Garden club to spruce up historic trough
BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer

COURTESY OF JEANNE GIARRATANO Peg Jarvis (l-r), Anna May Ahern, MaryAnn Enchura, Ken O'Brien of Public Works, Sally Burns, June Young and Jeanne Giarratano of the Metuchen Garden Club are fixing up the historic horse trough.

METUCHEN - The old Victorian horse-watering trough at the intersection of Oak and Middlesex avenues will get a new makeover throughout the four seasons.

The Garden Club of Metuchen teamed up with the Metuchen Department of Public Works and the Boro Hardware Store in September to provide maintenance and plantings for the 101-year-old site for all seasons.

"We wanted to expand the effort of Tish Ruegger's many years of planting the trough to include maintaining the surrounding area," said member Jeanne Giarratano. "Over the years, many groups also planted at the trough, yet no group had overseen the site. As a result, the club has made a commitment to coordinate their effort to beautify the trough and its surrounding property year round."

The club planted yellow and purple mums, winter cabbage and vinca for the fall season.

"We plan to plant for every season," said Giarratano. "We had so many ideas coming in that we broke it up into phases. Phase I - cleanup and seasonal plantings, and Phase II - giving the property surrounding the trough more of a park- like setting to bring back the feeling of an era of when the horse trough was first erected."

The club is considering winter greens with seasonal ornamental branches for after Thanksgiving and for throughout the winter, and colorful flowers for the spring, said Giarratano.

"We hope to move on Phase II by the summertime," she said.

Giarratano said the Metuchen Department of Public Works has been very helpful.

"They have offered to rearrange shrubbery and maintain it for us to give the site a better design and look," she said. "Basically doing everything that we cannot physically do."

The week after Thanksgiving, the club will give the trough its winter look.

The Garden Club of Metuchen started in 1925. The public is welcome to join the club and new members are always welcome.

The club had one of its monthly meetings last week. Member Elsie Hickey presented the group with holiday flower-arranging tips. Meetings are held once a month. For more information call Anna May Ahern at (732) 549-8012.