Category Archives: Irvington NY

Check Into a Pollinator Hotel

Perhaps the most fascinating exhibit on the grounds of the O’Hara Nature Center in Irvington is the “Pollinator Hotel,” a structure that supports cavity-nesting bees and wasps. Made of logs with holes drilled in them and of dried stems of perennial plants, it might be the ‘greenest’ recycled housing project ever: stems are saved from Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium fistulosum), Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), and Cup-plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and repurposed into nesting material.

It’s also a work of art.

Please watch this short explanation by the ONC’s resident horticulturist, educator, and designer of educational materials, CJ Reilly, in which he explains that bees and wasps that are solitary, that don’t live in colonies, are attracted to holes in natural materials, in which they lay their eggs and then fill with grasses and other nutrients. Up to a year later the eggs will hatch, creating a new brood of insects ready to pollinate native plants.

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Need to know more? Here is a link to some educational material. And you’ll just have to visit on your own.

 

Filed under Horticulture, Irvington Garden Club Events, Irvington NY, Nature Photography, NY and CT Public Garden Tours

Fab Flower Show “On The Sunny Side of the Hudson”

washingtonirvingsbooksThrough flowers and plants — our 2017 GCA flower (and plant) show celebrated the life and work of Irvington’s own Washington Irving. All club members worked very hard on this for more than a year to make this show happen.

The floral designs, judged by an esteemed panel of experts, were:

• “360 Degrees and Sunny” — glorious mass flower arrangements featuring yellow flowers in season.
• “The Book Party” — fanciful table settings for a book-signing by none other than Washington Irving at his Sunnyside Cottage,
• “Short Stories” — tiny miniature arrangements displayed on a mantelpiece
•  “Sleepy Hollow Awakenings” — designs with some flowers in bud and others in full bloom.

The horticulture classes included displays of  “Rip Van Winkle” alpine garden troughs and “Home Grown” window boxes — and dozens and dozens of beautiful cut stems and branches of the best in local perennials and flowering shrubs and trees in season.

Visitors also delighted in a display of photographs of historic houses and gardens at rest, among other subjects. All work was done by members of our own and other Garden Club of America clubs who register via the GCA website.

A special and timely conservation exhibit demonstrated the importance of native plants in our landscapes.

The show, chaired by Barbara Defino, was free and open to the public at 2:00 pm on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, and from 10 am to 1 pm on Thursday, May 11, at the Lyndhurst Carriage House. Photos to come soon…

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), a native plant that is an important food sorce for Monarch butterflies. The conservation and education exhibit will feature native plants to consider for our gardens, such as the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which is an important food source for Monarch butterflies.

The conservation and education exhibit will feature native plants to consider for our gardens, such as the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which is an important food source for Monarch butterflies.

Filed under Conservation, Garden Club Flower Show Categories, Horticulture, Irvington Garden Club Events, Irvington NY, Rivertowns Westchester NY, Tarrytown NY

Serving the Community

Thanks to a successful Plant Sale and other fundraising events, the Garden Club of Irvington is once again helping support organizations that improve and protect the environment, including the Center for Plant Conservation, Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct, the Garden Conservancy, Greenburgh Nature Center, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Irvington Land Trust, Native Plant Center, O’Hara Nature Center, Scenic Hudson, Untermyer Gardens Conservancy and Wave Hill.

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The O’Hara Nature Center on Irvington’s Mountain Road is one of the projects supported by GCI. This center features nine demonstration gardens that have curriculum-related content for educational programs—and are examples for beautifying your landscape. They include the Bird, Butterfly and Bee Garden, the Bog Garden, the Xeriscape and Rock garden, the Edible Forest Ggarden, the Shade Garden, and the Woodland Garden.

We look forward to an equally successful 2016, and wish you and yours a happy, healthy New Year.

 

Filed under Irvington Garden Club Events, Irvington NY, Rivertowns Westchester NY

Bravissimo to Our Artists!

The exhibition, “Home Grown,” art by the members of the Garden Club of Irvington, was on display at the Irvington Public Library through November 28. The show featured collages, watercolors, photography, prints, and needlework by Bunny Bauer, Barbara Defino, Nora Galland, Harriet Kelly, Edna Kornberg, Cathy Ludden, Louise Petosa, Dori Ruff, Renee Shamosh, Ellen Shapiro, Amy Sherwood and Dongkai Zhen.

