Garden Club hands out saplings, sunflower seeds at Arbor Day celebration
Apr 21, 2022
Garden Club member Joyce Holster explains caring for the free saplings at Thursday’s Arbor Day event at A.D. Makepeace. Photos by: Alexandra Weliever
Visitors found several booths of activities and educational handouts at Thursday’s Arbor Day event.
Children’s Librarian Marcia Hickey dons a hand puppet of a can of worms, which accompanies a book about the value of worms in gardens at Thursday’s Arbor Day event.
A hat and braids made of recycled materials sits at a booth.
“Recycle Rita” is a sculpture made of recycled materials.
One booth offered visitors a chance to make bird feeders by coating a paper tube with shortening before rolling it in birdseed.
Free saplings, soil testing and story time awaited those who participated in the Wareham Garden Club’s Arbor Day celebration at A.D. Makepeace on Thursday, April 21.
Garden Club President Barbara Van Inwegen said the day’s event was the biggest Arbor Day celebration the club has hosted in a while, though one of the club’s biggest events is yet to come. The annual plant sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at the Methodist Meeting House, she said.
Van Inwegen was running the sunflower seed planting booth as the Arbor Day event began. In front of her sat rows of planters, each filled with dirt and awaiting a sprinkle of sunflower seeds.
“Make a bird happy, plant a tree,” Van Inwegen said.
Elsewhere at the event, visitors could grab a free tree sapling, create a bead bracelet that turns colors in the sun and bring their soil in for free testing. The event was sponsored by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Wareham Cultural Council, members said, which helped the club provide free saplings and other activities for visitors. Inside the nearby Box Mill Hall, participants listened to Plymouth County Entomologist Blake Dinius give a presentation on jumping worms and other insects.
At a booth outside, Children’s Librarian Marcia Hickey runs a table full of children’s books about plants and gardening.
She holds up one, “Say Hello to a Worm,” that details the importance of worms in the gardening process.
Across the green from the library’s table, representatives from the Wareham Land Trust offered passersby information sheets on Arbor Day.
Trust board member Dale Scott praised the variety of functions that trees perform for the Earth, from their use in absorbing carbon to producing oxygen to looking pretty for residents.
Fellow trust representative Ann Bryant agreed.
“The saplings are great,” she said, “because so many trees are coming down.”
The two discussed how in recent years, strong winds have snapped many trees in their neighborhoods.
“We’re living the climate change,” Scott said.
