MOLLY LEVAN

Although a long-time resident of the East Rock area, Molly had a long and demanding career with the Connecticut State Appellate Court that tied her to the Hartford area and left her little time for other pursuits. After stepping back from her career she was interested in increasing her involvement and circle of friends in Greater New Haven. The Garden Club of New Haven has provided her with that opportunity. She has met interesting people and has enjoyed the intellectual content of the Club’s programming.

Molly is passionate about trees and very concerned about the impact of
recent storm damage on the tendency of towns trees without replacing. She finds clearcutting of trees along State highways particularly objectionable. Since moving to North Haven Molly got right to work in her North Haven property, planting a red maple and two dogwoods, replacing a sloping bank of grass with pachysandra and edging the pachysandra with herbaceous peonies, her favorite flower.

Molly has found her “home” at GCNH on the Conservation Committee where other members share her concerns and she looks forward to an active role.

Proposer: Lisa Totman

Interviewed by Lupi Robinson

DEE LUNDBERG

Dee’s primary motivation in joining the Garden Club of New Haven was
educational. Her Guilford house features a formal four-square garden laid out in the 1950’s, but neglected and overgrown by the time it became hers. She feels as if she has been playing catch up ever since and looks to her GCNH membership to help her develop the knowledge and tools that will support her efforts. Dee’s favorite garden plant, with which she has experienced some success despite its reputation as a “difficult child” is the delphinium.

Prior to joining GCNH Dee held a volunteer position in Guilford on the Town Human Resources Council where she provided advice to the Town on dispersing funds to non-profit organizations.

As a teacher of Freshman Composition to Quinnipiac students, Dee honed her skills as a writer-editor. She serves as a member the GCNH Centennial Committee and is considering putting her skills to use on the GCNH Newsletter as well.

Proposer: Susan Ehrenkranz
Interviewed by Lupi Robinson

Melissa Castleman

Melissa is a writer whose first published article on a species of invasive beetles appeared, perhaps prophetically, in Garden Design magazine. That was also her last project related to gardening. For the most part as a freelance writer her focus has been on food and travel. More recently she has put her degree in creative writing to work on two novels—one of which takes place in the future with climate change very much front and center.

Melissa looks to her membership in GCNH as a source of camaraderie to counteract the isolation of writing as well as a source of knowledge. She candidly admits she is at the beginning of her garden journey, but her property in Hamden, once the site of  the former Augur silk worm farm, includes a  Victorian garden and one of only two dawn redwoods in the area will give her plenty of scope to explore her future as a gardener, beginning with the introduction of more native plants and ripping out overgrown shrubs.

She expects the GCNH Conservation Committee to be her initial home in the Club and says she has already been impressed by the lessons she has learned and the willingness of members to share what they know.

Proposed by Julie Wilson

Janice Dreier

A real estate agent, Janice grew up in Georgia where her mother was a gardener and where gardens were mulched with pine straw. Prior to relocating to Greater New Haven seven years ago she lived in the DC area where she was part of a group of parents who restored a “dilapidated” garden at an elementary school in the DC  area—a project she found extremely satisfying.

As a gardener at her home in Woodbridge—her third garden “zone” she has found many of her initial plans stymied by groundhogs– an issue she did not encounter in her native Georgia or in the DC area. While she considers a strategy to deal with this very challenging garden nemesis, she is enjoying the beautiful trees planted on her  4.5 Woodbridge acres, including a venerable sycamore and two lovely Stewartias of which she is especially proud.

Janice was encouraged to join the Club by Joanne Bailey and now that her children are older a she thought the time was right. She looks forward to being involved in GCNH Civic projects—especially those outdoors. She is also a member of Horticulture.

Proposed by Ann Pingoud

Melissa Gambaccini

An internet search for an ikebana class brought Melissa to the GCNH website. Intrigued, she connected with Peggy Eatherton, who encouraged her to consider becoming a member and referred her to Trish Helm who ultimately proposed her for membership.

A career oncology nurse  practitioner (most recently at the Smilow Covid Clinic) Melissa found herself with more time on her hands after her son and daughter left home. As a gardener, Melissa’s passions are house plants  (especially African violets) and tomatoes. At one point her  houseplant count reached 100 but at the urging of her family  she pared it back to 50. She has begun experimenting with propagation and is particularly proud of the lavender she started hydroponically.

Her outdoor gardening is focused on raised beds where she has been successful especially with her tomatoes as well as with lavender. Her goal now is to move in the direction of more native plants including milkweed.

Kel Ginsburg

Kel, aka Ellen Kelly Ginsberg, grew up in Southport, but has been a New Haven resident twice as an adult– the first time from 1985-1994—returning in 2000.  After 20 years of working at Yale she retired in August 2020 and finally has the time to spread her gardening wings.

