If you’ve been saying you want to meet more people, or pick up a hobby, maybe the Wachusett Garden Club is for you! I wasn’t really looking for either. I just love perennials and wanted to get good local advice on managing what grows in my yard. Meetings are optional, but fun!
I joined the Wachusett Garden Club in 2025, after several years of good intentions, but no action on my part. I saw they were hosting a pruning workshop with a pruning guru, so I joined the club, joined the workshop and then pruned my Rhododendrons in to the prettiest they’ve ever been.
Dot Odgren and Kathy Olson are the co-presidents of the Wachusett Garden Club. They recently hosted the annual meeting at the Norco Sportsmans Club on Houghton Road in Princeton, and then a terrarium making workshop.
The Wachusett Garden Club was founded in Princeton in 1986 by a group of friends who shared an interest in learning about and helping each other with gardening, conservation and horticulture. The group is a mix of men and women from, as of this writing, Holden, Paxton Princeton, Rutland, Sterling, Westminster, and Winchendon and is open to anyone in the Wachusett area with an interest in gardening.
If you like the beauty of perennials, whether organized or whimsical, you should put the club annual plant sale on your calendar right now. It’s always held on the second Sunday of May at the Thomas Prince School, 178 Sterling Road in Princeton. This plant sale is a big fundraiser each year, and really gives your home landscape a boost with very reasonably priced plants that thrive in local soil.
I’ve signed up for a bonsai workshop in March, and look forward to a fruit tree pruning presentation later in the year. The membership costs just $20 annually and it’s not a bunch of fancy ladies sitting around sipping tea. We get our hands dirty preparing for plant sale, there’s lots of advice between members when there are specific questions, and people are offering divisions of their plants throughout the season. It’s just a really nice group of people, very casual. Last year I mentioned I would like some Hellebore for my shaded area, I had a few people reach out to offer to have me come over and divide some from their yard!
Find out more here, check out their calendar for 2026, here’s a membership form, and maybe I’ll see you there! If you’re like me and you don’t want to walk in to something new on your own without someone you know, just reach out to me and I’ll make sure to attend with you.
