Hamptons.com recently spoke with Lynda Confessore, Communications Chair of the Westhampton Garden Club and a member for 11 years, about their public gardens and service to the community.
What activities do you have for your members? Do you host seminars and workshops, and/or attend them in other places?
Our regular monthly meetings have three parts – a business meeting, then expert speakers on various topics with Q and A. Members also submit designs/exhibits in horticulture, floral design and photography which are judged before the meeting by accredited judges and are on display for members to view and learn from. We also have workshops for members led by experienced members or outside experts, and a training program for provisionals (folks in their first year of membership).
We also offer programs open to the public such as the recent one on the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, whose belief that parks should be free and open to all for physical and mental health benefits is now standard; he helped found the national park system, and designed many famous parks. Our historian developed both a wonderful exhibit and a lecture for both the Quogue and Westhampton libraries. Members also help with other organizations/parks, for weed whacking, cleanups and plantings. For example, we advised the East Quogue Beautification Committee with a local project.
Members go on field trips, sometimes in conjunction with other clubs. This fall’s trip with the East Hampton Garden Club is to the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, which contains the preserved Coe family Gold Coast estate from the 1920s, which survives today as a statement about art, architecture and landscape. Originally landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers firm the grounds feature 409 acres of greenhouses, rolling lawns, formal gardens, woodland paths and outstanding plant collections.
The WGC is a member of the Garden Club of America (Zone III) and the National Garden Clubs, Inc. (National Garden Clubs of New York State Second District. Members benefit from attending various conferences and seminars ranging from the lobbying process to the famed Shirley Meuneice Horticulture Conference as well as holding both state and national offices.
Do you have any other community projects besides the five public gardens you created and maintain?
We do horticulture at the Kanas East End Hospice Center quarterly seasonally. We care for plantings at the entrance and exit and also for each patient’s balcony. There are 8 rooms for patients who cannot be cared for at home, each with a balcony and peaceful view. Judy McDermott, who heads this effort and is tireless, was honored by East End Hospice.
In December members meet at the Quogue Firehouse and decorate topiaries which are distributed to at-home patients throughout the East End. (During Covid members met in the parking lot of the firehouse, member “elves” distributed supplies and all raised their car trunks and decorated the topiaries outdoors.)
Dragonfly Landscaping is paid for maintenance that members cannot do themselves. The firm donated its services to plant the Garden of Remembrance at the Quogue Firehouse.
What can you tell me about the scholarship you offer to a local high school senior? Where have some of the winners gone to school? What related fields have they gone on to pursue?
Most of the winners are graduates of Westhampton Beach High School and Hampton Bays High School, which have outstanding science/mentoring programs. Many go into fields that did not exist five or ten years ago. Studies have to relate to any aspect of horticulture. We have been so impressed that we keep increasing the amount! This year in addition to $2000 we decidedto have a runner-up for $1000. to be announced shortly. One will study environmental science and the other molecular biology. Past winners include:
Skye McMorris, a Hampton Bays High School graduate, was admitted to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she is in a BioTap Genetic Program that only accepts 45 students. Her passion for science developed as a member of the HBHS Science Research Program, in which she studied the settlement and metamorphosis of an invasive species of marine invertebrate under the supervision of a University of New Hampshire professor.
Campbell Kast, a graduate of Westhampton Beach High School, is pursuing a degree in Geography-Environmental Studies at Millersville University. Her passion for protecting the ocean was energized by a Science Research course project, studying the presence of microplastics in sediment collected from local bays including Moniebogue Bay and Quantuck Bay. She independently modified, perfected and built a Microplastic Isolation Unit to isolate microplastics from sediment samples; then learned to analyze the chemical composition of samples using infrared microscopy at Brookhaven National Lab. Her research won Honors in her category in the Long Island Science Congress.
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