Around Town

New Canaan Garden Club Launches Tree and Shrub Sale

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An organization whose first-ever civic project was the planting of two maple trees in front of Town Hall in 1909 has launched its annual sale raise money for projects in New Canaan. The New Canaan Garden Club for this year’s Spring Tree and Shrub Sale—held through April 20 (see the venerable group’s website here for order information)—is featuring two trees and two shrubs that it says appeal to a wide range of gardening interests: Stewartia pseudocamelia and American Pink dogwood (trees) and oakleaf hydrangea “snow queen” and viburnum dentatum “blue muffin” (shrubs). Asked to describe the level of interest in gardening here, club President Caroline Garrity said strong, “as evidenced by not only the different gardening groups, but by the many townspeople who love strolling through Waveny Walled Garden (which our club restored, plants and maintains) and by the many residents who use and admire the plantings at Irwin Park.” Any day now, we may see the 5,000 daffodils that the club planted there pop up through the ground—they’ll be visible from Weed Street, we’re told, on the crest of the hill in front of the main house. Other civic projects from the club include the garden at the New Canaan Historical Society—a fuller list of activities can be found here.

Now & Then

9-6-6-Story: The Many Changes of New Canaan’s Exchanges

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New Canaanites today see residents on cellphones everywhere, driving up Ponus Ridge (hopefully not doing this) or walking along the sidewalks of Elm and Main. For people such as Cookie King, née Van Beck—who lived in New Canaan from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and whose family lived in New Canaan until 1995—that’s about as impersonal as the way individual cell numbers are assigned: Between IP technology and mobile provider pool applications, there’s no rhyme or reason to a New Canaan “extension.” “We still have a landline and won’t give it up,” King told NewCanaanite.com “Have phone on the wall with a dial on it too.”

Many New Canaanites remember the days even before “966” was the town’s main designated exchange, and a look at our local telephone history tells the story of those three digits, long associated with the Next Station to Heaven. The first telephones in New Canaan were installed in 1881, as four businesses in the then-small town—Henry B. Rogers & Co., Hoyt’s Nurseries, Monroe’s drug store and Johnson’s carriage works—were part of the Norwalk exchange. After the turn of the century, New Canaan’s population began growing rapidly—as did the number of phones in town.