While Kel’s house on Livingston Street may have a front row seat to New Haven’s East Rock Park, the party, as they say,  is definitely in the back.  When the family  moved in, the backyard was “not hospitable.” Over the years she has worked to gradually transform the space by adding a terrace and perennial borders, creating a sanctuary and allowing her to indulge her love for her all-time favorite perennial—the herbaceous peony. Her collection numbers over 100 specimens. When pressed, she admitted to a particular fondness for double-flowered cultivars in the cream to light pink range, perhaps “Moonstone.”

Kel has two tips for would-be peony growers. The first is to install supports—ideally tall hoops, as soon as shoots appear to minimize damage caused by heavy rains (which seem to occur right at peak bloom time). The second is to be proactive about powdery mildew by regularly watering the foliage with a dilute solution of neem oil.

Like many of us, Kel joined GCNH to meet others in the community with similar interests and to learn more about gardening. She has served on the GCNH Hospitality Committee this year but next year she will put her technical skills to good use as part of GCNH’s webmaster team along with Melissa Gambaccini.

Joy Ford

Joy Ford is a New Haven native and life-long resident. She grew up in the East Rock neighborhood near Edgerton Park and for over 50 years has lived in one of the original brownstones on Temple Street near Trumbull. As an abutter, Joy has a special fondness for Phelps Triangle that predates her GCNH membership and has involved occasional solo clean-up sessions, sometimes on Earth Day. She looks forward to building on this connection as a Garden Club member. Joy was sponsored by Pam Field and says that although friends had been suggesting that she join for years, the time was finally right, since she recently completed her service as Board Chair at the Creative Arts Workshop.

For over 30 years Joy worked for the City of New Haven City Plan Department– often on Coastal and Inland Wetlands issues, which gave her a taste for conservation and concern about Climate Change. She is enjoying being part of the Club’s Conservation Committee and learning more through its activities and book selections. In fact, she cites the desire to learn more as her major motivation for joining the Club.

Joy’s love of gardening came from her mother and she has continued the tradition through cultivating the raised beds behind her home that are filled with perennials as are the gardens at her family’s home in Peru, Vermont.

Samantha Whitney

As a longtime urbanite, Samantha Whitney had a “longing for the green” and was not at all unhappy when her husband’s career offered the family a chance to decamp from their condominium on Chicago’s South Side to New Haven four years ago. Their house on Cold Spring Street is the first free-standing  house they have ever owned and offered the promise of a garden—another first.

The home’s previous residents, perhaps fans of xeriscaping, had covered what could have been flower beds in front of the home’s porch with the sort of white gravel popular in the southwest. After digging out the beds and removing the gravel with the help of their two sons, Samantha started by purchasing plants she liked and installing them in the newly-created flower beds.

Since then, it has been a series of happy experiments—learning which plants are happiest in their part-sun environment.  She has adopted the mantra of a more experienced gardener friend who encouraged her by saying, “Gardening is a bit like painting. You paint over the bits you don’t like.” Among her early failures were sweet peas, known by many gardeners to be a bit fickle. Her beds now contain a mix of perennials and annuals, among which zinnias have been standouts.  Samantha invested in grow lights and is now starting plants, including zinnias, from seed. Her husband has even caught the gardening bug and has a vegetable garden at a neighbor’s house.

Samantha views GCNH as a place to meet people with similar interests and as a source of knowledge about plants and gardening. During her provisional year she has served on the Hospitality Committee. A librarian by training, she has put her organizational skills to work  in program planning for large organizations but currently works as an independent recruiter for biotech research. She is excited about attending the Hartford Flower Show and very interested in being part of the GCNH Program Committee.

 ANNE CURTIS

Anne was proposed by Joanne Bailey, her Lincoln St. neighbor. She joined GCNH following retirement from herl ong career at Yale Medical School as a chest radiologist. In that role, Anne particularly enjoyed teaching small groups of residents and is still involved in interviewing candid ates for residency. She and her late husband were avid cyclists and enthusiastic participants in group cycling trips to far-flung locations in South America, Europe, and Asia. She has been very involved in various New Haven non-profitorganizations including the Neighborhood Music School, where she is a long-time board member. A Connecticut native (Southport), Anne has lived in coastal towns from Stonington to Guilford (Madison the longest). She moved to New Haven 5 years ago and has been enjoying the garden at her property installed for her by Nature Works’ Nancy De Brule. A self-confessed gardening newbie, she is looking forward to her membership in GCNH to build her gardening knowledge. She expects to become a member of the Floral Design Committee.