Friends of the Robbins Town Gardens

Friends Garden Party
2022-06-17 18:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Robbins Town Hall Gardens, 700 Mass Ave Arlington, Arlington, Massachusetts, 02476, United States
Come one, come all to the hidden garden at the center of Arlington.

We’ll go inside the Town Hall if it rains

Your $50 ticket gets you 2 drinks ( wine, Beer or non alcoholic) a delicious meal from either Jose’s Torta Mexicana or Blue Ribbon Barbeque, live music from the band ‘What She Said’ https://www.facebook.com/WhatSheSaidIL , and a chance to win an ornamental tree planted in your yard.

Proceeds from the event will go to restoring this beautiful Olmsted Garden.

For more information email frtg2018@gmail.com

Garden Party

Town Garden Work Session
2019-09-19 08:30 - 10:30, 2019-09-05 08:30 - 10:30
Work Plan: Weeding, pruning, clearing around the Whittemore Robbins House. Serious rain will cancel. Or a rain call will be made by 7:30 am. Meeting place: Meet Emily Snyder at the Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House (700R Mass. Ave., Arlington Ctr.) Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage HouseWear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Town Garden Work Session
2019-08-22 08:30 - 10:30, 2019-07-11 08:30 - 10:30
Work Plan: Work in the town garden to do some pruning and light weeding. Meeting place: Meet Patsy Kraemer at the Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House (700R Mass. Ave., Arlington Ctr.) Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage HouseWear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Town Garden Work Session
2019-08-14 08:30 - 10:30
Meet Mona at the Carriage House and work in the Town Garden.

Work plan: weeding area 7 and pruning the viburnum in area 8. This is a great opportunity to learn about pruning shrubs. Spot watering if needed.

We provide free parking permits for parking near the carriage house. Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long handled tools and garden carts.

Town Garden Work Session is cancelled for this week only.
2019-08-08 08:30 - 10:30

Town Garden Work Session
2019-07-31 08:30 - 10:30
Town Hall Garden Work Session

Wednesday July 3, 2019

@

8:30 am

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10:30 am

Meet Mona at the Carriage House and work in the Town Hall Garden.

Work plan: weeding
near town hall for a while, then weed the shrubs near pool and lawn oval.
Spot watering if needed.

We provide free parking permits for parking near the carriage house. Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long handled tools and garden carts.

G
2019-07-25 08:30 - 22:30
Time: 8:30 – 10/10:30 am Serious rain will cancel. Or a rain call will be made by 7:30 am. Work Plan: Weeding, pruning, clearing invasives around Whittemore Robbins House & the Reflecting Pool Meeting place: Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House (700R Mass. Ave., Arlington Ctr.) Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage HouseWear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Emily Snyder & Patsy KraemerEmily’s cell / text: 617-750-0106_

Town Hall Garden Work Session
2019-07-03 08:30 - 10:30
Meet Mona at the Carriage House and work in the Town Hall Garden. We
provide free parking permits for parking near the carriage house. Wear
gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long handled
tools and garden carts.

Town Gardens Work Day
2019-06-27 08:30 - 10:30
Work Plan: Spreading mulch which will be brought to work areas for spreading by town summer interns. Meeting place: Meet Emily Snyder at the Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House (700R Mass. Ave., Arlington Ctr.) Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage HouseWear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Town Garden Work Day
2019-06-19 08:30 - 10:00

Work plan
2019-05-30 08:30 - 22:00 | Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House,, 700r Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, Massachusetts, 02476, United States
Meet at the carriage house and work in the Whittemore Robbins House Garden.

Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage House

Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Work Plan 5/23
2019-05-23 08:30 - 10:00
Join Mona to finish the spiny branches piled on the small cotoneaster in areas 2 & 3 and work on rabbit fencing in area 7. Work group will also dig out some daylilies near the coffee tree, trim the juniper trees and will lightly cultivate the mulch near the Deutzia.

Anyone wishing to help should bring their gardening hand tools, weed bucket, sunscreen, hat, gloves, water and bug spray.

Come Celebrate restoration of the Reflecting Pool
2019-05-18 18:30 - 19:30
Cash Bar, Savory Hors d’Oeuvres,

Music and Theater.

