Professional Secrets

For Designing A Better Garden

Looking forward to the warmer weather to come, the members of The Garden Club of Newtown will have professional landscaper Rita Bond discussing garden design this month. The program will be on Tuesday, February 27, at 1 pm, in the Olga Knoepke Memorial Room of Cyrenius H. Booth Library, at 25 Main Street.

Originally from Brooklyn and a former English teacher with a Masters Degree from Columbia University, Ms Bond discovered gardening when she sought respite from the demands of raising her two children and studying for an MBA at night. She soon discovered that she enjoyed gardening far more than finance.

So she returned to school to earn a Certificate in Landscape Design at the New York Botanical Garden and became a Master Gardener through the University of Connecticut’s program. She also studied color theory at the West Hartford Art League and has begun a second career as an artist of pastel and oil paintings.

Ms Bond has been a landscape designer, concentrating on residential design, a lecturer and a teacher of gardening courses for ten years. She has also designed gardens for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, and a playscape located at Simsbury Farms Recreation Center. She was the featured guest in a series of local cable television shows on improving your home’s curb appeal in 2003.

Most recently, Ms Bonds completed a two-year term as co-president of Simsbury Garden Club, and in 2006 one of her gardens was selected for The Garden Conservancy Open Days fund raising event.

Her program in Newtown, “Designing a Better Garden: Secrets of the pros,” will discuss the basics of good garden design and her slides will illustrate the principles that she feels are essential to a well planned garden.

The public is invited to attend the free lecture. Registration is not necessary.

For more information call 270-1108.