On a beautiful summer day, eight members of the Osterville Garden Club traveled to the Childrens' Gardens to help the children create their own Scarecrows to be judged at the Barnstable Fair and eventually, to be used to guard each child's garden for the summer and early fall.


The leaders of the Childrens' Garden Program are Master Gardeners Donna Lawson and Mary Hunt. They are assisted by 12 other Master Gardeners who work one-on-one with the 12 children enrolled this season which runs from May through September.

It is a beautifully run program and the children who have chosen to participate in the program are 6 years to 12 years old and so enthusiastic and well mannered.

This days agenda was to clothe the scarecrows, paint the stones they had molded to look like ladybugs and weed their gardens.

Our members were quickly put to work stuffing paper into plastic shopping bags to be used to create the bodies of the scarecrows.




Each child brought clothes to dress their scarecrows.

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We helped to create the bodies, paint faces,


attach hair and hats while others supervised the painting of the lady bugs.





After most of the work was completed we all stopped to have lemonade and cookies.



At 5:00, Donna and Mary called everyone to form "the circle" which is the way the day's program is ended.


The day's work was discussed and we were thanked for coming to help and for bringing refreshments. We also planned for future meetings.

It was a fun afternoon to be with adults and children who are excited about gardening, proud of their accomplishment, and who love to be together out in their gardens for a a few hours each week.



Our hope is that other Club members will decide to join in the fun of working with children who love to garden. This is a wonderul program that fulfills part of our Club's mission, "to provide education in general horticulture, conservation and floral design". We have designated this new Club program as "Under The Green Umbrella" .