Federation President Jill Malcolm and a former Federation President whose granddaughter won our poetry contest. 

Val Howes and Lee Guertin welcomed everyone then I gave an overview of Arbor Day. Tina read the proclamation, and then we had our three winners read their poems – Olivia Lima 3rd place, Emily Spurway 2nd place, and our first place winner Andromache McCoy Oliver. Carol passed out their ribbons.

We dedicated our Sugar Maple to Carol Meritt, and Roger helped give a toast to her tree. 

Val Howes and Nikki Hafele led us in singing “God Bless America”. I encouraged everyone to vote at our town meeting and asked them to check out our display at the library. We ended with refreshments.

We were lucky the rain held out. 

Winning Poems from the 5th Grade Poetry Contest:

Thank you to all of the Fifth Graders who submitted wonderful poetry, and thank you to everyone who was involved in our Arbor Day event!

With a little help from our local librarians, we have compiled a list of just a few great books about gardening for children!

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Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Recommended ages: 1-4

Through brilliant, textured cut paper collages, the story follows the progress of a mother and daughter in their backyard as they plant bulbs, seeds, and seedlings and nurture their growth into a rainbow of flowers.

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Lola Plants a Garden by Anna McQuinn
Recommended ages: 2-4

How does your garden grow? Book-loving Lola is inspired by a collection of garden poems that she reads with her mommy. She wants to plant her own garden of beautiful flowers, so she and Mommy go to the library to check out books about gardening. They choose their flowers and buy their seeds. They dig and plant. And then they wait. Lola finds it hard to wait for her flowers to grow, but she spends the time creating her own flower book. Soon she has a garden full of sunflowers and invites all of her friends for cakes and punch and a story amongst the flowers.

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Up, Down and Around by Katherine Ayres
Recommended ages: 2-5

A garden produces a variety of edible plants, such as corn that grows up, onions that grow down, and tomato vines that twine all around. Peppers grow up. Potatoes grow down. Pumpkins vine around and around. From seeds dropping into soil to corn bursting from its stalks, from children chasing butterflies to ants burrowing underground, everything in this vibrant picture book pulses with life — in all directions!

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My Garden by Kevin Henkes
Recommended ages: 2-5

After helping her mother weed, water, and chase the rabbits from their garden, a young girl imagines her dream garden complete with jellybean bushes, chocolate rabbits, and tomatoes the size of beach balls.

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Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert
Recommended ages: 2-6

Every spring, butterflies emerge and dazzle the world with their vibrant beauty. But where do butterflies come from? How are they born? What do they eat–and how? This book also contains suggestions for growing a butterfly garden.

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A Seed Grows by Antoinette Portis
Recommended ages: 3-6

From a tiny seed to a huge, fold-out bloom, the transformative life cycle of a sunflower plays out in this educational picture book.

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The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
Recommended ages: 3-6

One boy’s quest for a greener world… one garden at a time. While out exploring one day, a little boy named Liam discovers a struggling garden and decides to take care of it. As time passes, the garden spreads throughout the dark, gray city, transforming it into a lush, green world.

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We Are the Gardeners by Joanna Gaines
Recommended ages: 4-8

A young family learns to grow a garden, describing how they prepared the soil, watered their plants, dealt with the animals who invaded their garden, and how all their hard work finally paid off as they harvested vegetables and flowers.

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A Kid’s First Book of Gardening by Derek Fell
Recommended ages: 9 and up

Presents information on soil, seeds, easy-to-grow flowers, flowers that keep blooming, bulbs, vegetables, fruits, trees, shrubs, house plants, gardening in containers, and unusual plants.

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Do you have a favorite kid’s book about gardening?

by Barbara Gardner

Holliston voters will have an opportunity at the May Annual Town Meeting to support Holliston becoming a Tree City USA.  This national program was created by the Arbor Day Foundation in l976, and 46.8% of the country lives in a Tree City USA community. There are 3,652 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that have been designated as Tree City USA communities.  The largest Tree City USA is New York City with 8,820,000 inhabitants, and the smallest town is Sibley, North Dakota, population 20.

To receive recognition as a Tree City USA, the community must meet four core standards. The first is to form a Tree Board or Department. Holliston has an appointed Tree Warden who is part of the Public Works Department.

The second standard is to establish a Tree ordinance which assigns clear authority over public trees and provides clear guidance for planting, maintaining and/or removing trees from streets, parks and other public spaces. The Select Board, in conjunction with the Planning Board, are currently working on a new tree ordinance for the town. This ordinance or by-law, as we call it, will be placed on the upcoming MayAnnual Town Meeting warrant for consideration by the voters in attendance.

The third standard to qualify as a Tree City USA community is to maintain a community forestry program with an annual budget of at least $2 per capita for the planting, care, and removal of trees. An adequate budget demonstrates an on-going investment into public trees. Happily, the Town of Holliston already meets and exceeds this standard.

The last requirement is to celebrate Arbor Day annually which the Holliston Garden Club has done for many years and issue an official proclamation to create pride, generate knowledge and focus on the importance of trees.

