The holiday wreaths are up in downtown Camden as of Tuesday, November 15th thanks to the efforts of the Camden Garden Club. For 51 years the Club has provided the Town of Camden with its iconic holiday wreaths to adorn the 98 downtown lampposts. This year, the wreaths are again up in plenty of time for Christmas By The Sea, Camden’s annual celebration to ring in the holiday season.
The Camden Garden Club provides the custom handmade wreaths free of cost to the Town of Camden. Dozens of the Club’s members contribute over 100 volunteer hours and the Club itself contributes thousands of dollars in materials to this annual project each year which is completely supported by donations and funds raised by the Club.
The Club purchases the fresh balsam wreaths from local Damariscotta provider Evergreen Farms, which uses locally sustainably harvested balsam tips to form the double sided fresh greenery wreaths. The Club has procured the wreaths from Evergreen Farms for at least eight years. Each wreath is finished with a handmade crimson felt bow and a loop of warm white lights, both of which are purchased and finished by the Camden Garden Club. The lighted wreaths are then affixed to the lampposts by the Town of Camden.
The practice of harvesting evergreen branch tips is a sustainable harvest technique called “tipping” or “tip harvesting.” Balsam fir tips are a multimillion dollar renewable sustainable resource in Maine.
Making the wreaths and all of their components takes months of preparation. The Club’s members volunteer across two hours-long workshops in the fall to create the wreaths. The first workshop took place in October this year and was exclusively devoted to creating the 98 bows. Each bow is cut from spools of ribbon and assembled by hand.
Since the 1950s, the Club has provided holiday decorations for the town. The tradition of fresh balsam wreaths adorned with puffy red bows and lights began in 1971.
The wreaths will hang on the streets of Camden throughout the 2022 holiday season in place of the Club’s iconic red flower baskets. Making the bows for the wreaths is just one of the many services the Camden Garden Club provides to the town.