Mission:   

The House and Garden Club aims to preserve town resources, beautify our surroundings, and educate ourselves and others on horticultural and environmental issues.  We connect through creative programming: speakers, workshops, activities, field trips, reading circles, film viewing and more. The club also aims to support conservation at the local, state, and national levels.  

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Community Projects include the installation and maintenance of Butterfly Gardens at Wellesley elementary schools, and Central Park at Post Office Square; providing holiday decorations for Town Hall; hosting an annual auction to benefit Wellesley Friendly Aid's Camp Scholarship Fund; providing Garden Therapy for seniors; hosting an annual Geranium Sale Fundraiser to support these and other projects. 

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Central Park:  

We launched Central Park in 1963 to beautify Post Office Square and Wellesley Center.  After removing unsightly undergrowth and weeds, the club prepared the ground to receive plantings of trees, shrubs, bulbs, perennials, and annuals, to give Post Office Square enduring appeal with the colors, fragrances, and horticultural beauty of each season.

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In collaboration with Wellesley's Department of Public Works, many more additions have been added since 1963, including the picnic table, benches, a brick walkway, and the bronze statue "Girl with Butterfly" that we commissioned to be made by the local artist, Merrilyn Delano Marsh, is a statue of a girl grasping a bouquet topped off by a butterfly. It commemorates the Club's Butterfly Gardens at Wellesley elementary schools.  The most recent additions are lovely lilac shrubs given in memory of Mrs. Billie St. Clair, one of the club's Founding Members and a former club president.

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Wellesley Schools' Butterfly Gardens grew out of the club’s collaboration with the Wellesley Schools’ Director of Curriculum and the PTO's Beautification Committees.  The club's mission of conservation of wildlife and lands united with Wellesley Schools' Science Curriculum.  The gardens were designed to 1) save the diminishing population of butterflies [and bees], by providing nourishment for them with plants from which they prefer to drink nectar, and by 2) providing “host plants” on which they prefer to lay their eggs. 

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Wellesley’s elementary schools have Butterfly Gardens, AKA Outdoor Science Laboratories in which students may observe science.  Following a butterfly's metamorphosis, it is released into the gardens. Each May Wellesley's students and teachers give these colorful insects their new homes in nature.  In addition, the gardens are used for other science lessons, such as for the study of seeds.

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​More Community Projects:

• Collaborative projects with Wellesley Girl Scouts, encouraging young gardeners and giving them Service Awards

• Annual Luncheon and Holiday Auction benefitting the Wellesley Friendly Aid Camp Scholarship Fund

• Collaborative projects and programs with the Council of Wellesley Garden Clubs

• Art in Bloom, Boston Museum of Fine Arts