Tickets: $25.00 in advance, $30 at the door

Available at the Town Hall Select Board office, the Book Rack or the Chamber of Commerce

Celebration sponsored by the Town of Arlington, the Friends of Robbins Town Gardens, the Arlington Historical Commission, the Cyrus Dallin Museum, and the Arlington Garden Club

Work Session
2019-05-16 08:00 - 10:30
Our plan for 2019 is to hold work sessions in the Town Hall Gardens on alternate Thursday mornings starting Thursday, May 2nd.

Serious rain will cancel. Or a rain call will be made by 7:30 am.

Work Plan: Weeding, planting, topdressing with compost in some areas, rabbit protection in some areas, and scouting for pests and diseases. Check one dogwood in Area 1 has anthracnose due to all the rain and might need to be replaced. We will see when the leaves are fully open.

Rabbits are eating the cotoneaster and have begun chewing on the bark of the old azaleas. Install garlic stakes on new cotoneaster at grotto. Spray after the next rain with Critter Ritter or Deer-Off.

Areas 3 and 4 still have dead wood and a large dead crown in a dogwood in Area 4 that needs surgery. Areas 3 and 4 at the lawn oval have invasive plants but we will remove them next year when there are dogwoods to replace and more mountain laurels and Korean Azaleas to infill the existing ones.

**There will be a demo of heading back the overgrown Japanese Yew in Area 4 next Thursday. Discussion will include preserving the shape as well as reducing the size in height and girth. This may include follow-up pruning in six months to redirect those sprouts that shoot straight up.

We will continue this technique on some of the other oversized shrubs in area 3 and 4, with the understanding that the azaleas, mountain laurels and Mountain Pieris are supposed to be clusters or masses growing into one another.

Invasive vines will sprout up so ongoing removal will continue each week. Digging the root out is best. Just cutting the top is okay if the root is hidden.

Mona will talk about elm tree cultivars at the next garden club Thursday work session.

Update

Pruned one overgrown upright Japanese Yew area 4. Sprayed rabbit deterrent and use granule fox urine P E W! Areas 2, 3, 4 Piled spiny branches on the small cotoneaster as an experiment area 2

We can cut bits of thorny rose and barberry and stick it all around the plants.

Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage House

Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Emily’s cell / text:617-750-0106

Volunteer Coffee
2019-05-09 19:30 - 21:00
Calling all Gardeners interested in helping to maintain the Robbins Garden- May 9, 7:30pm coffee Dear folks, As hopefully you have noticed, the WInfield Robbins Memorial Garden – the one at the center of Town located between the Library and Town Hall, is slowly being restored. The reflecting pool is repaired, the Indian restored and the garden at the side of town hall and the area around the Indian have many new plants. As we move into Spring, we are planning how these areas as well as the resst of the garden will be maintained this year.The Garden Club and the Friends of Robbins Town Gardens will be working on alternate Thursdays – weeding, pruning, watering and checking on the overall health of the older and newer plants. We need volunteers to help us with maintenance this summer. To get an idea of how many volunteers we might have who will be willing to help us, we are hosting an evening coffee/tea gathering on May 8 at 7:30 in the Lyons room at Town hall. At the gathering we’ll be going over the various tasks the two groups will be working on, introducing you to key people who will be helping with this effort – master gardeners and historic gardeners who will be on hand to oversee our work and teach us about garden maintenance.Volunteer commitments usually run 2-4 hours / week with lots of flexibility from week to week.We look foward to meeting you.Christine HarrisPatsy KraemerEmily SnyderMona McKindleyJoAnn RobinsonRobert Cunniff

Work Session
2019-05-09 08:30 - 10:30
Extra work session, May 2nd was rained out.

Serious rain will cancel. Or a rain call will be made by 7:30 am.

Work Plan: Mulching, with the help of DPW interns, in bare areas throughout the gardens.

UPDATE ON WHAT WAS DONE: Area 3 & 4: We began the cutting back of some overgrown mountain laurels in area 3 and 4 in the lawn oval. Area 3 and 4 at the lawn oval has invasive plants but we will remove them next year when there are red flowering dogwoods and white dogwoods and more mountain laurels and Korean Azaleas to infill the existing ones. Area 3 and 4 is cleaned and planted and mulched. Rabbits are eating the cotoneaster and have begun chewing on the bark of the old azaleas.

