By Renee Worthing
Register Reporter


The Seacoast Garden Club’s mission statement is simple: “Encourage enjoyment of growing plants, support conservation, beautify landscape and sponsor education programs.”
The club meets its mission by designing, planting and maintaining six gardens during the three growing seasons in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport.
The Seacoast Garden Club boasts 65 members and often has several people on a waiting list, Smith said.
The gardens include the Consolidated School youth garden and the Faerie Garden at the Kennebunk Library, which club president Pat Smith described as a “scratch and sniff garden.”
“The children can touch and smell the flowers and herbs,” Smith said.
Smith, a master gardener who earned her certificate in 2002 at the University of Maine Extension in Springvale, is serving the first year of a two-year tenure as club president.
She said she was active in a gardening club when she lived in Connecticut and when she moved to Maine in 2000, she was excited to continue her hobby with Seacoast Garden Club.
The club also maintains the garden in the traffic island at Route 1 and Route 3, the roundabout garden on Fletcher Street and the garden located at the Kennebunkport Post Office.
One of the gardens maintained the longest by the Seacoast Garden Club is Monument Garden in Kennebunkport’s Dock Square. Smith said Doris Keller was one of the original caretakers of Monument Garden when the club first began 25 yers ago. Keller is still active in the club.
While the garden has sported tulips since early spring, members were expected to turn out today to replace the single stem flowers with summer flora under the guidance of Monument Garden Project Chairman Pat Korth.
“Each year, the chair gets to do their own plans for Monument Garden,” Smith said ahead of the planting. “I can’t wait to see it.”
The tulips that were planted last November were to be pulled up yesterday and replaced with pansies, Korth said.
Smith said all members are required to work on two gardens for their community project and although Korth has been a member for two years, this is her first year as chairman of the Monument Garden project.
She said some of the tulips will be given to local merchants and others will be sold for a nominal fee.
“Since the world is so negative now, we want bright colors in Monument Garden,” Korth said. “There will be blue, yellow, green and white.”
The pansies will be pulled up in September and replaced with chrysanthemums and cabbage, Korth said. In November, tulips bulbs will be planted again for spring.
Korth said she joined the club because she always liked to garden and being part of the club allows an opportunity not easily afforded at the condo she lives in.
Impressed with the colorful gardens in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, Sue MacCachran said she joined the club about three years ago when she moved to Kennebunk from Sudbury, Mass.
 “I’m not a joiner, that’s the funny thing,” she said with a laugh.
She said she also lived in New Jersey where “anything grew,” but when she moved to New England, she realized she had to learn what plants could survive the harsh climate.
The club sponsors monthly meetings with speakers on related garden and environmental topics.
“Our speakers are quite diversified and many are master gardeners,” MacCachran said.
She said she also learned a “considerable amount” about organic gardening from the guest speakers.
“I really have a thrust toward organic gardening,” she said. “I am interested in preventing further poisoning of the soil that sustains us.”
MacCachran said she learned about container planting through the club.
“Living in a condo, I don’t have garden space,” she said.
MacCachran, like many women in the club, has a favorite flower to grow.
“Carnations are looked down upon, but to be perfectly honest, they are the most wondrous blooming flowers,” MacCachran said. “I stick with lowly carnations and I love them.”
She has also learned how many resources are available to gardeners – from books to the Internet.
 “You almost can’t go wrong,” she said.
Smith said while the club doesn’t focus on organic vegetable gardening, she said she hopes to secure a guest speaker who specializes in the practice.
During Christmas, club members created more than 100 boxwood tree boxes, which were delivered through the Visiting Nurses Association.
Earlier this month, club members created May Day baskets, which were delivered to shut-ins, Smith said.
She said Kennebunk and Kennebunkport finance the gardens in their town budgets. The club supplements these funds through its annual plant and pie sale, which always occurs on Memorial Day weekend.
“We divide plants from our personal gardens and sell plant divisions,” Smith said.
“I like to think we’ve made life a lot more pleasant for people,” MacCachran said.
Southern Maine Garden Club