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01/11/2017 07:30 AMEver since she owned her own home, Cindy Golia has enjoyed gardening, planting gardens, beds, and pots of flowers and vegetables. She has lived in North Haven for all but five years of her life and in 2010, she joined the North Haven Garden Club (NHGC).
“The Garden Club is a wonderful group of ladies who get together monthly and also do a lot of community service,” she says. “There is such a nice camaraderie and everybody is always there to help with projects.”
The NHGC maintains various beds and gardens throughout town, including the pots on Maple Avenue. The club, which has 25 members and four associate members, meets on the second Thursday of every month from September to June at 7 p.m. The meeting starts with a business discussion and, at 7:30 p.m., there is a guest speaker.
“We have quite an array of speakers lined up and every month is something interesting, from how to prune your trees to cooking demonstrations with herbs to flower arranging or beekeeping,” says Cindy. “The wealth of knowledge is unbelievable and there’s always more to learn about gardening.”
In addition to learning about different plants and gardening techniques, Cindy has also learned about flower arrangement through the NHGC as a volunteer at hospice.
The club is part of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut Inc. and at the last annual banquet in October, NHGC won 12 awards. Through her years with the club, Cindy has taken on more responsibility as she is the club’s treasurer, publicity chair, and Facebook page manager.
She is also the youth chair. Cindy coordinates the club’s work with Green Acres Elementary School where the NHGC takes care of the pots at the school’s entrance, updating them with each season. They also refurbished the three garden beds where they plant flowers each spring.
The NHGC also helps to coordinate Earth Day events with a theme each year. The theme is then carried over to the club’s annual May Market, which is the main fundraiser for the NHGC. Cindy particularly enjoys Earth Day and the May Market because her daughter is also involved in those events.
Cindy and Anthony, her husband of nearly 40 years, have three children—Anthony II, Krista, and Jennifer—and four grandkids. She enjoys sharing her passion with her family. Krista is a teacher in North Haven and involved in the North Haven Education Foundation, which works on Earth Day events with the garden club.
The May Market follows and is held on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. The NHGC sells annuals as well as perennials that are dug up from members’ gardens. In addition to the plant sale, there are other vendors who sell jewelry, stone carvings, and more, as well as raffles.
“Everybody’s garden is different and personalized to their own taste, so there are a great variety of plants,” says Cindy. “Members also sell their vegetables, herbs, birdhouses, bird feeders, and more. It’s more than just plants.”
In addition to her volunteer work with the NHGC, Cindy also runs the office end of her husband’s oil company. She works from home, which allows her watch two of her grandchildren and have time to garden. She also loves sharing her hobby with her grandkids, who are 3 and 1.
“One of the flexibilities of working from home is being able to watch my grandkids and have time to work in my gardens,” says Cindy. “It is so wonderful to see things through a child’s eyes again and see the delight and wonder in their eyes. It makes you slow down and smell the roses.”
Even though the ground is still frozen, Cindy is already thinking about her gardens. She plants more than 15 trays of annuals each year and also adds new perennials and vegetables. Cindy likes to plant things that will bloom throughout the growing season.
“I like a lot of color—flowers that are bright and have blooms that last and don’t require too much deadheading,” says Cindy. “I can’t wait for spring. Gardening is such a peaceful, relaxing thing. When you’re out there by yourself with the dirt and the flowers, it’s like therapy. I really enjoy it.”
Cindy enjoys exercising, boating with her husband, crocheting, and counted cross-stitch. Over the past two years, she started taking crocheting classes through adult education at the high school, learning new stitches and how to read patterns. She is glad to have found the NHGC and not only enjoys pursuing her passion for gardening but contributing to a better community, too.
“It was the right time in my life to join the garden club,” says Cindy. “It is just a small way to give back and our work makes our town a lot prettier to look at.”