Pomperaug Valley Garden Club

06/08/2026

Saturday is your last chance to catch this unique exhibit! 9 am until 2 pm at the Woodbury Library Gallery (don't forget to vote for your favorites!)

05/24/2026

The Memorial Day Parade in Woodbury has been CANCELLED due to weather. There will be a Memorial Day service held at 2 pm inside at the Senior Community Center instead.

05/06/2026

Click here for a preliminary list of the plants we will have on Saturday. Note that some of these plants (trees and shrubs, in particular) are in very limited quantities.

https://www.pomperaugvalleygc.org/pdfs/web-plant-list-2026.pdf

05/03/2026

The club's 2026 Botany Trail walks at Flanders are May 3, May 10, and May 17.
Please register through Flanders:

04/27/2026

Important reminders for Connecticut gardeners ... be alert!

Yale’s Peter Krause, a senior research scientist and expert in tick-borne diseases, explains what’s spreading, what’s rare but dangerous, and how to stay safe this summer.

04/20/2026

THANK YOU to all our Give Local donors!!!

04/16/2026

When food prices go up, people start doing something quietly revolutionary: they start gardening more. Which turns out to be one of the healthiest possible responses.

During WWII, about 20 million American households grew produce in their backyards and in community gardens. These “Victory Gardens” supplied an estimated 40% of the fresh vegetables for people at that time. Today’s gardening wave is less coordinated, but the instinct is the same: when the world feels unsteady, plant things. We’re here for it! Because gardening may be one of the most underrated longevity practices we have.

A cross-sectional study published in Scientific Reports found that people who garden every day are 43% less likely to report anxiety or health problems than those who rarely get their hands in the dirt. And, researchers in Wales, measuring the oxygen uptake of gardeners, found that common tasks like digging, raking, and weeding were on par with brisk walking and even tennis.

So, yes, grow some tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce and get your workout in at the same time.

Digging in the dirt may be one of the most powerful prescriptions for a longer life. Here's how to make your garden work for your health.

03/11/2026

Take a walk on the Botany Trail at Flanders this spring to see these beautiful wildflowers in bloom … and think of the incredible process behind each one you see in bloom!

That white Trillium on the trail took nine years to produce its first flower.

Nine springs of pushing up a single leaf, photosynthesizing for a few weeks, then retreating underground to store just enough energy to try again next year. No flower. No visibility. Just one leaf, building reserves, season after season.

After roughly nine years the plant finally has enough stored energy to send up its first three-petaled bloom. Each flower produces only one seed pod per season — a single chance per year to reproduce.

The seeds have a coating called an elaiosome that attracts ants. The ants carry the seeds underground into their colonies, eat the coating, and leave the seed in the perfect buried environment to germinate. Every Trillium cluster you walk past in the woods was built one ant delivery at a time, possibly over decades.

Each plant can live twenty-five years. But it gets all its annual energy during the few spring weeks when its leaves are out before the canopy closes overhead. Once the trees leaf out, the Trillium goes dormant until next March. That narrow window of light is the entire growing season.

A picked flower means a lost year of reproduction for a plant that waited nine years to start.

🌿 How to enjoy them without taking them:

- Photograph from the trail — Trillium colonies photograph beautifully and the white blooms against the dark forest floor are some of the most striking images of early spring
- If you find a colony, return to the same spot each March — they come back in the same place year after year and the colony grows slowly over time
- Teach kids to recognize them as the slow builders of the forest floor — the story of nine years to one flower is more memorable than any bouquet
- Leave the seed pods intact through summer — each one is the plant's single annual chance to spread

The flower that looks like it just appeared has been working toward this moment for nearly a decade 🌿

02/13/2026

**** TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR! ****

Get your spades out, sharpen those shears, and join us for an afternoon of garden trivia! Get some friends together and buy a table. It's BYO for snacks or beverages... Tickets are $15 a person... don't miss this fun and fact-filled afternoon!

If you'd like to reserve your spot in advance or for more information, email us at [email protected].

To order your tickets online at $15 per person, use the QR code in the first comment below!

12/31/2025

Catch our exhibit at the Woodbury Public Library through the month of January ... a good reminder of how much this busy club does in our community! Look for Pollinator Pathway information on the bottom shelf, information about the "Historic Woodbury in Bloom" floral exhibit (one of the Centennial kickoff events in June) on the middle shelf, and on the top shelf, details and a map of the 13 gardens we maintain plus much more about us!