The Arbor Day Foundation also runs similar programs on hospital and health care grounds and campuses of Higher Education and Tree Line USA which fosters best practices in public and private utility arboriculture, demonstrating how trees and utilities can co-exist for the benefit of communities and citizens.

The benefits to trees are endless. To name a few, cooler temperatures, cleaner air, higher property values and healthier residents. In addition to these benefits and so many more, this designation is attractive to businesses choosing a location and can help in applying for certain state grants. The Holliston Garden Club and the Friends of Trees organization is solidly behind this initiative and hope you will be too by attending and supporting Holliston becoming a Tree City USA at the May Annual Town Meeting.

We are pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for our scholarship and our educational grant now through April 14! Our $1,000 scholarship is awarded annually to a high school senior or college student who is a Holliston resident and planning to major in Horticulture, Botany, Landscape Design Forestry, Environmental Science, Land Management, or other garden-related field. It was founded by Dorothy (Dot) Stevens, a former Club president, who recognized the importance of preserving our natural world and whose dream it was to encourage young people to pursue careers in horticulture.

Educational grants are awarded annually to Holliston residents or organizations that seek to provide children with educational projects in horticulture or garden-related subjects. Funded grants over the years have supported the planting of tulip bulbs in the Placentino School courtyard, several High School greenhouse projects, window box planting projects with elementary special needs students, materials for the butterfly aviary, and the installation of a pollinator garden at Placentino Elemetary.

If you are interested in applying for an educational grant or scholarship, please visit our scholarships and grants page and send in your application by April 14.

by Jeanne Grandy
~Excerpt from the April 2021 Holliston Garden Club newsletter

It used to be that a young couple buying their first home would re-decorate the inside to their taste and needs, then pretty up the outside with pots of flowers until more creative yard work could be afforded. After too many months of Covid keeping people indoors, more established homeowners have been re-thinking the view from inside the house. Whether new or more established, whether walking in the neighborhood or just looking out the window, homeowners have come to realize the value of nature to restore us humans, physically and mentally. As importantly, we are realizing that our own properties can contribute not only to our well-being but to the beauty of the neighborhood and better health for all.

There is a growing awareness that each of us is part of the larger biosphere of all creatures that call this earth planet “home.” Scientists are telling us it is more than time to pay attention to our role – in even what feels like an insignificant way – playing a part in improving the health of all of us by planting native trees, shrubs, and flowers to attract and support wild life.

Holliston is in a region of the Northeast where trees are considered “old-growth” (about a 100 years) forests, the ”original” ones having been felled for building houses, fences, and shipbuilding; and cleared for farming.  Some of these trees are now being taken down for new housing; others, being removed after recent storm damage.  Still others need to be removed due to death and risk associated with the invasion of non-native insects.  As a Town and as property owners, scientists and environmentalists are making us aware that trees, shrubs, and flowers now have to support life by sequestering carbon, feeding pollinators, and managing water, a tall order but one we can do together.  For example, century-old Oaks and other natives help mitigate down-hill water run-off with their deep roots, so paying attention to how we care for them matters! Moreover, native trees  such as oaks, willows, cherries, and birches attract what are now considered “essential keystone wildlife species.”

Which trees to plant means doing some research as to soil and sun requirements, and awareness of its size at maturity. Good resources to check out include the following: the Native Plant Trust, the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder, and the Homegrown National Park website. Author and entomologist, Douglas W. Tallamy, is quoted as saying: “trees are the true heroes of the new ecology.”

For its part, the Holliston Garden Club is shifting its focus slightly this year from planting a tree for Arbor Day to educating ourselves and the community on the care, maintenance, and value of our trees in Holliston on public or private lands; and encouraging participation in the efforts to both beautify and improve health, for our environment and our community by planting natives. Check our website: www.hollistongardenclub.org for information about Club activities and Zoom events for your participation.

Every year the Massachusetts Horticultural Society puts on a Festival of Trees at the Garden at Elm Bank, and this year our club has decorated an ‘Enchanted Forest’ themed tree to be one of the many trees on display from now through the end of December.

Visitors to the Festival of Trees may purchase raffle tickets for the the tree (or trees!) of their choice, and the winners get to take their trees home at the end of the Festival. There are quite the variety of different trees, and many have gifts in addition to decorations. Our tree features a fairy at its base, with a bark fairy home door and woodland-inspired decorations.

The festival also features a large indoor model train exhibit, with model trains winding their way through a holiday snow village. Holiday lights and decorations add to the festivities, and visitors can enjoy hot chocolate and s’mores while gathering around firepits.

Tickets for the Festival of Trees are available on the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s website. Look for our tree there!

Over the years, the Holliston Garden Club has planted many trees and shrubs throughout our town of Holliston, MA. In recent years tree surveys were undertaken in an effort to identify the trees planted by the club throughout its history. After going through club records, over 70 trees were identified, including an American Sycamore called the ‘Moon Tree’, which was planted from a seed that traveled on the Apollo 14 Lunar Mission in 1971. To find out more about our trees and to see the results of the surveys, click on our tree survey site.