“A connection was made,” Root-Simone said, and members have even attended a class together to learn gardening tips, as well as to get to know each other, which may lead to regular meetings.

“Hopefully, it will create more awareness,” Tasca said. The group’s efforts will be visible June 4, when they plan a community plant sale on the town common. 

Other efforts like garden tours are also being planned. 

But as spring is here, for real, there will be plenty of digging, preparing and planting going on. The plant sale will give gardeners the chance to add to their gardens as well.

Club members will also take advantage of the opportunity to share some of their plants, dividing some, for instance, to sell to benefit the club’s programming and presentation, Root-Simone said.

A wide variety of people — and plants — may be involved in the pant sale, Tasca and Root-Simone said.

“It’s good to see Paxton doing more of this,” Root-Simone said, noting she had grown up in town. Tasca said future efforts could include groups such as the library and the Council on Aging.

Root-Simone stressed the benefits of using native plants in gardens, as they are “an important piece of the puzzle.”

And of the more than 100 people on the Facebook page, 40 or more are actively chatting, Tasca said, with 25 attending the group’s recent program at Bemis Farms Nursery in Spencer.

The club has also expressed interest in helping to maintain plantings on the town common.

Roger McGaughey has worked to reinvigorate the plantings at the memorials there, but club members are planning to help maintain them, handling things like watering, working with the DPW to get water access to the site. The plantings at the memorials will help make it a more welcoming place for people to visit and sit, McGaughey said, with plans for Scouts to work on benches. He’s planning pots next to the benches as well. “It’s good for people to get their hands in the dirt, good for the mind,” McGaughey said.

In addition to flowers, vegetables could be grown, and Root-Simone said they could be donated to the food pantry.

The two met through the Facebook effort, sharing a love of gardening.

Root-Simone teaches in the Rutland schools, and Tasca is a marketing veteran, with the two putting their skills and hobby to work to build the new garden club. 

Root-Simone’s background includes plenty of plants, from landscape work for her father’s company and teaching. She also has farm experience from her grandparents’ dairy farm and her own personal farm. She studied environmental policy at Clark University and learned more at Tower Hill, now New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, where the Worcester County Horticultural Society’s gardens can provide inspiration. 

Tasca summered with her grandmother in Western Massachusetts, where she was exposed to a “gorgeous flower garden.” Tasca helped weed and water, but over time, “I absorbed her expertise like a sponge.” Her grandmother’s interests and skills rubbed off on her children and Tasca, who has passed them to her daughter. “It all came from my grandmother,” she said.

There are plants from her grandmother whose descendants still grow in her garden, Tasca said. She occasionally divides those to continue and share their line, which she said has “real emotional attachments.”

Root-Simone also divides perennials and shares them so they can bloom again in other gardens. In addition to the Facebook page, the club has a website:  www.paxtongardenclub.com.

June 4 plant sale

The club has reached out to vendors who want to set up at the plant sale. For more information, email paxtongardenclub01612@gmail.com.

The sale is slated for June 4 from 8 a.m. to noon. After that, they expect many of the plants to be headed into the gardens of residents who take advantage of the chance to add plants and watch their gardens bloom.