In May of 1969, Judith Millon, Chairman of School Volunteers at the Abraham Lincoln School at 152 Arlington Street, wrote to then Garden Club of the Back Bay President Laura Dwight asking for help with four window boxes, 4 feet long and 14 inches deep, to be set up in four very large north facing windows at the school. The building, constructed circa 1910, is red brick and is located at the corner of Arlington Street and the Massachusetts Turnpike.  Today the building houses the Josiah Quincy Upper School. In 1969, it served 700 students from kindergarten through 8th grade.

In Mrs. Millon’s request, she said the deep ledged windows cry out for window boxes full of chrysanthemums, pine boughs, tulips – whatever the season and north light will allow.  If anyone has any information about those window boxes – were they built, were they planted? – please email info@bostonflora.com.

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In 1982, the courtyard in the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library on Boyston Street was in need of maintenance and enhancement.  The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s then-President, the late Patsy Boyce, designed the garden, worked with Robert Van Gelder of Capizzi & Co. to arrange for the installation.  The quoted prices from the contractor will be of interest to those of you who have worked with landscapers recently:

Fertilize pachysandra beds (already existing) and provide three sprays of linseed oil – $320

Prepare all planting beds, weed and rake paths, level soil where needed and fertilize with aged bovine manure – $582

Mulch planting beds with pine bark mulch – $535

Pick up plants, deliver and install – $913

Plant material  (2 Taxus cuspidata ‘Nana’ – 2 more were already in place, 1 Acer palmatum- 3 other already in place, 5 Azalea poukhanense for each parterre, 4 Cotoneaster apiculata, privet ligustrum obtusifolium, and pink, salmon and white impatiens) – $1,647

Total – $3,997

At that period, the Garden Club assets totaled approximately $4,700, so this was a major expenditure for us. Although subsequent Library renovations recreated the garden in a manner thought to be more historically accurate, the shady, flower filled garden provided much enjoyment to Library patrons for over 20 years.

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In 1968, the New England Spring Flower Show exhibited for the first time at Suffolk Downs Race Track, and The Garden Club of the Back Bay was there, winning a blue ribbon for its attractive back yard showing a little foreign car in a lattice work enclosure.  President and founder Laura Dwight and Vice President Mrs. Paul Bishop gave a tea in for the members in May of that year to congratulate them on the award. We have found a copy of the Flower Show program for that year on eBay, hoping to gather more information, but we were not listed among the area Garden Clubs exhibiting – perhaps we were a last minute addition, or perhaps we have the year wrong. Club member Elisabeth Lay remembers helping the late Dr. John Twaddle, a radiologist at New England Baptist Hospital, and his wife, Garden Club of the Back Bay member Ann Twaddle, tote things over to the exhibit, and believes the small Fiat was on loan from a local automobile dealer, since the gasoline would have had to be drained.

The Twaddles put the ideas together, and cut and assembled the lattice in the back of their home at 241 Marlborough Street.  As Elisabeth says: “It was an early idea for those living here as well as those in the suburbs of what could be done in a lovely way with plants, window boxes in a Boston alley space behind a building with still enough room for a car … I remember suburbanites really liking it. ” If anyone out there has a picture of the exhibit to share, or more information on how we came to exhibit, we would be most grateful. The image below, from www.theparisienne.fr, is not our car, but gives us an idea of what could have been shown. Email info@bostonflora.com. 

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