Old South Church’s award-winning gardeners are at it again!

While hundreds of deeply planted tulip bulbs await the spring, the garden will be dressed in a contemporary, winter arrangement of upright stakes.  Stained in the dark hues of Red Osier Dogwoods, hundreds of these stakes will be “planted” by church volunteers on Saturday, December 19 to conjure the image of a drift, to reflect the colors of the season and to complement the decorative Northern Italian Ruskinian architecture of the National Historic Landmark Building.

Old South’s volunteer gardener, Jim Hood, says this about his latest undertaking, “Winter is mostly a time of quiet color, yet in rural areas of the northeast United States fields of snow are often striped with stands of Red Osier Dogwood, a woody shrub that goes little noticed in summer but that comes to visual life in winter. Red Osier Dogwood exposes its brilliant red bark once its foliage falls away offering a sense of warmth amidst the cold.”

Old South’s Associate Minister, Quinn Caldwell, describes the garden as “a labor of love to the city. Besides being a thing of beauty, the stick garden is also a proclamation of our faith: that beauty will spring from barrenness, form out of chaos, life out of death.  Here in the coldest and darkest time of year, we make bold to proclaim that spring and life are on their way.”

In the last 30 years stick gardens (sculptural installations made of color-stained sticks of wood) have been mounted in the U.K. U.S. and Canada – see picture of blue stick garden below.

Old South’s gardens and gardeners are the recipients of the Garden Club of the Back Bay’s Magnolia Award (2009), the Mayor’s Golden Trowel Award (2007), and the Mayor’s Runner Up Award (2008).  For information, and to volunteer with the staking, call (617) 536-1970 ext 222, or email nst@oldsouth.org.