Around Town

Wildflower Power: New Canaan Garden Club Plans a ‘Mose Meadow’ for Irwin Park

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New Canaanites will recall how the town received a wonderful gift of pink, yellow, purple and blue this past summer. By the end of July, cars were pulling over on Parade Hill Road to photograph the wildflower meadow (see slideshow above) planted in a disused patch of land off of Route 123. A creation of DPW Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary (a Center School alumnus) and his crew, the suddenly and dramatically transformed roadside parcel earned high praise from New Canaan’s experts in lovely plants. This week, some of those same experts—notably, Caroline Garrity, president of the New Canaan Garden Club and Katie Stewart, a member—received permission from parks officials to create what hopefully will be a similarly spectacular and deeply appreciated wildflower meadow at Irwin Park. “Mose has tried different things there [at Route 123 and Parade Hill Road], and this summer he had great success,” Stewart told the Park & Recreation Commission Wednesday at the group’s regular meeting, held in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center.

News

New Trees Grace Entrance to Irwin, Thanks to Garden Club and Town DPW

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[Editor’s Note: The following information was submitted by Katie Stewart of the New Canaan Garden Club, a nonprofit organization that’s been doing this type of great work in town for more than a century. Find out more about membership here.]

The three photos below were taken on Tuesday, September 30, 2014 by Judy Neville when the New Canaan Garden Club Irwin Park Committee installed five new trees at the Park entrance with the help of the town backhoe and Parks Superintendent John Howe, Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary and Tiger Mann. In 2005 the garden club members accepted the stewardship of New Canaan’s newest park on Weed Street from the Irwin Family when the club members were given an endowment fund to continue the beautification of the property/park and improve the quality of life in our already special town. The garden club gladly collaborates with the Park and Recreation Commission, the Office of Selectman and the Public Works crew on the maintenance and beautification. Annually improvements and new projects have been undertaken using the funds.

Around Town

Parks Officials Back New Canaan Garden Club’s Beautification Plan at Irwin

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Seeing a need to beautify Irwin Park, the New Canaan Park and Recreation Commission unanimously supported a plan presented by the Irwin Park Committee of the New Canaan Garden Club to update and improve the 36-acre park’s visual aesthetics at the main entrance on Weed Street. The plan, presented by committee chair Katie Stewart, calls for the removal of several unsightly, overgrown and dying trees on either side of the driveway, just past the entrance. This includes three pines on the left side of the driveway and a juniper, two oaks, a maple and several hemlocks on the right. In their place will be a 12-foot Copper beech as well as Stewartias and Kousa dogwoods that Stewart told the commission will complement the visual presentation of the park. “It will form a nice, gracious canopy in that area,” Stewart said.

The Little Things

The Little Things: 5,000 Daffodils from the New Canaan Garden Club

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[Editor’s Note: In this feature, “The Little Things,” we record acts of consideration and kindness that make New Canaan special. It is meant to complement “REALLY?”—a feature where we record the opposite.]

Motorists traveling along Weed Street will have an entirely new and spectacular view come spring, thanks to some planning and work from the New Canaan Garden Club. The club saw to it that 5,000 daffodil bulbs were planted at the crest of a hill in front of the main house at Irwin Park, said Katie Stewart, a member of the group. The plantings include four different varieties of daffodils, she said. “It’s going to be a dramatic,” Stewart told NewCanaanite.com.