Tag Archives: West Trenton Garden Club

Meet the Misses McGregors

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You may recall our bustling Peter Rabbit Party back in February, in which rabbit fans celebrated everything garden! At the center of the festivities were Barbara Lear and Anne Skalka from the West Trenton Garden Club. Armed with know-how and sprouting avocado trees, Barbara and Anne taught local families how their food grows from seed to snack, and helped them plant pots of their very own!

I caught up with them after the event to find out a little more about their personal connections to gardening, as well as take a peek at their gorgeous grounds…

Please tell us a little bit about yourselves!

Anne: I’m a retired CPA who practiced in Mercer County for 45 years.  For over 35 years, I ran my own my small tax and accounting practice and with my staff, we serviced approximately 700 clients. I retired in 2020. Currently, I sit on three not-for-profit agency boards whose missions are the empowerment of children and families in Mercer County. I’m the immediate past president of the Central Jersey Orchid Society and the current president of the West Trenton Garden Club.

Barbara: I have been retired for almost 18 years. I have a daughter, son in law and three grandchildren.

When did you first become interested in gardening?

Anne: I’m an avid gardener. I started in gardening in my twenties, as an antidote to the frustration I faced as a woman in what was once an all-male profession. I felt peaceful and competent with my hands in the soil. That feeling I get from gardening has sustained me throughout the years.  I got interested in orchids about 25 years ago, and my husband and I built my greenhouse in 2018.

Barbara:  Plants, gardening and nature have always been a part of my life. My parents had me pulling weeds and planting since I was a child. Even as a teenager, I had a few African Violets in my bedroom. Life and children kept me busy for many years, but once I retired there was more time to spend outside and enjoy my plants and flowers. Last year, I decided to join the West Trenton Garden Club and it was a perfect fit for me. Everyone was so friendly and so willing to talk about and share their experiences and plants.

Describe your gardens to us.

Barbara: After having to cut down many of the huge trees around our property, we decided to put in more flower and garden beds. My daughter gives me different plants for my birthday and Mother’s Day. There is always room for another plant. I also enjoy growing vegetables and then eating them. It’s so rewarding!

How did you come up with the concept “From Seed to Snack” for our Peter Rabbit event?

Anne: I’ve done “Seed to Snack” presentations with different age groups and different seeds, mainly in small classes.  I love doing it and it reminds me of the joy I’ve had watching seedlings come up. If I get at least one child to love gardening, I’ll be happy.

What was your favorite thing about the event?

Barbara:  Anne had the initial idea for our Peter Rabbit presentation, but it certainly evolved from her original plan. And with the pots and supplies Cotsen provided, it all came together as a very worthwhile and fun collaboration. The most fun part for me was watching the kids get their hands dirty.

What are the plans for your spring/summer gardens this year?

Anne: My daughter and her kids live in Wales, United Kingdom. My husband, Paul, and I bought a cottage near her and happily, the cottage has a huge well-developed garden. It also has a small greenhouse, workshop and tool shed.  In June, I’ll be leaving my garden here in New Jersey to live in Wales and will work on a very large, overgrown site that includes a pond. When we return to New Jersey, I’ll be tending my indoor garden of orchids and other house plants.

Barbara: I look forward to having a bigger vegetable garden and continuing to improve on my shade and full-sun gardens.

Barbara and Anne will be delighted to know that 2 weeks after the event, a family came into Cotsen to excitedly report that their bean was sprouting in its pot!

Three cheers for new gardeners!

And three cheers for Barbara and Anne!

Peter Rabbit Party!

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Finally! You CAN go into Mr. McGregor’s garden!

Last weekend, community families were invited to spend a day with Peter Rabbit, literature’s most enduring radish-eater. This was our first foray into Saturday programming specifically aimed at children ages 2-6, and oh my goodness was it a rousing success. We were also delighted to be joined by our friends from the West Trenton Garden Club, who you will meet a little later in this post!

While there was plenty to learn about Beatrix Potter at the event, the main attraction was the dress up cottage and planting garden, designed with a charming Potter-esque vibe in mind. Heading over to the cottage, we had an outdoor tea garden…

And just a few steps away is the kitchen! This was a cute wooden set we scored inexpensively online, we removed the peg legs to make it extra stable for young enthusiastic chefs.

Next to the kitchen set were three baskets of dress up clothes. You can see just a few combinations below…we tried to replicate Potter’s aesthetic with aprons, bonnets, vests, straw hats, shawls, and a dashing tam o’ shanter!

Upstairs was a cozy cottage bed (a giant floor pillow covered with a quilt and bolster):

Meanwhile, over in the garden, we had two “plantable” vegetable beds, fabric carrots, garden carts, a well-stocked produce stand, and a trio of bunny bouncers!

The vegetable beds were long cardboard boxes. We bought dozens of toy foam bricks, then laid the bricks on top of short pieces of toilet paper tubes hot glued to the bottom of the box. The tubes elevated the bricks just enough to allow 7.5″ fabric carrots to be “planted” in the holes of the bricks. Below you can see one of the bricks removed to reveal its toilet paper tube support:

And here’s a close up of that adorable produce cart!

For quieter activities, we had a coloring table with sheets from “Paint Like Peter Rabbit,” a free Cotsen Children’s Library publication that features illustrations reproduced from Peter Rabbit’s Painting Book, an item we have in our special collections.

We also had a sweet little reading nook with a number of Beatrix Potter books to enjoy:

Adventurous budding ornithologists could scan the gallery for garden birds of England, eight of which we posted around the event floor:

I mentioned them in the introduction, but now it is my distinct pleasure to present Barbara Lear and Anne Skalka from the West Trenton Garden Club! These two wonderful ladies brought their enthusiasm, expertise, and boundless energy to the event, teaching kids about how plants go from seed to snack, including an display of sprouted avocado trees! They had plenty of dirt and pots on hand so kids could start little gardens of their own. They were an absolutely amazing team, and we appreciate them so much!

