The Annual Meeting of The Garden Club of the Back Bay, Inc. took place Monday, May 14, and $66,000 in grants and expenditures were unanimously approved by the membership. Co-President Jackie Blombach is pictured below announcing the grants to the attendees.

Thirty thousand dollars has been set aside for street tree care, including planting, pruning, and inoculating.  In addition to this amount, the following organizations will benefit from our Club’s fund raising successes, including our holiday wreath project and our upcoming Twilight Garden Party:

$5,000 to The Friends of Copley Square, for treating with fertilizer and fungicide the diseased trees (the ones not being removed) for root stress due to canker stain and compacted ground conditions.

$5,000 to The Friends of the Public Garden, to continue the inoculation of elms against Dutch elm disease.  The street trees to be treated are not on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, but are located on Commonwealth Avenue beyond Massachusetts Avenue.

$5,000 to The Esplanade Association, for the Eliot Memorial Demonstration Garden.

$5,000 to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall Committee, for its Historic Elm Preservation Project.

$3,000 to the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, to help pay for plant material for the completion of Mother’s Rest, at Boylston Street and The Fenway.

$3,000 to City Roots/Urban Ecology Institute, for plant materials (trees and shrubs) for a project underway in Allston/Brighton, which also includes a citizen science and education component.

$3,000 to the Boston Nature Center of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, supporting some level of scholarships to twenty children for the summer camp.  The children range in age from 5 to 14 and are from the local neighborhoods of Mattapan, Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain.

$2,000 to the Charles River Clean Up Boat, helping keep our beloved river trash free.

$500 to the Ellis Neighborhood Association, to inoculate an historic elm tree in the South End against Dutch elm disease. This contribution will cover half the expense of the treatment, with the other half being paid by the Ellis Neighborhood Association.

$500 to The Blossom Fund of The Boston Committee of The Garden Club of America, for our five year fund raising effort to be awarded next year to a project in or around The Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Additionally, we are purchasing four tree fences to be installed in the neighborhood, three in front of The First Lutheran Church on Berkeley Street, and one in front of The French Cultural Center of Boston, on Marlborough Street, at a total cost of $4,000.

We congratulate all our grant recipients, and thank our supporters for giving us the ability to beautify Boston.