Members of The Garden Club of Newtown gathered along Elm Drive on a recent Tuesday morning, returning to the same lot where six years earlier the club had planted a swamp white oak.

A companion tree was planted at the south end of the historic Ram Pasture, south of Hawley Road and opposite the entrance to Newtown Village Cemetery. The club received permission from Newtown Village Cemetery Association to do the planting. The association owns and maintains Ram Pasture as part of its holdings.

With ten club members looking on, Holly Kocet stepped onto a shovel and confidently dug into the ground. The space where the swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor) was to be planted had already been prepped. A circle a few feet in diameter had already been cleared of its grass, and the soil loosened ahead of the club’s arrival on August 29.

As Kocet stepped on the shovel, fellow garden club member Lisa Shirk began to lift the young tree out of its container.

Kocet reminded club members that the tree variety had been selected because it would do well in a moist location. It was the same variety the club had planted in April 2017, just a few yards north of where the new tree was being installed.

The first planting was part of that year’s Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut (FGCC) President’s statewide project. The 2017 theme was “Growing Together: Tiny Acorns to Mighty Oaks.”

This year’s work was also in response to the FGCC President’s statewide project. The 2023 theme is “Plant A Mighty Oak.”

Soft Landings

As part of the recent planting, the garden club made sure the new tree had a soft landing around its base.

Soft landings are created through the planting of native plants and the addition of “green mulch” — leaf litter and plant debris — under keystone trees such as oils, willows, cherries, pines, and poplar. The plantings provide critical shelter and habitat for one or more life cycle stages of moths, butterflies, and “beneficial insects” such as bumble bees, fireflies, lacewings, and lady beetles, according to a handout provided by the garden club.

The elimination of landscape fabric and mulch is also beneficial to insects. Additionally, less mowing reduces soil compaction.

“These future butterflies and moths — food for birds — are sustained by these trees but also need space below the trees for overwintering without being disturbed by mowers and blowers,” Kocet told The Newtown Bee this week. “A bed around the trees also serves to protect the trees from string trimmers that can girdle the tree bark.”

Shirk agreed, saying soft landings are significant for pollinators.

“A soft landing for insects going through metamorphosis, who need to reach ground and even go underground, is important,” she told her fellow garden club members. “A lot of people forget that.”

The landing will additionally create easier access underground for those young creatures.

“It will do this even better than mulch would,” she said, noting her practice of bagging leaves in her yard and using them similarly on her property. “Instead of bagging them up and getting rid of them, use those leaves productively. I didn’t buy any mulch this year.”

Kocet said the garden club’s Civic/Conservation Committee purchased perennials to go around the bases of both oak trees at Ram Pasture to create the soft landings.

The club planted Canada Windflower (Anemone canadensis), Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis), Big-Leaved Aster (Eurybia macrophylla), and Wild Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia) — all natives, each selected for different benefits including varying bloom times — under the two trees in its care.

Kocet said plants “have to do more than look pretty.”

Quoting the entomologist and author Doug Tallamy, Kocet said plants “need to feed others, and pollinate. They need to work.”

Without keystone plants, Kocet said, “butterflies, native bees, and birds will not thrive. 96 percent of our birds rely on insects supported by these keystone plants.”

Club member Jane Sharpe smiled while she and the others listened to the educational comments.

“These are good lessons,” she then said. “This is why people join garden clubs — to learn cool things.”

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.