Tony Todesco will present a program entitled Holiday & Winter Floral Designs on Wednesday, November 28 at the Mill Pond School, Olde Hickory Path, Westborough, Massachusetts, beginning at 6 pm. The evening, sponsored by the Westborough Garden Club, will also include a holiday boutique, a shoebox raffle, and refreshments. $7 admission. For advance tickets call 508-366-0067, or email WestboroughGC@gmail.com. Tickets may also be purchased at the door.
Visit the Jolly Holly Fair and the Millis Garden Club Greens Sale on Saturday, December 1, from 9 – 3 at the Church of Christ, 142 Exchange Street in Millis to get an early start to your holiday shopping. All ages will enjoy the festive surroundings and large variety of hand-made gifts, decorations, home-baked goods, and other specialty items not available in malls or catalogues. Shoppers will find hand-knitted and woodcraft items; vintage jewelry; and special shopping experiences for children. To make your home or office festive, you’ll find decorated fresh wreaths and swags; attractive centerpieces, boxwood trees, and fireplace baskets; holiday blooming bulbs; pine cone candle rings; and garden-inspired tree and table decorations. Raffle tickets will be sold for two tickets to the Boston Pops December 20 Holiday Concert and for decorative door decorations. There will be also a Silent Auction to bid on New Revolution Soccer tickets and many themed gift baskets. Santa photos suitable for framing will be offered from 10am to 1pm. For more information contact Tammy (Jolly Holly Fair) at tcoutts@meditech.com or Janet (Millis Garden Club) at janet@EtiquetteForToday.net.
The Gardeners’ Guild of Braintree will present The Jechonias Thayer House: A Georgian Holiday, its 38th Annual Holiday House Tour and Boutique & Craft Fair on Sunday, December 2, 2012. This year’s featured home, located at 216 Elm Street, was built in 1830. The inside of this home is nothing short of spectacular, with its gorgeous floor to ceiling windows, built-in cabinets and bookcases, natural woods and murals on walls, just to mention a few of its many outstanding features. The Tour hours will be 1 – 5 p.m. Advance tickets at $15 will be available at Town Hall Clerk’s Office, Braintree Cooperative Bank, Caruso Jewelers, and The Potting Bench. Tickets at the door will be available for $20.
Also on Sunday, December 2, the Guild will hold its Boutique & Craft Fair at the Braintree Town Hall from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. A variety of beautiful holiday arrangements, made by the Guild members, with fresh greens will be availble for sale. Also highlighted will be quality crafts from over 20 vendors. Complimentary refreshments will be provided. The Boutique & Craft Fair is open to the public for a $2 entrance fee, or FREE with your House Tour ticket.
Skinner Auctioneers & Appraisers is pleased to present Ken Druse, called the “guru of natural gardening” by the New York Times, for a lecture on art in the garden on Friday, November 30 at 63 Park Plaza in Boston. A reception will begin at 6, with the lecture at 6:30. Ken will show many different types of enduring art and discuss ways to display it in a variety of outdoor environments. He’ll also discuss the use of “living sculptures,” plants, in the creation of more ephemeral designs. The program is presented by Skinner’s 20th Century Design department. For more information, or to register, visit www.skinnerinc.com.
Garden Club of the Back Bay member Maureen O’Hara reminded us of this terrific Thanksgiving benefit, and her boss Ken Tutunjian of Coldwell Banker Boston is selling pies! Buy pies directly through Ken by searching his name in the Pie in the Sky directory at www.pieinthesky.org. More than a fundraiser, Pie in the Sky fosters community spirit and engages the public in the mission of Community Servings — Massachusetts’ free home-delivered meals and nutrition program for the critically ill.
Each November since 1993, Boston’s best restaurants, bakeries, caterers and hotels donate thousands of pies that over 500 volunteers then sell to family, friends and colleagues. Each pie costs $25, providing a week’s worth of hearty home-delivered meals to a Community Servings’ client and a tasty Thanksgiving treat to the buyer.
Corporate donors provide financial support and donations of in-kind services. Thanks to the dedication and generosity of our pie sellers and volunteers, $.90 of every $1.00 raised in 2010 went directly to feeding Community Servings’ clients.
Rest assured, when you support Community Servings through Pie in the Sky, your contribution goes directly to our neighbors in greatest need — homebound individuals and families struggling with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses and who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves.
