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Students from Antrim Elementary School with their completed planter. -
AES students pat flowers into the potting soil. -
Students from Great Brook Middle School fill planters with soil as Principal Adam Caragher, back right, looks on. Bottles in the foreground were used as filler in the planters. -
Students from Antrim Elementary School hold up petunias before filling planters with volunteers from the Antrim Garden Club. -
AES students look on as Beverly Montgomery demonstrates planting flowers. -
Student volunteers from AES with their planter. -
Volunteer Helene Newbold transports the newly planted pots from GBS to Main Street in Antrim. -
First-grade teacher Erica Sullivan with her class. -
Antrim Garden Club volunteer Kathy Wasserlos (center) helps a youngster plant petunias. -
Students from AES watch intently as a classmate plants a petunia. -
Middle school volunteers with a completed planter. Antrim Garden Club volunteer Kathy Wasserlos is at rear right. -
Great Brook School Adam Caragher lends a hand at the planting.
Due to efforts of the new Antrim Garden Club, downtown Antrim has 36 planters spouting pink wave petunias.
“Our main goal is to help beautify the town,” said co-Chair Amy DeLisle. “We’re working with the DPW and looking at town properties and thinking about what else we can do, and we’re going to start doing some fundraising to buy plants. We’re really excited about it.”
Future projects include plans for garden beds on the lawn of the Antrim Baptist Church, at the intersection of routes 202 and 31 and at Goodell Park, and possible expansion of the flower beds at Memorial Park.
All plants and planters for the Main Street project were locally sourced through Tenney Farm and Edmunds Ace Hardware.
Volunteer Helene Newbold helped organize student volunteers from Antrim Elementary School and Great Brook School to plant the containers just before Memorial Day.
“One of our garden club members, Rose Novotny, is on the PTO, and she said, ‘It would be great if we could get children from AES involved,’” Newbold said. “So I contacted the middle school and the elementary school, and they were happy to get involved.
The project included volunteers of all ages.
“We had students in preschool through eighth grade volunteer to help make the planters. They were in the middle of standardized testing, and they did it on their lunch hour. The differences in the different age groups was very funny; the little kids stopped dirt one cup at a time, while an eighth-grade boy just picked up the whole bag and dumped it out,” Newbold said.
Newbold said she wanted the students “to be able to see the planters on Main Street as they went by on the bus.”
“That made it very real for them; they could see what they accomplished, and they can watch them as they grow,” she said.
Before students planted their containers, the garden club sent the teacher of each class a poster illustrating how the pots would be filled.
The planters use plastic bottles as fill in the bottom of the containers to save on soil and water, two layers of cardboard to help retain water and a layer of potting soil, in which the students gently placed wave petunias.
Graphic designer and Antrim Community Board volunteer James Panico designed the poster.
“I didn’t know it was better to not fill the whole container with dirt, but our volunteers are very knowledgeable and knew the right way to do it,” Newbold said. “The roots of the plants only reach down so far, so you don’t need to fill the whole thing with dirt. They are huge pots.”
Garden club volunteers explained to the students how using the plastic bottles as fill keeps the bottles out of landfills and saves water and soil.
“One middle school student asked why we’re using plastic planters, since it’s not sustainable, and I was able to tell him our pots were made of recycled marine plastic,” Newbold said.
Jennifer Murdaugh, who is co-chair of the new garden club along with DeLisle, said the club has gotten a positive response from the community so far.
“A lot of people have made comments about how nice they look,” she said.
The club will be making its official public debut at the Antrim in the Evening concert on Wednesday, July 16, at 6 p.m. at Memorial Park with a plant and bake sale.
“We’ll be doing our first plant sale, with cuttings and plants. That should be a nice way for us to kind of introduce what we’re doing,” DeLisle said .
Murdaugh joked that “no one really knows who we are yet.”
“I think I startled people at the police station the other night. I was out there watering the planters and set off the motion lights and someone came out and said, ‘Do you need any help?’” Murdaugh said. “The planters are the very first thing we have done.”
DeLisle and Jennifer Murdaugh are taking the lead on organizing the club, which meets monthly at James A. Tuttle Library. So far, 16 Antrim residents have signed up.
“We all love to garden,” said member Mary Devine. “We’re not all experts, but we all love plants and gardening.”
At a recent meeting, members discussed how to get rid of “thrip,” tiny insects thatch that can infect houseplants and planters, after Devine said she may have spotted the condition in one of the new planters.
Member Linda Breyer suggested neem oil to treat the thrip.
“We’ll keep an eye on all the planters,” she said
According to Antrim native Renee Mercier-Gerritsen, Antrim “always” had a garden club until about 1998, when it went dormant.
“I remember ladies in my neighborhood being in the club,” Mercier-Garritsen said.
The new garden club is an initiative of the Antrim Community Board. Newbold, who is chair of the ACB, said a garden club was one of the most-popular suggestions that came out of a community survey the ACB sent out in 2023.
“The community board’s mission is to connect people with similar interests, and to find volunteers who want to help work on projects that will help the town, and to get some things started,” Newbold said. “In the survey, we asked people what they were interested seeing happen in town, and a ton of people suggested bringing back the garden club.”
The Antrim Community Board has also facilitated the relaunch of the transfer station’s swap shop, helped revive the Antrim Players and organized last winter’s Antrim Business Fair.
“We’re thrilled that we were able to get people connected for the garden club, and we had a great response, and now they are just running with it,” Newbold said.
The garden club is looking for sponsors for each Main Street planter. Residents or businesses who would like to sponsor a planter should send a check for $35 made out to Town of Antrim, with “Main Street Planter” in the subject line, to P.O. Box 517, Antrim, NH, 03440.
For information, contact DeLisle at amydelisle@hotmail.com or Murdaugh at jmurdough75@gmail.com.