Creativity & Charm Make

Garden Club Sale A Success

By Shannon Hicks

The Garden Club of Newtown hosted a holiday greens sale on December 4 that could be deemed nothing less than a complete success.

The event opened at 9 am at Newtown Meeting House and was scheduled to continue until 3 pm. When the doors at 31 Main Street opened for the public to enter the show and sale Saturday morning, every pew in the old church building had an evergreen or grapevine wreath or a sprig of greens hanging from it. The wreaths were decorated in a variety of themes, from simple to more ornate, all done by garden club members.

Across the back of the building’s sanctuary area and the front of the room were tables piled with topiary, mulling spices, herb-infused vinegars and other offerings, all being sold to benefit the ongoing projects of one of the town’s two garden clubs.

“It’s been a great day, we’re very happy with this,” club president Nancy Rowe commented Saturday afternoon. By noon, the majority of the offerings had been sold, but there was still a steady stream of visitors to the meeting house.

In addition to the items offered for home decoration and gift giving, the public was also enthralled to visit the meeting house and meet gardener and columnist Rea Lubar Duncan. Ms Duncan has been writing features and columns for a number of regional newspapers for five years.

She has also been writing a popular column for Connecticut magazine since 1983, and a collection of these columns has been gathered together and published in book form, called Down To Earth (Wisdom, Wit & Great Advice From A Connecticut Gardener). It is Ms Duncan’s honest portrayals of herself and the hands-on approach to her gardening that readers have found so endearing for years.

“The reason for this heart-warming empathy is not because I’m a great gardener but because I’m not,” she once said. “I’m an amateur, a dirt gardener, one of those people who likes to get down on their knees and grub.”

It was Ms Duncan’s appearance at the meeting house that continued to draw in the public long after the majority of the garden club’s inventory had been sold. Ms Duncan warmly greeted everyone who stopped in to meet her, and during the course of her four-hour visit (she was at the meeting house from 10 am to 2 pm), she sold at least 20 copies of her book.