Here is how you — the communty — make Pie in the Sky happen.  Over 150 Bakers throughout Greater Boston bake and donate thousands of apple, pecan, pumpkin and sweet potato pies. Over 600 Pie Sellers take orders from their family, friends and coworkers in the weeks before Thanksgiving. You can buy pies and make financial contributions to Community Servings by visiting pieinthesky.org. 75 volunteers gather at the Greater Boston Food Bank for our annual “Box Party” to label 15,000 pie boxes in just 3 hours. Groups of volunteers then head out to deliver bundles of pie boxes and pie tins to each of our 150 bakers. Volunteers pick up the donated pies from pie bakers across Greater Boston and deliver them to “Pie Central.” It takes a lot of space and manpower to organize 15,000 pies! Pies are then shipped to over 60 public distribution points in Boston and the surrounding suburbs. Happy pie buyers retrieve their pies on the day before Thanksgiving at their preselected pick-up location. Pie Buyers enjoy their Thanksgiving celebrations. Thanks to their generosity, Community Servings’ clients sit down to lovingly prepared home-style meals — on Thanksgiving and every day.
Today is the day you are going to check some gift purchases off your list and here is a foolproof way to do it. The Garden Club of the Back Bay will deliver a gorgeous holiday wreath to the recipient of your choice who lives in Back Bay, Beacon Hill, or the South End (call if you’re not sure) with an elegant gift card attached. Just click on to https://bostonflora.com/products-page/ , print the order form, and fax it to 617-249-1762. You can pay through PayPal by clicking the Donate button right on this website.  Or have the wreath delivered to you, if you are in the delivery area. Another option? Pick up your purchase either Wednesday or Thursday, December 5 or 6, at The First Lutheran Church of Boston, 299 Berkeley Street, on the corner of Berkeley and Marlborough Streets. We’ll be there from 8 in the morning until 7 at night. Customers have sent wreaths to friends and family, and a beautiful standard wreath with a bow (example below) can make a terrific gift for your hairdresser, trainer, dentist, masseuse … you get the idea. Happy shopping!
On Thursday, December 6, from 7 – 9 at the Boston Architectural College, 951 Boylston Street in Boston, enjoy a COGdesign fundraiser hosted by the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectural Center. Johnny Linville, High Line Manager of Horticulture (pictured below,) will speak on All About the High Line: New York City’s Park in the Sky, followed by a sparkling dessert buffet. COGdesign is celebrating 15 years of greening communities by design. $40, and you may sign up in advance by emailing info@cogdesign.org.
We wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving, filled with love, companionship, good food and a Patriot’s victory over the Jets tonight. Our deadline for holiday wreath ordering is a week away, so if you have a moment after washing dishes and putting away leftovers, click on to https://bostonflora.com/products-page/ and place your order before time slips away!
Preparations are underway for Deck the Halls, A Holiday House Tour, which will feature five distinctly different Belmont homes decorated to celebrate the winter holidays. Sherry Jones and Sue Kelleher, event co-chairs, promise that there will be no shortage of creativity as Belmont Garden Club members and designers apply their talents to transform entry ways and living areas into inspiring holiday settings. Mark your calendars now and plan to bring friends and family on what promises to be a beautiful way to catch the holiday spirit. Deck the Halls, A Holiday House Tour will take place Saturday, December 8, 2012, from 11 AM until 4 PM. Tickets with maps may be purchased that day at the Belmont Library between 10:30 AM and 3:30 PM. Profits from the $35 per person ticket sales will benefit the community gardens and deltas cared for by the Belmont Garden Club as well as the Marion Wilkins/Marie Gray Scholarship awarded each year to a Belmont resident pursuing a degree in Biology, Landscape Design, Horticulture, Environmental Studies, Forestry, or another closely related field. Image from furniture.trendzona.com.
Blithewold’s Garden Manager Gail Read, and Interpretive Horticulturist Kristen Green will share design ideas and assembly tips that allow you to create a one-of-a kind holiday wreath. You will be able to choose your greens from a wide variety of plant material, some of which is pre-cut from Blithewold’s collection of unique evergreens. Anyone who may be in Rhode Island and plans to help with The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s wreath project the following week may wish to take this “practice” opportunity. Blithewold is located at 101 Ferry Road in Bristol, Rhode Island, and the workshops will be held Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1, from 10 – noon. $38 for Blithewold members and $45 for non members. Register by telephone at 401-253-2707, or on line at www.blithewold.org. One of our own Garden Club of the Back Bay wreaths is pictured below (to order, click on to www.gardenclubbackbay.org/products-page/.