Area 1: This weekend we planted:Mountain laurels and Korean Azaleas in the middle of Area 1. Two types of cotoneaster adjacent to the Korean Azaleas Area 1

Area 2: This weekend we planted:Dogwoods among the pines in Area 2

Area 7:This weekend we planted: Thunberg’s spirea and blueberry and mock orange in Area 7 mixed in with existing other spirea. Arrow wood Viburnum behind the Kentucky Coffee Tree. We also put up a rabbit fence. We will extend the mulch to the yew hedge when the mulch is available. We agreed the Sargent Crabapple that is trained as a standard needs to be replaced because it is the wrong shape, and it has a large wound on the main trunk which will lead to disease.

Area 5 The elm trees will be planted in the lawn oval.

Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage House

Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Emily’s cell / text:617-750-0106

Work session
2019-05-02 08:30 - 10:00 | Carriage House behind Whittemore Robbins House, 700r Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, Massachusetts, United States
Demonstration on pruning Japanese Yews!

Our plan for 2019 is to hold work sessions in the Town Hall Gardens on alternate Thursday mornings starting Thursday, May 2nd.

Serious rain will cancel. Or a rain call will be made by 7:30 am.

Work Plan: Weeding, pruning, clearing invasives around Whittemore Robbins House & the Reflecting Pool

Parking: We provide free parking permits for parking near the Carriage House

Wear gloves. Bring water and hand tools if you want. We have long-handled tools and garden carts.

Emily’s cell / text:617-750-0106

Polishing a Masterpiece: Rediscovering Arlington’s Winfield Robbins Memorial Gardens
2019-04-30 19:30 - 20:30 | Town Hall, 730 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, Massachusetts, 02476, United States
Members of the Friends of Robbins Town Gardens and the Arlington Historical Society are invited to attend a special program. Lucinda Brockway will be speaking on “Polishing a Masterpiece: Rediscovering the Winfield Robbins Memorial Garden”. The program will be held at Arlington Town Hall on Tuesday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to arrive early and stroll the garden and see the restored reflecting pool. The program is free for members of the Arlington Historical Society and of the Friends of Robbins Town Gardens. Admission for non-members is $5.00.

Like a work of Paul Revere’s silver or a master’s painting, designed landscapes need some regular polish to look their best. The Winfield Robbins Memorial Garden, between the Robbins Library and the Arlington Town Hall, is such a landscape jewel. In 1938, the Olmsted Brothers were hired to re-imagine R. Clipston Sturgis’ Victorian garden into a less formal, naturalistic garden setting for the famed “Menotomy Hunter” statue. Their design, and the park’s subsequent construction, are documented through plans, planting lists and Arlington Annual Reports. Preserving these landscapes takes a special multi-focal lens that looks to the past, the present, and the future with an eye to budget, maintenance and management. Using examples from recent work at Castle Hill, Naumkeag and other properties, Lucinda Brockway, Director of Cultural Resources for The Trustees, will explore the process and the promise held in these treasured spaces.

Brockway states: “I believe that our cultural landscapes open a three dimensional textbook to the past for contemporary citizens. These landscapes existing on a village street, an urban park, backyard garden or woodland that has grown up over a former hayfield. The details of their stories are written in light posts, old trees, curb edgings, street widths and stone walls. Each of us can learn to read their vocabulary if we only pay attention. Revitalizing these landscapes is like polishing an old masterpiece, igniting new life for another generation.”

Bio:LUCINDA A. BROCKWAY is the Program Director for Cultural Resources at The Trustees, a Massachusetts conservation and preservation organization with eleven public gardens from Martha’s Vineyard to the Berkshire Hills. Brockway and her team are deepening the public connection to plants, plant collections and the beauty of public gardens across the Commonwealth with an eye to their resiliency, sustainability and durability. An award-winning landscape designer and preservationist, Brockway’s work has been recognized by the Garden Club of America, the Garden Club Federation of Maine, the Massachusetts Historic Commission, and others. Her work has been featured in Old House Journal, Colonial Homes, Nineteenth Century and Accent as well as numerous professional and trade publications.
