Special Features Offered at Camden Garden Club’s 75th Annual Garden Tour

May 26, 2023

The Camden Garden Club’s 75th Annual Garden Tour will take place on Thursday, July 20, 2023, from 9:30 am to 4 pm. This year, the gardens will feature a variety of landscaping, planting styles, and architectural structures, with a modern emphasis on sustainable horticulture and native plantings. To complement the visual beauty of the Tour, the Club is pleased to present a selection of immersive garden-side features. These include a flower-arranging demonstration, a culinary treat, and performances by award-winning local musicians.  

Flower-arranging demonstration

On the morning of Tour day, Nellie Sweet, owner of Sweet Tribbie Flowers, a small-scale flower farm in Mid-Coast Maine bringing fresh-cut flowers right to your door in Knox and Waldo counties May-October, will conduct a flower-arranging demonstration.

“I started work as a landscaper ten years ago and fell in love with working with plants,” Nellie explains. “In 2018, I began growing cut flowers which led to Sweet Tribbie, my small-scale flower farm in Searsmont, Maine. I use all-natural, low-impact farming to grow flowers, focusing on the overall health of the system rather than the highest yield. Cover crops, chickens, pigs, and old-fashioned hard labor bring you the freshest blooms. Whether you’re looking for flowers for your wedding, business, home, party, or just because, I bring you thoughtfully grown reminders of the simple elegance and magic of the natural world.”

Nellie’s flower arranging demonstration will be from 10:30 – 11:15 am on the morning of Camden Garden Club’s 75th Annual Garden Tour on July 20 at one of the private gardens on the Tour. The location will be announced before Tour Day. 

A Culinary Treat

The Cayman Islands are famous for their Rum Cake. British colonists brought their holiday plum and figgy pudding recipes to the islands. Local chefs adapted this festive English favorite, using island ingredients. Today, Cayman Island Rum Cake has become the island’s number one souvenir and export. One of the hosts of a private garden on Camden Garden Club’s 75th Annual Garden Tour is a Cayman Island resident who bakes their rich and authentic Rum Cake recipe. All Tour guests visiting this garden on the Tour will enjoy the savory-sweet taste of the islands. It may not be the holiday season for this famed confection, but the 75th Anniversary of Camden Garden Club’s Annual Garden Tour is worth celebrating!

Award-winning Local Musicians

To further enhance ticket holders’ experiences, award-winning local musicians will perform for their listening pleasure at each private property on Camden Garden Club’s 75th Annual Garden Tour. These artists’ rich musical histories and biographies speak to their love of music. 

Ami Wolovitz, the 2022 Elsie Bixler Junior Prize winner, comes from a musical family: her mother is a flutist, her father a drummer, and her sister a pianist. An eighth grader, Ami has played the violin for six years and has won first-place awards in the Young Stars of Maine Competition (2022) and MaineMTA Biennial Pine Tree Competition (2021). She studies with Josie Davis at Bay Chamber Concerts & Music School

While Ami finds managing time for practice challenging, chamber music remains a pleasure and an important component of her musical studies. “Music is a big part of performing, whether at camp or in my weekly group. The collaboration and energy put into piecing together all the parts are gratifying, and it’s been a wonderful way to create friendships,” according to this young star. 

Ami cites “The Six Romanian Folk Dances” by Bela Bartok as her favorite piece because they are rustic, and she can play them with a lot of vigor. Ami looks forward to playing “Dances” for guests during her performances at Camden Garden Club’s Annual Garden Tour. 

Greg Dorr lives in Camden with his wife, Susan, and their beloved boxer, Edie, one of his most adoring fans. Every summer, Greg enjoys performing at the Pleasant River Grange on Vinyl Haven and can be found busking throughout the area at local farmers’ and flea markets. 

Music has always played an essential role in Greg’s life, and he has taught himself to play several instruments, including the fiddle, violin, and mandolin. Greg started playing with a contradance band called Karl’s Dad’s Tavern. Greg actively volunteers for the Midcoast Habitat For Humanity ReStore when he’s not learning a new piece or performing.

Belfast Bay Fiddlers is a group of amateur musicians from mid-coast Maine who gather together to play traditional dance tunes from New England, French and Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Scotland, and other regions. Their infectious, toe-tapping repertoire includes jigs, reels, hornpipes, polkas, and waltzes performed on fiddle, guitar, mandolin, whistle, banjo, bass, piano, and other instruments. 

Belfast Bay Fiddlers evolved from a weekly jam session in Belfast into a popular group that plays at regional festivals, community events, contra dances, schools, and senior centers. They have performed at New Year’s by the Bay, the Maine Celtic Celebration, Arts in the Park, and Harbor Fest. Their weekly Sunday evening jam sessions at the First Baptist Church in Belfast are open to anyone who enjoys playing or listening to traditional Music. You can find the Belfast Bay Fiddlers at facebook.com/belfastbayfiddlers or on their website, belfastfiddlers.org.

Kirby Ledvina is a harpist living in Malden, MA. Originally from Houston, she studied piano and switched to harp for middle and high school years. Kirby is a multiple-award winner. An engineer in the Boston area, Kirby enjoys practicing and sharing the harp.

Jamie Allen is a consummate musician and gardener. His mother was a classical pianist, and his grandfather played piano for silent movies; music significantly influenced Jaime’s life. He became an accomplished fiddle and flute player and taught himself to play many other instruments, such as the penny whistle, guitar, and bass. Equally talented on the classical guitar and Celtic guitar, Jamie performs on these instruments at weddings and other occasions.

Jamie’s other true love is gardening. He grew his first garden at seventeen and pursued this passion through apprenticeships on farms throughout New England. Jamie moved to Mid-Coast Maine in 2014. He continues his work as a gardener and often plays music in downtown Camden on a sunny day.

Tour ticket holders can also enjoy the exceptional talents of an award-winning teen cellist and harpist duo who will play at one of the private garden locations. 

All musical performance locations will be released closer to the date of the Annual Garden Tour. For more information and updates please visit camdengardenclub.org.

Thank you to our partners, mainehomedesign, decormaine, and visitmaine. Visit visitmaine.com for statewide info. 
The oldest garden club in Maine, the Camden Garden Club cultivates the art of gardening to its fullest sense, develops and preserves beauty in and around Camden, and promotes civic improvements, education, and conservation of natural resources. For more information on the Club and its activities visit camdengardenclub.org.
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Header Photo: Carol Miller Photography

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