The Cotsen Children’s Library has a number of Beatrix Potter treasures in its special collections, and we wanted to use this opportunity to educate young visitors about these fantastic items. We’ll begin with an original stuffed Jemima Puddle-Duck (which I posted about here on the blog).

jemima

From the Cotsen Children’s Library collections, Princeton University Library

In honor of this terrific original textile, two library staff members – Wind Cowles, Associate Dean for Data, Research, and Teaching; and Sarah Reiff Conell, Research Data Management Specialist – crafted a needle felt rabbit family for visitors to enjoy!

In addition to the Jemima stuffed animal, Cotsen has a number of Beatrix Potter’s family photographs (you can browse them here). Several photos include Beatrix with her beloved pets, so we put together an exhibit wall of eight photos, including this one of Beatrix and Benjamin Bouncer:

From the Cotsen Children’s Library collections, Princeton University Library

We also have some of Beatrix Potter’s natural history drawings and picture letters she sent to children. Many of those letters became the famous books we know today, including the Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, which you can view in our special collections here. We put together an event table with a display of her drawings and picture letters, with plenty of paper and pens on hand for children to try drawing and writing their own.

If you’d like a closer look at the handsome jumping spider illustration that’s prominently displayed in the center of the tables, you’ll find it this post.

Almost all the photos you’ve seen were taken before the event, when everything was nice and tidy. But then the doors opened and it was a massive flood of happy gardeners for four hours straight. We had a HUGE turnout. Honestly, we were so hopping we barely managed to snap photos!

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I would say that our inaugural event for younger children was an unqualified success, and it was such a delight to see everyone turn out for such a classic children’s character. In their best rabbit duds no less!

Many thanks to Barbara Lear and Anne Skalka from the West Trenton Garden Club for volunteering their time and expertise! Thank you as well to Wind Cowles and Sarah Reiff Conell for your beautiful artistic needle felt creations. And finally, thank you to graduate student volunteer Shruti Sharma for helping out on such a big day!

The Holly and the Ivy (and we mean that quite literally)!

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It’s time to deck the halls, and this historical house pulled out all the stops, compliments of the talented individuals in the West Trenton Garden Club! In today’s post, we’re visiting the holiday display inside the library at Drumthwacket, the official residence of the Governor of New Jersey. This year, the theme was children’s literature, and the exhibit featured ten different tables with innovative and gorgeous takes on holiday classics! Katie’s been a docent at Drumthwacket for over a decade, and she is going to do her docent duty and drop in cool little facts as we meander through this delightful tour. Her parts will be in italics!

The library was added to Drumthwacket by the second private owner, Moses Taylor Pyne. Pyne graduated from Princeton in 1877 and never missed a meeting during his 37 year tenure on the University Board of Trustees.

Here’s another glimpse at the arrangement that started this post – a table for Jan Brett’s fantastic books, including The Mitten and The Hat. Did you notice the little pine cone owl in the mitten? Adorable.

Another cozy classic is Nutcracker, written by E.T.A. Hoffman, and illustrated by Maurice Sendak (and here’s a little Sendak special collections gem for you to enjoy as well).

Nearby was a Nutcracker-inspired tree festooned with sweet little ballet ornaments:

At the next display, the West Trenton Garden Club stole my heart with this innovative white carnation snowman, aptly paired with Raymond Brigg’s classic The Snowman. Look that snowman’s little baby carrot nose. Perfection!

The fireplace is one large block of Caen stone from France, which was brought to Drumthwacket and carved onsite by stonemasons. Can you see the Princeton University shield hidden in the middle of the fireplace?

Up next we have none other than Charlie Brown and his little tree that could…

And a Mexican holiday legend retold and illustrated by Tomie dePaola. If you’re a fan of dePaola’s work, don’t miss this original Strega Nona gingerbread cottage. Its massively talented architect, Jen Carson, would return to our blog eleven years later with her own bakery and children’s book!

Caldecott Medal winner The Polar Express made an appearance. My son would have absolutely loved this display for the trains – it’s simply not the holidays without trains!:

The Polar Express rests on Moses Taylor Pyne’s partner desk, which is original to the room. The desk has two complete working sets of drawers on each side, allowing two people to easily work across from each other.

Rudolph flew in for a visit to Drumthwacket as well. See the books on the shelf behind him? That’s just one small section of a massive floor to ceiling bookcase stuffed with children’s books exclusively authored by New Jersey writers, including Sayantani DasGupta, who we interview here!

This next table is one of our absolutely favorites. Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, which boasted a delightful sled bouquet in a decorated sack.

And to the person who created a Grinch out of evergreen branches and a painted vase? You made our hearts grow three sizes larger. You deserve a gold medal for creativity, and I hope you don’t mind if I replicate this idea for my front porch next year? Incredible!

The library’s diamond shape leaded glass windows are adorned with different images, including a sailboat, the fleur de lis, a bow and arrow, and the anchor and serpent. East Pyne Hall, which used to be Princeton University’s main library and is named after Pyne, has the very same style of leaded glass windows.

Finally we come to the grand finale, and this was just so touching and innovative. A table featuring Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The three ghosts are represented with delicate custom bouquets. I don’t know when or how, but we are going to do something with this idea in the future. It’s absolutely wonderful.

Many thanks to Drumthwacket for allowing us to photograph their display, and a hearty round of applause to the West Trenton Garden Club for their masterful creations. Thank you too, Docent Katie for your awesome historical facts. Happy holidays, one and all!