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Helpful husband Al Galland helped Nora hang twelve of her beautiful botanical illustrations.

Renee

Adam Shamosh helped his mom, Renee, with her paintings.

Donghai

Donghkai Zhen had four exquisite needlepoint pieces in the show.

Photo

Edna Kornberg and Harriet Kelly of the photo committee decided how best to arrange their work.

Bunny

Bunny Bauer shows a collage with three of the many pressed-flower bookmarks made by GCI members for a 2002 Garden Club of America Zone Meeting. In the background are photographic and typographic prints by Ellen Shapiro.

If you are interested in any of the works shown here, please contact us through this site.

Filed under Irvington Garden Club Events, Irvington NY, Rivertowns Westchester NY

GCI “Gilded Cage” Flower Show a Success

"Anna's Hats in Bloom," a design complementing a hat in Lyndhurst's costume collection.

The Garden Club of Irvington-on-Hudson’s GCA Flower Show last spring honored Lyndhurst and the Victorian era. The show was held at The Carriage House at Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, and was open to the public on Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17, 2010.

The theme “THE GILDED CAGE,” a play on “The Gilded Age,” was inspired by the Gothic arches of Lyndhurst and its greenhouse, built by railroad tycoon Jay Gould, who made the Tarrytown landmark his family’s country estate in 1880.

“A GCA Flower Show is a competition judged by the rigorous standards of the Garden Club of America and exemplifies artistic and horticultural excellence,” said show chairman Nancy Stoer. “Our members worked for a year to present an outstanding show that included elaborate flower arrangements and horticultural specimens judged against ‘perfection’ as defined by GCA judging standards. Entries were prepared by members of our own club, who live in the River Towns, and GCA garden clubs throughout the tri-state area.”

Visitors enjoyed the "Victorian Wedding" arrangements staged on pedestals. The arrangements were designed as if for the 1913 wedding at Lyndhurst of Helen Gould, daughter of railroad tycoon Jay Gould, to Finley Shepard.

Floral arrangement exhibits included designs using flowers that were grown in the original Lyndhurst greenhouse (now restored and used by the Garden Club to cultivate plants for its annual plant sale in May); large arrangements suitable for a Victorian wedding; table settings for a card party on a Lyndhurst’s terrace overlooking the Hudson; and designs complementing hats in Lyndhurst’s extensive costume collection. Village of Irvington schoolchildren ages 8-12 made an exhibit of “tussie-mussies,” small hand-held bouquets expressing “the language of flowers.”

Cut specimens: Flowering trees and shrubs in bloom

Pot-et-Fleurs featuring Neomarica caerulea (Fan Iris), Phyllitis scolopendrium ‘Undulatum’ (Hart’s Tongue Fern), Lysimachia nummularia ‘Goldii’ (Creeping Jenny), Oxalis triangularis (Purple Shamrock), and three kinds of zonal and scented Pelargoniums.

Horticultural exhibits included “Lord & Burnham Presents: Nineteenth Century Favorites,” which featured orchids, ferns and palms and cut specimens of locally-grown nineteenth-century favorites such as rhododendrons, magnolia, prunus, and blooming stems of narcissus and tulip bulbs. The challenge class was to grow from seed a Victorian favorite Pelargonium, ‘Black Velvet Rose.’ “Pot et Fleurs: In the Victorian Style,” featured large containers planted with with a minimum of three different species or cultivars reflecting the Victorians’ love of carefully planned excess. Special classes included topiaries and “glass houses” or terrariums.

Vistors viewed an exhibit of landscape and horticultural photography and a conservation/education exhibit that focused on the London Plane Tree or Sycamore, and showed how this magnificent tree has contributed to the ecology of the lower Hudson Valley.

Filed under Conservation, Flower Arranging, Garden Club Flower Show Categories, GCA Events, Irvington Garden Club Events, Irvington NY, Nature Photography, Rivertowns Westchester NY, Tarrytown NY, Zone III Events