AGENDA
7:00 – 7:15 General Business
7:15 Guest Speaker
8:00 Member Social Time

Upcoming Calendar Notes:

Meeting Dates for upcoming Business Meetings will be Tuesday, June 5

Sunday Brunches – May and July

Perennial Swap, Noon, Sunday May 20
location to be announced, but probably in a Brighton Center parking lot

Brighton Garden Tour, Saturday, July 14

The Garden Society also sponsors the annual Oak Square garden tour which is A LOT of fun. This year's tour will be on Saturday, July 14th and any suggestions for cool neighborhood gardens to add to the tour are strongly encouraged. Please call Doris at 782-4781 with ideas.

The first meeting was held on October 30, 2000 7:30PM at the home of Barbara Moss. In attendance were 21 residents of the Brighton Community whose names shall be hereafter listed as the founding members. They are listed on the attached sheet.

Barbara, as the organizer moderated and led the meeting. She started by telling the group a little about her background and why she decided to get involved in this kind of effort. She then asked each person to give a brief description of his/her gardening experience and an explanation of why he/she would want to form a Garden club. As expected many people love gardening because of the physical and mental rewards it brings in the form of relaxation and a sense of accomplishment etc. Most people tend small city gardens, many are novices but they all share a desire to be a member of a garden club so that plants and gardening tips can be shared with a group of like minded people and so that the general appearance of their neighborhood and community can be improved through the use of flowers and plants.

Conversation then turned to what we as a group could expect from an association of gardeners and what we would like to accomplish. Some of these ideas were:

• The ability to socialize with other gardeners
• To attend regular meetings and lectures on the topic of gardening
• To attend the annual Flower show in Boston
• To be able to buy plants and products as a group and obtain a group discount
• To inspire children to learn about flowers and plants, through a program dubbed "KinderBloomers" thereby grooming them to become future gardeners. On the other end of the spectrum, recognizing that outdoor gardening can be too strenuous for the elderly, an "ElderBloomers" program could help senior citizens continue to foster their love of flowers and plants through the use of container gardening.
• To encourage civic beauty and improve the appearance of our neighborhoods and public spaces with plantings of flowers and plants.
• To create a database/clearinghouse of flower and plant information that would be accessible to each garden club member.
• To create a cookbook to raise money for the Society's efforts

Turning to the mechanics of how all of this would be accomplished, Barbara asked for volunteers to serve a one-year term on the Board. The volunteers are:

President, Barbara Moss; 57 Oak Square Avenue 782-0354

Vice President, Wilma Wetterstrom; 9 Glenley Terrace

Vice President, Charles Vasiliades; 47 Langley Road

Secretary/Treasurer, Doris Walsh; 60 Langley Road 782-4781

The annual membership dues were set at $15.00. Doris will open an escrow account and members were asked to send their checks to Doris at her home address:

Doris Walsh, 60 Langley Road, Brighton, MA 02135

Charlie Vasiliades will take care of publicity by being the point person to the local editorial staff at the Brighton TAB.

Wilma Wetterstrom will research which books would be appropriate as reference materials for the group.

Because Andrea Doremus'  husband Dan Cuetara is the creator of the OakSquare.com website, Andrea shared the great news with the group that Oaksquare.com web site could be used as a communication vehicle for the club to post information, activities and club photographs.

Periodic mailings and newsletters will also keep the membership informed of club activities.

Other discussion included the question of how many meetings should be held annually; when the next meeting should be scheduled (Tuesday, December 5^th at 7:30) and the agenda of the next meeting. Which would be to welcome new members who were not able to attend the 10/30 meeting; to socialize with each other; possibly hear a lecture by an arborist; to set future meetings dates and agenda and to discuss the formation of committee groups (ie the garden tour, newsletter, etc).

Other future meeting dates mentioned were February, March April & May with a garden tour occurring in July.

David Bertino will work with Charlie Vasiliades and other members to find a site for the next meeting in December.

The meeting concluded at 9:30 with Barbara's thanks to the group. Charlie expressed his gratitude on behalf of the membership to Barbara for her efforts and the evening concluded with light refreshments.