COMMUNITY BY
Sandra N. Johnson, President, Hanover Garden Club
Deep Roots Beautifying Hanover How one man made a difference This year the Hanover Garden Club is celebrating its 80th anniversary—and there’s a lot to celebrate! The Garden Club’s involvement in the life of Hanover goes back to 1936, when a group of women who were interested in protecting the natural resources of their growing community formed the Hanover Garden Club. The organization attracted members with a love of gardening. As civic-minded individuals, they took an active role in maintaining the beauty of their community. Also forward-thinking people, they were concerned about conservation and environmental sustainability. Over the years, the Hanover Garden Club has grown to over 200 members, attracting men and women who share the same values as those original members from all over the Upper Valley. A VERY SPECIAL POSTMAN At this time of year, the club’s members are busy planting all of the town gardens and hanging the flowering baskets that will soon be seen blossoming throughout Hanover. This valued and enduring tradition, however, did not begin with the garden club. It can be attributed to Julius S. Mason, a local Hanover-based mailman. In 1919, Julius began his 37-year career with the post office, delivering mail to the area west of Main Street. He also began planting a wide variety of annuals, perennials, and shrubs in many of the public spaces that he encountered along his mail route. These barren patches begged for a bit of color and more interesting scenery. Some of the seeds and plants that Julius Mason used were donated, but most were his own contributions. As the years went by, more gardens were developed, and during the summer months, many areas of the community were ablaze with color. Over the years, Julius tended these gardens in several key locations around Hanover—a traffic island in front of the Hanover Inn, at the Nugget Theater (located then at 2 West Wheelock Street), on the Casque and Gauntlet corner, at the municipal parking lot, in front of the Super 32
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Julius S. Mason as a young postal worker in Hanover. Photo courtesy Dartmouth College Archives.
Duper grocery store parking lot (now the CVS Pharmacy), and along South Main Street as one enters Hanover along Route 10. Each year, this green-thumbed postman would add small-plot gardens where he felt a splash of color was needed. As the gardens matured during the summer months, flowers were picked and presented to patients at Hanover’s Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and to friends along his mail route. When Julius Mason passed away in 1965, the people of Hanover recognized that they had lost a faithful and valuable friend who had enriched the community in his own very special way. A LEGACY CONTINUES After his death, the Hanover Conservation Council established the Julius Mason Fund and sought assistance from the Hanover Garden Club to continue his gift of beautifying the town of Hanover. Work was initiated to create new “beauty spots” in the town as well as to maintain the flower gardens so lovingly cared for by Julius. The Council solicited donations from the community, and during that first year, more than $1,200 from 75 contributors was collected. The sole purpose of the fund was to continue what Julius Mason had started 45 years earlier. For 38 years after Julius’s death, the Conservation Council and the Hanover Garden Club shared the responsibility for these town