Cool Timeline

2014

2014 – 2015 — Partners for Plants at Keney Park

With a grant from the Garden Club of America’s Partners for Plants program and in collaboration with Hartford’s Department of Public Works, GCH launches a design competition for landscape architecture students. The focus is the five entrances to Keney Park – with a construction ready plan for the Barbour Street entrance. The charge is to include native plants from the Olmsteds’ original plant list, with an emphasis on pollinator-attractive species. GCH members begin mapping and monitoring endangered, rare and invasive plants at Barbour Street.

2016

2016 — A Centennial Celebration

GCH celebrates 100 years of making a difference with lunch at the Governor’s Mansion, complete with a Connecticut Proclamation read by member Eunice Groark, former Lieutenant Governor. Mayor Luke Bronin read the City of Hartford proclamation and the Garden Club of America also issued a congratulatory proclamation.

2016 – 2020 — The Keney Park Project

2016 saw us voting for our own application — one of three that made it to this stage — in the GCA Founders’ Fund competition. With our prize of $10,000 and monies the Club raised on its own, we funded replanting the park’s five entrances, following the winning plans from the Partners for Plants at Keney Park design competition. We also underwrote several years of From the Ground Up: Best Practices in Land Management Basics, a course for City of Hartford parks employees on such fundamentals as the importance of biodiversity, plant identification, pollinator preservation and invasive plant management. And we created and installed signs at all the Keney entrances, the golf course and the cricket pitches to explain the park’s flora, fauna, landmarks and history. (See The Keney Park Project above.)

2020

March – May 2020 and Beyond: COVID 19 Changes the Way We Meet

The novel coronavirus hit Connecticut in early March, and on March 23rd Governor Ned Lamont’s executive order closed all “non-essential” businesses as part of the “Stay Safe, Stay at Home” campaign. “Social distancing” became part of our vocabulary as we all learned to stay 6 feet apart, wear masks and self-quarantine. President Marian Kellner made sure the Garden Club of Hartford rose to the occasion and began holding meetings on Zoom. Garden clubs across the country did the same. The Garden Club of America’s annual meeting didn’t take place in Asheville, N.C., as scheduled, but it did happen online. The Garden Club of Hartford’s Annual Meeting took place on schedule and on Zoom. We welcomed new members, said fond farewells to one board and cheered in a new one. And felt thankful and grateful to be members of the strong GCH community as we find new ways to move forward into our future.

2023

2021-2023 – The Keney Park Project

We continue the Hartford Public Works classes on best practices in public park management, the focus is now on increasing biodiversity. We refurbish the Windsor Avenue and Pond House entrances with native trees and shrubs. In partnership with Bartlett Trees, we complete the planting of an allée of 10 Japanese Lilac trees which complements the existing Japanese Lilacs at the Woodland Street entrance. With an additional Partnership for Plants grant we also added bulbs and low maintenance underplantings to the allée. At the same entrance, we plant three River Birch trees to the renovated traffic circle and with help from local school children plant spring bulbs underneath. This basically completes the club’s eight-year project to restore native landscapes, install pollinator plantings and improve signage to this historic park.